Have you ever ridden through the Chicago stock-yards on a sunny day in the month of June? If you have, you are not likely to forget the experience.
As I rode with about twenty or thirty other girls in the bus, all apparently perfectly contented and happy, I thought of some of my father's vivid stories of old Shanghai, the city of smells.
I shall not describe the odors of the Chicago stock-yards. Suffice it to say that they are many, varied, and strong, hard to bear at first, but in time, like everything else, one becomes acclimated to them, as it were. I have heard patriotic yards people, born and reared in that rarefied atmosphere, declare that they "like it." And yet the institution is one of the several wonders of the world. It is a miraculous, an astounding, a mighty organization.
Again, as on that first day in Chicago, at the railway station, I was one of many atoms pouring into buildings so colossal that they seemed cities in themselves. I followed several of the stenographers—only the stenographers rode in the busses; the factorygirls of the yards walked through, as did the men—up a few flights of stairs, and came to a vast office where, I believe, something like three thousand clerks are employed on one floor. Men, women, girls, and boys were passing along, like puppet machines, each to his own desk and chair.
The departments were partitioned off with oak railings. There was a manager and a little staff of clerks for every department, and, oh! the amazing number of departments! During all the months I worked there I never knew the names of more than half the departments, and when I come to think of what was on the other floors, in other buildings, the great factories, where thousands were employed, I feel bewildered and stupendously impressed.
To think of the stock-yards as only a mighty butcher shop is a great mistake. It is better to think of them as a sort of beneficent feeder and provider of humanity, not merely because of the food they pour out into the world, but for the thousands to whom they give work.
I heard much of the abuses there, of the hateful actions of many of the employers; but one loses sight of these things in contemplating the great general benefit of this astounding place. Of course I, in the offices, saw perhaps only the better and cleaner side of the yards, and therefore I cannot tell what went on elsewhere.
I asked a boy for Mr. O'Brien, and he said:
"Soap department."
I went along the main railing, inquiring for the soap department, and a sharp-eyed youth (in the pickled snouts department) with a pencil on his ear, undertook to take me to O'Brien.
As I passed along with him, I found myself the attacked of many eyes. A new girl is always an object of interest and speculation in the yards. I tried to look unconcerned and unaware, an impossibility, especially as some of the clerks coughed as I went by, some grinned at me, one winked, and one softly whistled. I felt ashamed and silly, and a fierce sort of pity for myself that I should have to go through this.
"Lady for you, Fred," at last sang out my escort as we approached an inclosure, and then smiling, he opened a little gate, and half pushed, half led, me in.
I found myself at the elbow of a long, lanky young man who was doubled over in such a position that his spine looked humped up in the middle. He had a large box before him, in which were a lot of pieces of soap, and he kept picking up pieces and examining them, sometimes smelling them. There was one other person in the inclosure, or department, and he was a very red-haired, freckle-faced boy of about twelve.
For some time the long, lanky young man did not even look up, but continued to examine the soap. I was beginning to think he was ignorant of my presence at his elbow when he said, without taking his nose out of the box, and shifting his unlighted cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, in a snarlingsort of voice, like the inquiring bark of a surly dog:
"Wa-al, what d' yer want?"
"A position as stenographer," I answered promptly.
He straightened up in his seat at that, and took a look at me. His cheek-bones were high and lumpy; he had a rather pasty-colored skin, sharp-glancing eyes, and a humorous mouth. It was a homely face, yet, curiously enough, not unattractive, and there was something straightforward about it. He wore his hat on the back of his head, and he did not remove it in honor of me. After scrutinizing me in one quick glance, in which I felt he had taken in all my weaknesses and defects, he said in a less-snarling tone:
"Sit down."
I sat.
Lolly's card I timidly proffered. He took it, stared at it with an astonished expression, and then snorted so loudly it made me think of Estelle, and I felt a quaking fear that Lolly's card was a poor recommendation. He spat after that snort, looked at me again, and said:
"Well, I like her nerve!"
Of course, as I was not aware of just what he meant by that (I subsequently learned that Lolly had gone to work for O'Brien supposedly as a stenographer, and then had written up and exposed certain conditions in the yards), I stared at him questioningly, and he repeated with even more eloquent emphasis:
"Well, I like hernerve! It beats theDutch!"
Then he chuckled, and again scrutinized me.
"That all the reference you got?" he asked.
I produced Mr. Campbell's, and as I watched him read it with a rather puzzled expression, I hastily produced Canon Evans's reference as to my character, which my father had sent me for the Y. W. C. A. O'Brien handed the letters back to me without comment, but he kept Lolly's card, putting it carefully away in his card-case, and chuckling as he did so.
"What do you know?" at last he said to me. "Good stenographer, are you?"
"Yes, very good," I eagerly assured him.
"Humph! How much salary do you expect to get?"
"I got ten a week in the West Indies," I said. I never even thought that that "free board" at the hotel amounted to something, too. Ten dollars was my salary, and so I said ten.
