第214章

"Tomorrow makes everything all right.You mustn't act like a baby.The first time Katy tried, they yelled her off the stage.Now she gets eleven a week.Come back right away with me.The boss'd be mad if you won't.You ain't acting right, Miss Lorna.I didn't think you was such a fool."He had her attention now.Unmindful of the little crowd they had gathered, they stood there discussing until to save Albert from pneumonia she returned with him.He saw her started up the stairs, then ventured to take his eye off her long enough to put his head into the winter garden and send a waiter for Lange.He stood guard until Lange came and was on his way to her.

The next evening, a Saturday, before a crowded house she sang well, as well as she had ever sung in her life--sang well enough to give her beauty of face and figure, her sweetness, her charm the opportunity to win a success.She had to come back and sing "Suwanee River." She had to come for a second encore;and, flushed with her victory over her timidity, she sang Tosti's sad cry of everlasting farewell with all the tenderness there was in her.That song exactly fitted her passionate, melancholy voice; its words harmonized with the deep sadness that was her real self, that is the real self of every sensitive soul this world has ever tried with its exquisite torments for flesh and spirit.The tears that cannot be shed were in her voice, in her face, as she stood there, with her violet-gray eyes straining into vacancy.But the men and the women shed tears; and when she moved, breaking the spell of silence, they not only applauded, they cheered.

The news quickly spread that at Lange's there was a girl singer worth hearing and still more worth looking at.And Lange had his opportunity to arrive.

But several things stood in his way, things a man of far more intelligence would have found it hard to overcome.

Like nearly all saloon-keepers, he was serf to a brewery; and the particular brewery whose beer his mortgage compelled him to push did not make a beer that could be pushed.People complained that it had a disagreeably bitter aftertaste.In the second place, Mrs.Lange was a born sitter.She had married to rest--and she was resting.She was always piled upon a chair.Thus, she was not an aid but a hindrance, an encourager of the help in laziness and slovenliness.Again, the cooking was distinctly bad; the only really good thing the house served was coffee, and that was good only in the mornings.Finally, Lange was a saver by nature and not a spreader.He could hold tightly to any money he closed his stubby fingers upon; he did not know how to plant money and make it grow, but only how to hoard.

Thus it came to pass that, after the first spurt, the business fell back to about where it had been before Susan came.

Albert, the Austrian waiter, explained to Susan why it was that her popularity did the house apparently so little good--explained with truth where she suspected kind-hearted plotting, that she had arrested its latterly swift-downward slide.She was glad to hear what he had to say, as it was most pleasant to her vanity; but she could not get over the depression of the central fact--she was not making the sort of business to justify asking Lange for more than board and lodging;she was not in the way of making the money that was each day more necessary, as her little store dwindled.

The question of getting money to live on is usually dismissed in a princely way by writers about human life.It is in reality, except with the few rich, the ever-present question--as ever-present as the necessity of breathing--and it is not, like breathing, a matter settled automatically.It dominates thought; it determines action.To leave it out of account ever, in writing a human history, is to misrepresent and distort as utterly as would a portrait painter who neglected to give his subject eyes, or a head, even.With the overwhelming mass of us, money is at all times all our lives long the paramount question--for to be without it is destruction worse than death, and we are almost all perilously near to being without it.Thus, airily to pass judgment upon men and women as to their doings in getting money for necessaries, for what the compulsion of custom and habit has made necessaries to them--airily to judge them for their doings in such dire straits is like sitting calmly on shore and criticizing the conduct of passengers and sailors in a stormbeset sinking ship.It is one of the favorite pastimes of the comfortable classes; it makes an excellent impression as to one's virtue upon one's audience; it gives us a pleasing sense of superior delicacy and humor.But it is none the less mean and ridiculous.Instead of condemnation, the world needs to bestir itself to remove the stupid and cruel creatures that make evil conduct necessary; for can anyone, not a prig, say that the small part of the human race that does well does so because it is naturally better than the large part that does ill?

Spring was slow in opening.Susan's one dress was in a deplorable state.The lining hung in rags.The never good material was stretched out of shape, was frayed and worn gray in spots, was beyond being made up as presentable by the most careful pressing and cleaning.She had been forced to buy a hat, shoes, underclothes.She had only three dollars and a few cents left, and she simply did not dare lay it all out in dress materials.Yet, less than all would not be enough; all would not be enough.

Lange had from time to time more than hinted at the opportunities she was having as a public singer in his hall.

But Susan, for all her experience, had remained one of those upon whom such opportunities must be thrust if they are to be accepted.

So long as she had food and shelter, she could not make advances; she could not even go so far as passive acquiescence.

She knew she was again violating the fundamental canon of success; whatever one's business, do it thoroughly if at all.