第210章

THE dash of cold rain drops upon her face and the chill of moisture soaking through her clothing revived her.Throughout the whole range of life, whenever we resist we suffer.As Susan dragged her aching, cold wet body up from that stoop, it seemed to her that each time she resisted the penalty grew heavier.Could she have been more wretched had she remained in that dive? From her first rebellion that drove her out of her uncle's house had she ever bettered herself by resisting? She had gone from bad to worse, from worse to worst.

Worst? "This _must_ be the worst!" she thought."Surely there can be no lower depth than where I am now." And then she shuddered and her soul reeled.Had she not thought this at each shelf of the precipice down which she had been falling?

"Has it a bottom? Is there no bottom?"

Wet through, tired through, she put up her umbrella and forced herself feebly along."Where am I going? Why do I not kill myself? What is it that drives me on and on?"There came no direct answer to that last question.But up from those deep vast reservoirs of vitality that seemed sufficient whatever the drain upon them--up from those reservoirs welled strength and that unfaltering will to live which breathes upon the corpse of hope and quickens it.And she had a sense of an invisible being, a power that had her in charge, a destiny, walking beside her, holding up her drooping strength, compelling her toward some goal hidden in the fog and the storm.

At Eighth Street she turned west; at Third Avenue she paused, waiting for chance to direct her.Was it not like the maliciousness of fate that in the city whose rarely interrupted reign of joyous sunshine made her call it the city of the Sun her critical turn of chance should have fallen in foul weather?

Evidently fate was resolved on a thorough test of her endurance.In the open square, near the Peter Cooper statue, stood a huge all-night lunch wagon.She moved toward it, for she suddenly felt hungry.It was drawn to the curb; a short flight of ladder steps led to an interior attractive to sight and smell.She halted at the foot of the steps and looked in.

The only occupant was the man in charge.In a white coat he was leaning upon the counter, reading a newspaper which lay flat upon it.His bent head was extensively and roughly thatched with black hair so thick that to draw a comb through it would have been all but impossible.As Susan let down her umbrella and began to ascend, he lifted his head and gave her a full view of a humorous young face, bushy of eyebrows and mustache and darkly stained by his beard, close shaven though it was.He looked like a Spaniard or an Italian, but he was a black Irishman, one of the West coasters who recall in their eyes and coloring the wrecking of the Armada.

"Good morning, lady," said he."Breakfast or supper?""Both," replied Susan."I'm starved."

The air was gratefully warm in the little restaurant on wheels.

The dominant odor was of hot coffee; but that aroma was carried to a still higher delight by a suggestion of pastry."The best thing I've got," said the restaurant man, "is hot corn beef hash.It's so good I hate to let any of it go.You can have griddle cakes, too--and coffee, of course.""Very well," said Susan.

She was ascending upon a wave of reaction from the events of the night.Her headache had gone.The rain beating upon the roof seemed musical to her now, in this warm shelter with its certainty of the food she craved.

The young man was busy at the shiny, compact stove; the odors of the good things she was presently to have grew stronger and stronger, stimulating her hunger, bringing joy to her heart and a smile to her eyes.She wondered at herself.After what she had passed through, how could she feel thus happy--yes, positively happy? It seemed to her this was an indication of a lack in her somewhere--of seriousness, of sensibility, of she knew not what.She ought to be ashamed of that lack.But she was not ashamed.She was shedding her troubles like a child--or like a philosopher.

"Do you like hash?" inquired the restaurant man over his shoulder.

"Just as you're making it," said she."Dry but not too dry.

Brown but not too brown."

"You don't think you'd like a poached egg on top of it?""Exactly what I want!"

"It isn't everybody that can poach an egg," said the restaurant man."And it isn't every egg that can be poached.Now, my eggs are the real thing.And I can poach 'em so you'd think they was done with one of them poaching machines.I don't have 'em with the yellow on a slab of white.I do it so that the white's all round the yellow, like in the shell.And I keep 'em tender, too.Did you say one egg or a pair?""Two," said Susan.

The dishes were thick, but clean and whole.The hash--"dry but not too dry, brown but not too brown"--was artistically arranged on its platter, and the two eggs that adorned its top were precisely as he had promised.The coffee, boiled with the milk, was real coffee, too.When the restaurant man had set these things before her, as she sat expectant on a stool, he viewed his handiwork with admiring eyes.

"Delmonico couldn't beat it," said he."No, nor Oscar, neither.That'll take the tired look out of your face, lady, and bring the beauty back."Susan ate slowly, listening to the music of the beating rain.

It was like an oasis, a restful halt between two stretches of desert journey; she wished to make it as long as possible.

Only those who live exposed to life's buffetings ever learn to enjoy to the full the great little pleasures of life--the halcyon pauses in the storms--the few bright rays through the break in the clouds, the joy of food after hunger, of a bath after days of privation, of a jest or a smiling face or a kind word or deed after darkness and bitterness and contempt.She saw the restaurant man's eyes on her, a curious expression in them.

"What's the matter?" she inquired.

"I was thinking," said he, "how miserable you must have been to be so happy now.""Oh, I guess none of us has any too easy a time," said she.