He hugged his chin reflectively, studying me, and after a moment he said:
"I wasn't expecting to take any one on for a day or two, but so long as you're here, and come so highly recommended,"—and he grinned,—"you may stay. Salary fifteen per."
"Oh, thank you!" I said so fervently that he got angrily red, and turned away.
The red-haired office boy, who had been acutely listening to the conversation, now came up to me and pertly asked me if I was engaged. Which insolentquestion I at first declined to answer. When I realized that he did not mean engaged to be married, but engaged for the position, then I said, with scarlet face, that I was.
"Red Top," as they called him, then showed me my desk, next to Mr. O'Brien's, filled my ink-wells, brought me pens, pencils, and note-books. I was inwardly congratulating myself that there was no sign of a type-writer when the boy pulled up the lid of my desk, and, lo! there was a fine, glistening machine.
I suppose some girls really take a sort of pride in their machine, just as a trainer does in his horse. I confess that I felt no fond yearnings toward mine, and while I was debating how in the world I was ever going to copy the letters, Mr. O'Brien pulled out a slat on my desk, leaned over, and began to dictate. All the time he was dictating he was chewing tobacco, stopping once in a while to spit in a cuspidor at his feet, and watching my face out of the corner of his eye. This was a sample of the letters I took, and you can judge of my feelings as I wrote:
Messrs. So and So.Gentlemen:I send you F.O.B. five hundred broken babies, three hundred cracked babies, one thousand perfect ones, etc.
Messrs. So and So.Gentlemen:
I send you F.O.B. five hundred broken babies, three hundred cracked babies, one thousand perfect ones, etc.
Broken babies, cracked babies, perfect ones! What sort of place was this, anyway? The pigs' hair department was mystifying and horrifying enough, andIhadheard that sausages were made from dogs and horses; but a trade inbabies—cracked and broken!
I suppose my face must have betrayed my wonder and perhaps horror, for O'Brien suddenly choked, though I don't know whether he was laughing or coughing, but he made a great noise. Then he said, clearing his throat:
"Got all that?"
I nodded.
"That's all," he said, and turned back to his soapbox. There was nothing for me to do now but to type-write those letters. I stared at that machine blindly, and to put off the evil moment, I tried to engage my "boss" in conversation while pretending to dust the machine.
"Mr. O'Brien, have—have you many babies here?" I asked.
"Thousands," he returned.
"It must be like a hospital," said I.
He grunted. I've often thought that O'Brien delighted to put stenographers through that "baby" joke, but I don't suppose any other girl was ever quite so gullible as I.
"I'd like to see some of them," I said.
"You're looking at them now," said he.
I looked about me, but I saw no babies. O'Brien was digging down in the box. Suddenly he tossed up a handful of odd-shaped pieces on his desk. ThenI understood. They were all in the shape of babies—Wool-Soap babies! O'Brien, with his tobacco in his cheek, thought it a good joke on me.
I stuck the paper into the type-writer, and then I began slowly to write, pecking out each letter with my index-finger. I felt rather than saw O'Brien slowly turning round in his seat, and though I dared not look up, I felt both his and Red Top's amazed eyes on my slowly moving fingers. Suddenly O'Brien stood up.
"Well, upon my word," said he, "you sure are a twin of that friend of yours! I like your nerve!"
I sat still in my seat, just staring at the type, and a fearful lump came up in my throat and almost choked me. I could not see a thing for the tears that came welling up despite myself, but I held them back fiercely.
Suddenly O'Brien snapped out in his most angry and snarling tone:
"Say, who are you staring at, anyway?"
I thought he meant me, and I started to protest that I was merely looking at the type, when I heard the feet of Red Top shuffle, and he said, oh, so meekly and respectfully:
"Yes, sir; I ain't staring ather, sir."
I was relieved, anyway, of a part of the pressure, for the office boy was now busy at some files. I found enough courage at last to look at O'Brien. He was studying me as if I were some strange curiosity that both amused and amazed him.
"You're a nice one, aren't you," said he, "to take a job at fifteen per as an experienced and expert stenographer and—"
I said quickly:
"I am an expert stenographer. It's just the type-writing I can't do, and, oh! if you'll only give me a chance, I'll learn it in a few days, honestly I will. I'm cleverer than most girls, really I am. I taught myself shorthand, and I can type-writing, too. I'll practise every night, and if you'll just try me for a few days, I'll work so hard—and you won't be sorry; I'm sure you won't."
I got this all off quickly and warmly.
To this day I do not know what impulse moved Fred O'Brien to decide that he wanted me as his stenographer. His was an important department, and he could have had as good a stenographer as fifteen dollars a week will get, and that's a fair salary for work of that kind. Here was I, palpably a green girl, who could not type a line! No man's voice ever sounded nicer than that gruff young Irishman's when he said that I could stay, that for the first week I could do the letters by hand; but I was to practise every opportunity I got, and I could help him a lot if I would write the letters without making it necessary for him to dictate them.
