"What a child you are!" laughed Mabel. "What's marriage but that?. . . Believe your Aunt Betsy, it's the poorest way to make a living that ever was invented—marriage or the other thing. Sometimes you'll be tempted to. You're pretty, and you'll find yourself up against it with no way out. You'll have to give in for a time, no doubt. The men run things in this world, and they'll compel it—one way or another. But fight back to your feet again. If I'd taken my own advice, my name would be on every dead wall in New York in letters two feet high. Instead——" She laughed, without much bitterness. "And why? All because I never learned to stand alone. I've even supported men—to have something to lean on! How's that for a poor fool?"
There Violet Anstruther called her. She rose. "You won't take my advice," she said by way of conclusion. "Nobody'll take advice. Nobody can. We ain't made that way. But don't forget what I've said. And when you've wobbled way off maybe it'll give you something to steer back by."
Susan sat on there, deep in the deepest of those brown studies that had been characteristic of her from early childhood. Often—perhaps most often—abstraction means only mental fogginess. But Susan happened to be of those who can concentrate—can think things out. And that afternoon, oblivious of the beauty around her, even unconscious of where she was, she studied the world of reality—that world whose existence, even the part of it lying within ourselves, we all try to ignore or to evade or to deny, and get soundly punished for our folly. Taking advantage of the floods of light Mabel Connemora had let in upon her—full light where there had been a dimness that was equal to darkness—she drew from the closets of memory and examined all the incidents of her life—all that were typical or for other reasons important. One who comes for the first time into new surroundings sees more, learns more about them in a brief period than has been seen and known by those who have lived there always. After a few hours of recalling and reconstructing Susan Lenox understood Sutherland probably better than she would have understood it had she lived a long eventless life there. And is not every Sutherland the world in miniature?
She also understood her own position—why the world of respectability had cast her out as soon as she emerged from childhood—why she could not have hoped for the lot to which other girls looked forward—why she belonged with the outcasts, in a world apart—and must live her life there. She felt that she could not hope to be respected, loved, married. She must work out her destiny along other lines. She understood it all, more clearly than would have been expected of her. And it is important to note that she faced her future without repining or self-pity, without either joy or despondency. She would go on; she would do as best she could. And nothing that might befall could equal what she had suffered in the throes of the casting out.
Burlingham roused her from her long reverie. He evidently had come straight from his nap—stocking feet, shirt open at the collar, trousers sagging and face shiny with the sweat that accumulates during sleep on a hot day. "Round that bend ahead of us is Sutherland," said he, pointing forward.
Up she started in alarm.
"Now, don't get fractious," cried he cheerfully. "We'll not touch shore for an hour, at least. And nobody's allowed aboard. You can keep to the cabin. I'll see that you're not bothered."
"And—this evening?"
"You can keep to the dressing-room until the show's over and the people've gone ashore. And tomorrow morning, bright and early, we'll be off. I promised Pat a day for a drunk at Sutherland. He'll have to postpone it. I'll give him three at Jeffersonville, instead."
Susan put on her sunbonnet as soon as the show boat rounded the bend above town. Thus she felt safe in staying on deck and watching the town drift by. She did not begin to think of going into the cabin until Pat was working the boat in toward the landing a square above the old familiar wharf-boat. "What day is this?" she asked Eshwell.