So she accepted his invitation.She took one of his cigarettes, and it was as good as he had said.He rattled on, mingling frank coarse compliments with talk about "the business" from a standpoint so practical that she began to suspect he was somehow in it himself.He clearly belonged to those more intelligent children of the upper class tenement people, the children who are too bright and too well educated to become working men and working women like their parents; they refuse to do any kind of manual labor, as it could never in the most favorable circumstances pay well enough to give them the higher comforts they crave, the expensive comforts which every merchant is insistently and temptingly thrusting at a public for the most part too poor to buy; so these cleverer children of the working class develop into shyster lawyers, politicians, sports, prostitutes, unless chance throws into their way some respectable means of getting money.Vaguely she wondered--without caring to question or guess what particular form of activity this young man had taken in avoiding monotonous work at small pay.
After her second drink came she found that she did not want it.
She felt tired and sleepy and wished to get her wet stockings off and to dry her skirt which, for all her careful holding up, had not escaped the fate of whatever was exposed to that abominable night."I'm going along with you," said the young man as she rose."Here's to our better acquaintance.""Thanks, but I want to be alone," replied she affably.And, not to seem unappreciative of his courtesy, she took a small drink from her glass.It tasted very queer.She glanced suspiciously at the young man.Her legs grew suddenly and strangely heavy.her heart began to beat violently, and a black fog seemed to be closing in upon her eyes.Through it she saw the youth grinning sardonically.And instantly she knew."What a fool I am!" she thought.
She had been trapped by another form of the slave system.This man was a recruiting sergeant for houses of prostitution--was one of the "cadets." They search the tenement districts for good-looking girls and young women.They hang about the street corners, flirting.They attend the balls where go the young people of the lower middle class and upper lower class.They learn to make love seductively; they understand how to tempt a girl's longing for finery, for an easier life, her dream of a husband above her class in looks and in earning power.And for each recruit "broken in" and hardened to the point of willingness to go into a sporting house, they get from the proprietor ten to twenty-five dollars according to her youth and beauty.Susan knew all about the system, had heard stories of it from the lips of girls who had been embarked through it--embarked a little sooner than they would have embarked under the lash of want, or of that other and almost equally compelling brute, desire for the comforts and luxuries that mean decent living.Susan knew; yet here she was, because of an unguarded moment, and because of a sense of security through experience--here she was, succumbing to knockout drops as easily as the most innocent child lured away from its mother's door to get a saucer of ice cream! She tried to rise, to scream, though she knew any such effort was futile.
With a gasp and a sigh her head fell forward and she was unconscious.
She awakened in a small, rather dingy room.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.Her head was aching so fiercely that she had not the courage to move.Presently the man turned toward her a kindly, bearded face.But she was used to the man of general good character who with little shame and no hesitation became beast before her, the free woman.
"Hello, pretty!" cried he, genially."Slept off your jag, have you?"He was putting on his coat and waistcoat.He took from the waistcoat pocket a dollar bill."You're a peach," said he.
"I'll come again, next time my old lady goes off guard." He made the bill into a pellet, dropped it on her breast."Alittle present for you.Put it in your stocking and don't let the madam grab it."With a groan Susan lifted herself to a sitting position, drew the spread about her--a gesture of instinct rather than of conscious modesty."They drugged me and brought me here," said she."I want you to help me get out.""Good Lord!" cried the man, instantly all a-quiver with nervousness."I'm a married man.I don't want to get mixed up in this." And out of the room he bolted, closing the door behind him.
Susan smiled at herself satirically.After all her experience, to make this silly appeal--she who knew men! "I must be getting feeble-minded," thought she.Then----Her clothes! With a glance she swept the little room.No closet! Her own clothes gone! On the chair beside the bed a fast-house parlor dress of pink cotton silk, and a kind of abbreviated chemise.The stockings on her legs were not her own, but were of pink cotton, silk finished.A pair of pink satin slippers stood on the floor beside the two galvanized iron wash basins.