In justification of my boast to O'Brien that I would "make good," let me say that I stayed in his department all the time I was at the yards, and this is thereference he gave me when he himself left to take charge of the New York office:
To Whom it may Concern:This is to certify that Miss Nora Ascough, who has been in my employ for the past few months as stenographer and typewriter, is an A No. 1 Crack-a-Jack.Smith & Co. Per, Fred O'Brien, Mgr.
To Whom it may Concern:
This is to certify that Miss Nora Ascough, who has been in my employ for the past few months as stenographer and typewriter, is an A No. 1 Crack-a-Jack.
Smith & Co. Per, Fred O'Brien, Mgr.
Some one once said of me that I owed my success as a writer mainly to the fact that I used my sex as a means to help me climb. That is partly true not only in the case of my writing, but of my work as a stenographer. I have been pushed and helped by men who liked me, but in both cases Imade goodafter I was started.
I think it would have broken my heart not to have "made good" to Fred O'Brien after he had trusted me in this way. This man, the first I worked for in America, was probably the best friend I ever had or will have. I do not mean so much while I worked for him, but later in my life.
I have spoken of the mild sensation I made as I walked down that main aisle. All through the day, in whatever direction I looked, I encountered interested eyes bent upon me. Some were those of girls like myself, some office boys, a number of department managers, and nearly all the clerks in my vicinity. Some craned their necks to get a glimpse of me, some came officiously to talk to O'Brien. Thus it was anembarrassing day for me, especially at luncheon-hour, when I did not know quite what to do. Then a girl from another department came over and asked me to go to luncheon with her. She said that her "boss," whose name was Hermann, and who was a chum of O'Brien, had bade her look out for me.
She pointed Hermann out to me as we passed along, and he seized his hat, and came after us; but as he was passing our department, O'Brien seized him, and, looking back, I saw them both laughing, and I felt sure O'Brien was telling him about me.
Hermann was about twenty-five. He had a stiff thatch of yellow hair which he brushed up straight, and which stood up just like bristles on his head. He had wide-awake eyes, and looked like a human interrogation-point, dressed very dudishly, and flirted right and left with all the girls. Though born in America, and wiry and active, nevertheless there was the stamp of "Made in Germany" everywhere upon him. Later in the afternoon he stuck so insistently about our department that O'Brien finally introduced us, and then said with a grin:
"Now clear out. You got what you wanted."
Two or three departments to the left of me I had noticed a very blond, plumpish, rather good-looking young man, who watched me unceasingly throughout the day, but, whenever I looked at him, would blush, just like a girl, and look down and fuss with papers on his desk. Well, about the middle of theafternoon, and while O'Brien was away from the department, a boy came over and laid a note on my desk. It was folded ingeniously, twisted into a sort of bowknot, and it was addressed, "Stenographer, Soap Dept."
I thought it was some instruction from O'Brien, especially as the boy said:
"Any answer?"
I unfolded the note, and this is what I read:
I'm stuck on you. Will you keep company with me?
I'm stuck on you. Will you keep company with me?
I had to laugh, though I knew my furiously red swain was watching me anxiously.
"Any answer?" again asked the boy. I wrote on a piece of paper the one word, "Maybe."
People who have called me clever, talented, etc.,—oh, all women writers get accused of such things!—have not really reckoned with a certain weak and silly side of my character. If as I proceed with this chronicle I shock you with the ease and facility with which I encouraged and accepted and became constantly engaged to men, please set it down to the fact that I always felt an inability tohurtby refusing any one who liked me enough to propose to me. I got into lots of trouble for this,—call it moral lack in me,—but I could not help it at the time. Why, it's just the same way that I once felt in a private Catholic hospital, and little Sister Mary Eulalia tried to convert me. Out of politeness and because I lovedher,I was within an ace of acknowledging her faith, or any other faith she might choose.
If you could have seen the broad smile of satisfaction that wreathed the face of my first stock-yards "mash," you, in my place, would not have regretted that little crumb of hope that I had tossed him. Yet I had no more intention of "keeping company" with him that I had of flying.
It pleases me much to record that on this my first day in the yards I received three "mash" notes, which one of the girls later told me "was going it some for fair."
My second note was a pressed flower, accompanied by these touching lines:
The rose is red; the violet's blue,Honey's sweet, and so are you!And so is he, who sends you this,And when we meet we'll have a kiss.
The rose is red; the violet's blue,Honey's sweet, and so are you!And so is he, who sends you this,And when we meet we'll have a kiss.
The rose is red; the violet's blue,Honey's sweet, and so are you!And so is he, who sends you this,And when we meet we'll have a kiss.
The rose is red; the violet's blue,
Honey's sweet, and so are you!
And so is he, who sends you this,
And when we meet we'll have a kiss.
I don't know who sent me this, but I suspected an office boy in a neighboring department.
My third note came just about an hour before leaving. It was from Hermann, and in a sealed envelop. It was as follows:
How about "Buffalo Bill" to-night?
