As for Barb's own little life, caught in the whirl of the city's, it was full and breathless and on the whole incredibly agreeable. She typed her Aunt's eloquent pro-suffrage pamphlets and articles and listened with rapt eyes and eager ears to her Aunt's glowing speeches and all the while in her busy brain the meaning of this, too, was gradually dawning. At first it had been like a confused, jumbled picture puzzle, but little by little she was able to put the pieces together into their proper places. She was beginning to see that though one talked a great deal about the woman question and listened to a great deal about the woman question, there was really, after all, no woman question, just the human question--the human questions.
How could every man and woman and child in America--in the world--be assured enough to eat and to wear, enough and not too much? How could each have leisure to play, also just enough, neither too much, nor too little? How was each to find his own work, neither too much nor too little, but the right work, the work he could do with all his heart, not for the payment, though that must be adequate, but for the zest of the doing itself, that special, personal service which every human being should be God endowed and man fitted to perform? Above all, how could every man, woman and child be sure of happiness? Since she had come to the city happiness had come to seem a very fundamental thing, perhaps because she herself was so happy, partly also because she was so sorry for the rest who were not happy. And so few of them seemed to be happy. They looked complacent, or smug, or well-fed, or blatantly successful, some of them, but almost none looked happy, and most of them, it seemed to Barb, looked downright miserable, haunted and hunted, which was very sad.
Barb herself was happy, as has been said. In her ignorance and innocence she supposed her happiness had its roots in the fact that she was young and healthy and busy and useful and interested in her work. She had no idea that her happiness was at all bound up in the other fact that few days passed that she did not either see or talk over the telephone with a certain rather grave but very friendly young doctor from the near-by clinic, who was also interested in getting at the secret of the city, especially in trying to pluck out the heart of its physical miseries, fighting the seemingly futile battle with filth and disease and ignorance and vice and their sad consequences, attacking the Augean stables of the city with the energy of a Hercules, though there was no magic stream to turn to his aid except the magic stream of youth and courage and determination and faith, which was, after all, a fairly efficient substitute.
And if sometimes when there was a silence between the two young people and Barb's heart was almost overbrimming with a wistful, half-conscious joy in things as they were, she did not know that the grim set to Phil's mouth and the tired look in his eyes was due to the fact that his Faraway Princess was looking particularly far off just then and that he was all but oblivious of the presence of the contented little Beggar-Maid quite within hailing distance. So much for Fools' Paradises where Youth lives from preference and for Nature going quietly about her business in the background!
The city had its way with Suzanne, too, and though she loved it better than Barb, it treated her less genially. Suzanne worked hard and hopefully. The click of her typewriter resounded faithfully by night and day. But, somehow, her plays and stories did not sell. The arrival of the mails with the persistently returning long envelopes was a daily agony. She got to know all the hateful platitudinous variations of the printed slip "Does not necessarily imply lack of merit," "Not exactly suited to the needs of the magazine," and so on. How she detested the smug, smooth, complacency of those printed formulæ! How she hugged to her heart the occasional kindly, personal notes of the compassionate editors who salved the pain of rejection by a brief word or two of encouragement or advice. But, alas, these favors were as few as they were precious!
The plays fared no better. The managers smiled unctuously upon her prettiness when Suzanne bearded them in their dens. Some of them even patted her on the shoulder and told her her work was "promising," and advised her by all means to keep at it. But there was always some thoroughly excellent reason why they could not take the particular play or sketch she had to offer and she had eventually to retreat from the dens, one after the other, sore, indignant, but more doggedly determined than ever to storm the citadel.
In the meanwhile Aunt Sarah's little legacy dwindled until it became a mere shadow of itself. It had never been very portly at the best of times, and living in the Village is deceptively expensive. By the first of December Suzanne moved, taking with her her "Factory re-built," which skipped a few letters for variety's sake now and then, but was, on the whole, very dependable. Certainly it could be depended upon to turn out manuscript which would return with automatic precision after the briefest allotment of days. Suzanne informed Barb about this time over the telephone that it was incomparably more picturesque to be living over a fruit vender's shop in the Alley than it was to inhabit a mere studio. It gave you loads of "copy." Miss Murray looked meditative when her niece reported this new viewpoint on Suzanne's part and suggested that that young lady be invited to take supper with them at an early date, to which Barbara joyfully acquiesced. She felt that she had seen too little of Suzanne of late. Suzanne accepted and Barb looked at her very critically and accused her of working herself to death and getting great dark circles under her eyes.
But Suzanne only shrugged and asserted that work agreed with her and sent up her plate for more salad, apologizing for her appetite on the score of having been so busy at lunch time she had forgotten to eat any.
"Oh, you genii!" laughed Barb reproachfully, but Miss Josephine Murray vouchsafed her guest a keen scrutiny which Suzanne perceiving, straightway rattled off a lot of voluble enthusiasm about the delights of the "Dutch Oven" and other Bohemian eating-places.
Later, Phil Lorrimer dropped in and took the girls to a show. He, too, looked rather hard at Suzanne later when they were having innocuous sandwiches and beer at a little German restaurant. Phil and Barb escorted Suzanne home to her alley but she would not let them come in, protesting that it was too late and she didn't want to ruin her reputation with Giovanni and Pepita downstairs, who were very proper people.