How about "Buffalo Bill" to-night?
O'Brien leaned over me as I opened the note, deliberately took it from me, and read it. As he did so, Hermann stealthily pelted him with tightly chewedwads of paper, though, from his hunched-over position at his desk, no one would have suspected who was throwing those pellets. I saw him, however, and he winked at me as if I were in a conspiracy with him, and as much as to say:
"We'll fix him."
O'Brien, his cigar moving from one side of his mouth to the other, answered the note for me.
"Nothing doing," was his laconic response to Hermann's invitation, and he despatched it by Red Top. He let me out with the five-thirty girls instead of the six, and he said:
"Now step lively, and if you let Hermann catch up with you, I'll fire you in the morning."
I went flying down the aisle with my heart as light as a feather. Next to being in love, there is nothing finer in the world, for a working-girl, than to have a good "job" and to know that some one is "stuck" on you.
My type-writing was practised under difficulties, for girls kept coming in and out of my room, and Lolly, who was there nearly every evening, taught me. By this time I was getting acquainted with a great many of the girls in the house, and for some reason or other I was popular. The "good" girls wanted me to join this or that Christian Society or Endeavor Club, and the "bad" girls—alleged by the good ones to be bad—were always urging me to "come on out and have a good time."
In those days Lolly was my chum. We were always together, much to Estelle's disgust. Every evening Lolly would come into my room unless she had an engagement, and, heavens! men came after Lolly like flies to the honey-pot. With a box of cigarettes and a magazine, or one of my own stories, all of which she was revising for me, she would curl up on my bed while I worked. Sometimes I practised till ten o'clock, when the lights would go out.
After a long, if not hard, day in the yards—and even if one did not work at all, the incessant movement and buzz of the great work factory was exhausting—and two or three hours of type-writingpractice at night, you may be sure I was pretty tired when finally I crept into bed.
Then for some time thereafter I would lie wide awake. Like a kaleidoscopic panorama, the scenes of my day's work would slide in and out of my mind, then slowly pass away, as the figures in a strange dance. Visions would then come to me—the wavering, quaint persons and plots of the stories I would write. Dreams, too, came of the days when I would be famous and rich, and all my dear people would be lifted up from want. My poems would be on every one's tongue, my books in every home. And I saw myself facing a great audience, and bowing in acknowledgment of their praise of my successful play.
A few years later, when the name of a play of mine flashed in electric letters on Broadway, and the city was papered with great posters of the play, I went up and down before that electric sign, just to see if I could call up even one of the fine thrills I had felt in anticipation. Alas! I was aware only of a sad excitement, a sense of disappointment and despair. I realized that what as an ignorant little girl I had thought was fame was something very different. What then I ardently believed to be the divine sparks of genius, I now perceived to be nothing but a mediocre talent that could never carry me far. My success was founded upon a cheap and popular device, and that jumble of sentimental moonshine that they called my play seemed to me the pathetic stamp ofmy inefficiency. Oh, I had sold my birthright for a mess of potage!
We arrive at a stage of philosophic despair when we calmly recognize our limitations; but long before we know them, what wild dreams are those that thrill, enthrall, and torment us! Well, the dreams at least were well worth while.
I was now part of a vast, moving world of work, and, strangely enough, I was, in a way, contented. It takes very little to make the average normal girl contented. Take the girls who worked as I did. Given fair salaries and tolerable conditions under which to work, they were for the most part light-hearted and happy. You had only to look at groups of them about the Y. W. C. A. to realize that. Not that most of us did not have some little burden to carry; a few of us cherished wistful ambitions beyond our sphere, and all of us, I think, had our romances.
In the yards there was probably one girl to every three or four hundred men. They were obliged to pay good salaries, moreover, as many girls hesitated to go away out there to work, and the aristocrats of our profession balked at the sights and smells of the yards. Anyhow, the firm for which I worked treated us well. Special busses brought us to and from the yards. Excellent dressing-rooms and luncheon-rooms were assigned to us, and we were always treated with courtesy.
We girls were all appraised when we entered, and soon afterwards were assigned certain places in the estimation of the men of the yards. That is to say, a girl was "good," "bad," a "worker," a "frost," or a "peach."
The "good" girls were treated with respect; the "bad" girls made "dates" for dinners with the various "bosses," had fine clothes, jewels, were loud, and had privileges; the "frosts" were given a wide berth. They were the girls who were always on the defensive with the men, expecting and looking for insults and taking umbrage on the slightest provocation. The "workers" were of course the backbone of our profession. They received high salaries and rose to positions almost as good as the men's. Boys and men stepped lively for them, and took their orders unblinkingly. Finally, the title of "peach" was bestowed upon the girls whom the men decided were pretty and approved of in other ways. If one was in the "peach" class, she was persistently courted by all well-meaning or bad-meaning men who could get near her. She was a belle of the yards.
Under which head I came, I never knew. I think I was the strange gosling that had sprung up somehow in this nest, and no one knew quite where I should be assigned. There was a wavering disposition at first to put me in the "peach" class, but I rather think I degenerated within a few weeks to the "worker" class, for Fred O'Brien early acquired the habit ofleaving most of the details of our department entirely to me.
Twenty-four men asked me to "go out" with them the first week I was there. I kept a note of this, just to amuse myself and O'Brien, who was vastly interested in the sensation he fatuously believed I was creating. He took a comical pride in my "success"! Ah, dear Fred! No one, not even I, was ever prouder of my later "success" than he. Every day he would ask me, "Well, who's asking you out to-night?" and I would show him my "mash" notes, most of which he confiscated, later, I suspect, to torment their authors.
The men out here did not ask if they could call upon a girl. Their way of becoming better acquainted, or "going after" a girl, as they called it, was to invite her to "go out" with them, meaning for a ride, to the theaters, the parks, restaurants, or other places of amusement. I never "went out" with any of the men of the yards except O'Brien and Hermann, who had been acting like a clown for my special benefit by coming over to our department every day, and talking a lot of nonsense, telling jokes, and sending me countless foolish notes, until at last O'Brien took pity on him, and said they would call upon me one night.
That was an illuminating occasion. "Fellows" were few and far between who called at the Y. W. C. A., and every girl who possessed a "steady" wasmarked. Whenever a new "fellow" appeared there, he was the object of the united curiosity of a score of girls, who hung about the halls and the parlors to get a look at him.
Now, Hermann called upon me in great state. Much to my surprise and Lolly's hilarious joy, he came in silk hat and frock coat, with a gold-topped cane. I hardly knew him, when I descended in my own best, a white polka-dotted Swiss dress, with a pink sash, and found him sitting erect and with evident discomfort on the edge of a sofa in the parlor, the admired target of a score of eyes, all feminine. He was making a manful effort to appear at his ease, and unaware of the sensation he had made. Men with silk hats, you must know, do not call every day upon girls at the Y. W. C. A. It was plain to be seen that the poor fellow was suffering a species of delicious torture. In the hall, within direct sight of the sofa, Lolly was leaning against the wall, and looking her wickedest and prettiest. She had already tormented and teased me unmercifully about my "first beau."
Hermann rose gallantly as I entered, and he bowed, as I did not know he could bow, over my hand, shaking it in the then approved and fashionable high manner; but I could not resist a little giggle as I heard Lolly chokingly cough in the hall, and I knew she was taking it all in.
"O'Brien's waiting for us outside," said Hermann. "Wouldn't come in. Acted just like a man with asore tooth. Ever seen a man with a sore tooth, Miss Ascough?"
No, I had never had that pleasure, I told him.
"Well," said Hermann, "the man with a sore tooth groans all day and night, and makes every one about him suffer. Then first thing in theA.M.he hikes off to the nearest dentist. He gives one look at the sign on the dentist's door, and that's enough for him: he's cured. Christian Science, you see. Now, that's how it is with O'Brien to-night. He was dead stuck on coming along, but got stage-fright when he saw the girls."
"Youweren't afraid of us, were you, Mr. Hermann?" said I, admiringly and flatteringly.
"Me? What, me afraid of girls? Sa-ay, I like that!" and Hermann laughed at the idea as if it amused him vastly. "Tell you what you do. Get another girl; there's a peach looking in at us now—don't look up. She's the blonde, with the teeth. What do you say to our all going over to the S—— Gardens for a lobster supper, huh?"
Now, the peach, of course, was Lolly, who, with her dimples all abroad and her fine white teeth showing, was plainly on view at the door, and had already worked havoc in the breast of the sentimental Hermann.
O'Brien didn't like the idea of the S—— Gardens. He said it was "too swift" forme, though he brutally averred it might do for Hermann and Lolly. Lollyand he sparred all the time, just as did Lolly and Estelle. He said, moreover, that it would not do at all for us to be seen together, and we would be sure to run across some yards people at the S—— Gardens. If he were seen out with his stenographer, every tongue in the office would be wagging about it next day.
So he suggested that we take a long car ride, and get off at L—— Park, where there was a good restaurant, and we could get something to eat and drink there. Fred and I paired off together, and Hermann, who had been utterly won away from me by Lolly, who was flirting with him and teasing him outrageously, brought up behind us as we started for the cars. After he had explained to me why we should not be seen together, O'Brien said, with an air of great carelessness:
"Now, look a-here, girl, I don't want you to get it into your head that I'm stuck on you, for I'm not; but I like you, and if you don't pull my leg too hard, I'll take you out with me all you want."
"Pull your leg!" I repeated, shocked. I had never heard that expression before. American slang was still a source of mystification, delight, and wonder to me. Lolly heard my horrified exclamation, and moved up, laughing her merriest.
"Limb's the polite term," she corrected Fred.
"Eh?" said he. Then as he saw I did not really understand, he explained to me what he meant.
"Oh," said I, "you needn't worry about me. If you don't believe that I care nothing about money, look at this."
There were a few coins in my pocketbook. I poured them into my hand, and deliberately and impulsively I tossed them out into the road. I am sure I don't know why I did such a senseless thing as that. It was just the impulse of a silly moment.
The subjects we two girls and boys discussed were varied and many, but always by persistent degrees they seemed to swing back to the yards, wherein of course the interests of our escorts naturally centered. The boys entertained us with tales of the men and even cattle of this "city," as they called it. There was a black sheep called "Judas Iscariot" who led the other sheep to slaughter, and was always rewarded with a special piece of meat. There was a big black pig that wandered about the offices of a neighboring firm, and was the mascot of that office.
There was a man who had been born in the yards, married in the yards, and whose heir had recently been born there. And so forth.
I got into trouble at the Y. W. C. A. for the first time that night. We had forgotten to ask permission to be out after ten, and it was after eleven by the time we got back. The door girl let us in, but took our names, and we were reported next day. I was let off with a reprimand from the secretary, but Lolly had a stormy time of it with this unpleasant personage, uponwhom, I am happy to say, she never failed to inflict deserved punishment. It seems Lolly was an old offender, and she was accused of "leading Miss Ascough astray." I, by the way, was now in high favor with the secretary, though I never liked her, and I never forgave her for that first day. Also I had seen many girls turned away, sometimes because they did not have the money to pay in advance, and sometimes because they had no references. My heart used to go out to them, as with drooping shoulders these forlorn little waifs who had applied for shelter were turned from the very doors that should have opened for them.
That night as we felt our way in the dark through the unlighted halls to our rooms, Lolly, swearing audibly and picturesquely, said she was "darned tired" of this "old pious prison," and as she now had all the "dope" she wanted upon the place, she was going to get out, and she asked me to go with her. I said that I would.
I worked for five weeks in the stock-yards before I could make up the deficit in my hundred dollars caused by those first three weeks of idleness and the consequent expenses of my board. I am very bad at figures. I still calculate with my fingers. Every night, however, I counted my little hoard, and I had it all reckoned up on paper how soon I would have that hundred intact again.
Out of my fifteen a week I had to allow five dollars for my board, and so much for luncheon, car-fare, and the little articles I added to my wardrobe. I used about eight dollars a week on myself and I sent home two. That left me only five a week, and as I had used twenty-five of the hundred before I got my position, it took me over five weeks to make it up. As each week my little pile grew larger, the more excited I became in anticipation of that moment when I could write!
I would lie awake composing the wonderful letter that would accompany that hundred dollars, but when the sixth Saturday (pay-day) actually came, and I had at last the money, I found myself unable to pen the glowing letter of my dreams. This was the letterI finally sent, and unless he read between the lines, goodness knows it was a model of businesslike brevity, showing the undoubted influence of the Smith & Co. approved type of correspondence:
Y. W. C. A.Chicago, Ill., Aug. 8-19.Roger Avery Hamilton, Esq.Dear Sir:I send you herewith inclosed the sum of one hundred dollars, being in full the amount recently lent by you to,Very faithfully yours,Nora Ascough.
Y. W. C. A.
Chicago, Ill., Aug. 8-19.
Roger Avery Hamilton, Esq.
Dear Sir:
I send you herewith inclosed the sum of one hundred dollars, being in full the amount recently lent by you to,
Very faithfully yours,Nora Ascough.
It was with a bursting heart that I folded that cold and brief epistle. Then I laid it on top of that eloquent pile of bills—"dirty money." Just before I did up the package, the ache within me grew so intense that I wrote on the envelop:
"Please come to see me now."
I made a tight little package of the money and letter, and I sent it off by registered mail. I knew nothing about post-office orders or checks. So the money went to him just like that.
Now my life really changed. On the surface things went on as ever. I progressed with my type-writing. I "made good" at the office. The routine of the daily work in the yards was brightened by various little humorous incidents that occurred there. For instance, one of the firm, a darling old man of seventy, took a great fancy to me, and every day he wouldcome down the main aisle of the office with a fresh flower in his hand, and lay it on my desk as he passed. Not bad for an old "pork-packer," was it? Every one teased me about him, and so did he himself. He called me "black-eyes," and said I was his "girl." Other men gave me flowers, too, but I prized that one of Mr. Smith's more than the others. Also I had enough candy given to me, upon my word, to feed me, and I could have "gone out" every night in the week, had I wanted to; but, as I have said, this was only part of my life now—my outer life. The life that I conjured up within me was about to come to reality, and no one knew anything about it, not even Lolly.
She had been very much engaged in "educating" Hermann, who was madly in love with her. Lolly accepted his adoration with amused delight. She considered him a "character," but she never took him seriously.
As the days passed away, the fever within me never waned. Though I went about my work as ever, my mind was away, and I was like one whose ear is to the ground, waiting, waiting.
But he did not come, and the weeks rolled away, and two months passed.
One night a man from Lolly's home came to call upon her. His name was Marshall Chambers. He was one of those big-shouldered, smooth-faced, athletic-looking men who make a powerful impression upon girls. According to Lolly, he was a wealthybanker whom she had known during her father's administration as mayor of her home town. I knew as soon as I saw them together that my poor Lolly was deeply in love with him, and I felt at once a sense of overwhelming antagonism and dislike toward him. I cannot explain this, for he was specially attentive to me, and although Lolly and he had not seen each other for some time, he insisted that I should accompany them to dinner at R——'s.
When we went to our rooms to dress, Lolly asked me what I thought of this man, and I said:
"I like Hermann better.He'shonest."
That remark in ordinary circumstances would have sent Lolly into one of her merry peals of laughter,—she always laughed about Hermann,—but she gave me a queer look now, her cigarette suspended in her hand. Her face was flushed, and her eyes were so brilliant they looked like turquoises.
"You're dead right," she said solemnly.
But a moment later she was her old self again. I was putting on a little white dress when Lolly swung me round and examined me.
"Here, you can't go to R——'s in duds like these," she said. "Wait a minute."
She disappeared into her own room, and came back with her arms full of dresses; Lolly had beautiful clothes. I suppose her tailored suits would have looked ludicrous, as she was larger than I, but a little cream-colored chiffon frock, trimmed with pearlbeads, was very becoming to me. She also lent me an evening cap, and a red rose (artificial) for my waist.
"Now look at yourself," said she, "and after this don't let me catch you mooning in your room at night. Get out and show yourself. You'll only be young once."
Lolly was in blue, the color of her eyes, and she looked, as always, "stunning." Beside her, I'm afraid, I appeared very insignificant, for Lolly was a real beauty. I never went anywhere with her but people—men and women, too—would stare at her, and turn around for a second look. People stared at me, too, but in a different sort of way, as if I interested them or they were puzzled to know my nationality. I would have given anything to look less foreign. My darkness marked and crushed me, I who loved blondness like the sun.
Mr. Chambers did everything very splendidly. He had a carriage to take us to dinner, and he was extremely gallant in his manner to both Lolly and me, just as attentive, I thought wistfully, as if we were society girls, and not poor girls of the Y. W. C. A. Lolly and he talked a good deal in an undertone, and although they did not ignore me, I was left out of most of their conversation. I did not mind this. I was happy to lean back in that carriage, and indulge in my own fine dreams.
I should have enjoyed the dinner more if our hosthad been some one other than this man Chambers. He made me uncomfortable and secretly angry by looking at me in a meaning sort of way when Lolly did not see him. I felt as if he were trying to establish some sort of intimacy with me behind Lolly's back. He sat beside Lolly, and I opposite them, and he would lean back in his seat, inclined toward Lolly, and over her shoulder he would make his bold eyes at me. No, I did not like that man, and I avoided his glances as much as I could. But Lolly, my poor Lolly, seemed infatuated with him, and all her pretty banter and chaff had departed. She scarcely ate anything, but played nervously with her food, and she would look at him in such a way that I wanted both to shake her and to cry for her.
But this is my story, not Lolly's, though hers perhaps would make a better tale than mine.
Chambers said he could tell one's fortune from one's palm, and that he would like to see mine. Lolly said:
"Nora carries her fortune in her head."
"And you," I said, "in your face."
He reached over the table for my hands, and Lolly said:
"Let him, Nora. Sometimes he makes pretty good guesses."
Chambers began to reel off a fine fairy-story, which he said was to be my fortune. We were all laughing, Lolly leaning over, and making merry and mocking interpolations, and I eagerly drinking in every word,and, though I laughed, believing most of it, when suddenly I had a queer, nervous feeling that some one other than ourselves was listening to us and was watching my face. There is something in telepathy. I was afraid to look up, and my heart began to beat in a frightened way, for I knew, even before I had turned my head, thathewas somewhere there in the room with us. And then I saw him directly behind Marshall Chambers. Their chairs, back to back, were almost touching, but he had turned about in his seat, so that he was looking directly at me, and I shall never forget the expression of his face. It was as though he had made some discovery that aroused both his amusement and contempt.
What had I done that he should look at me like that? I wanted to go to him, to beg him to speak to me; but some one with him—a woman, I think, for curiously enough, I was capable of seeing only him, and noted not at all his companions—said something to him, and he moved his chair till his back was turned toward me. I felt like some dumb thing unjustly punished.
Lolly said:
"What's the matter, Nora? You look as if you had seen a ghost."
I suppose my face had blanched, for I was shivering, and I wanted to cover my face with my hands and to cry and cry.
"Oh, Lolly," I said, "I want to go home!"
Chambers took me by the arm, and we passed, likepeople in a dream, between the tables—ah! past where he was sitting, and out into the street and then home!
The following morning I was passing languidly by the secretary's desk, in the main office, when she called to me:
"Miss Ascough, you will have to ask your men visitors to call earlier in the evening if they wish to see you. You know our rules."
"My men visitors?" I repeated stupidly.
"Yes," she returned sharply; "a gentleman called here last night at nearly nine-thirty. Of course we refused to permit him to see you."
"Oh," I said faintly, for before I had looked at that little card I knew who had at last come to see me. I went out with his card held blindly in my hand, and all that day, whenever my work paused or slackened, I found myself vaguely wondering why he had called so late, and I felt a dumb sense of helpless rage toward that hateful secretary who had turned him away.
Lolly came flying into my room just a little while before eight that evening, with her cheeks red and her eyes sparkling. She had dined down town with Marshall Chambers, and they had come back to get me to go to the theater with them.
"Hurry up, Nora!" she cried. "Get dressed! Marshall has seats for Sothern and Harned in 'The Sunken Bell.'"
Up to this time I had never been inside a theater. I had come to America in late May. It was now the beginning of September, and the theaters were just opening. Of course I had never been to a play of any sort at home, except some little church affairs. So, unhappy as I was, I dressed in Lolly's pretty chiffon dress, and we went down to join Mr. Chambers, who was waiting for us in the parlor. On the way down in the elevator, Lolly had handed me a number of advertisements of rooms and flats that she had cut from the papers, and while she was drawing on her gloves in the lower hall and I was glancing through these, a page called my name, and said a gentleman was waiting for me inside.
As I went into the parlor, Marshall Chambers stood up, held out his hand, and said something to me; butI scarcely saw him, and I know I did not answer him. I saw, in fact, nothing in the world save Roger Hamilton, who had come across the room to me, and, with an odd air almost of proprietorship, had taken me quietly from Chambers.
Without saying a word to each other, we sat for some time in the Y. W. C. A., with girls coming and going. I glanced only once at his face, and then I looked away, for I could not bear his expression. It was like that of the previous night. It was as if he examined me critically, cruelly, not only my face, but even my clothes and my gloved hands. Presently he said in a low voice:
"There are too many people here. We shall have to go out somewhere."
I found myself walking with him down Michigan Avenue. We said nothing as we walked, but presently we came to a little park, and found a bench facing the lake, and there we sat, I staring out at the water, and he looking at me. After a while he said:
"Who was your friend of last night?"
I said:
"Her name is Lolly Hope."
"I mean theman."
"He is her friend," I said. "I never met him till last night."
It was pretty dark, and I could not see his face, but insensibly I felt him lean toward me to look at mine; and then he said in a low voice:
"Are you sure of that?"
"Why, yes," I said. "I don't know the man at all. Did you think that I did?" He did not answer me, and I added, "Was it because ofhimyou did not speak to me last night?"
"I did bow to you," he said, and then added reluctantly, "though I can't say I admired the looks of your party."
I said:
"I didn't even see the people withyou, and it wouldn't have made any difference to me who they were."
He put his arm along the back of the bench behind me, but not touching me.
"Where did you get the clothes you had on—the dress you're wearing now?" he asked in a strained voice.
"Lolly lent them to me," I said. "She said mine were not fine enough."
After a pause he moved nearer to me, and I thought he was going to put his arm about me, but he did not. He said in a low voice:
"You can have all the fine clothes you want."
"I wish I could," I returned, sighing; "but one can't dress very beautifully on the salary I get."
"What do you get?" he asked, and I told him. Then he wanted me to tell him all about myself—just what I had been doing, whom I had met, what men, and to leave out nothing. I don't know why,but he seemed to think something extraordinary had happened to me, for he repeated several times:
"Tell meeverything, every detail. I want to know."
So I did.
I told him of the Y. W. C. A. woman who had met me; of my failure with the newspaper offices; of my long hunt for work; of the insults and propositions men had made to me; of my work at the yards; and of O'Brien, my "boss," who had taken me on trust and had been so good to me.
He never interrupted me once, nor asked me a single question, but let me tell him everything in my own way. Then when I was through, he took his arm down, put his hands together, and leaned over, with his elbows on his knees, staring out before him. After a while he said:
"Do you mean to tell me youlikeliving at this—er—Y. W. C. A.?"
I nodded.
"And you are contented to work at the Union Stock Yards?"
"No, I don't say that; but it's a stepping-stone to better things, don't you see? It's a living for me for the present, and perhaps by and by I'll sell some of my poems and stories, and then I'll be able to leave the yards."
He turned sharply in his seat, and I felt him staring at me.
"When on earth do you gettimeto write, if you work all day from nine till five-thirty?"
"Sometimes I get up very early," I said, "at five or six, and then I write a bit; and unless the girls bother me at night, I have a chance then, too, though I wish the lights didn't go out at ten."
"But you will kill yourself working in that way."
"No, I won't," I declared eagerly. "I'm awfully strong, and, then, writing isn't work, don't you see? It's a real pleasure, after what I've had to do all day, really it is, a sort of balm almost."
"But you can't keep that up. I don't want you to. I want you to go to school, to begin all over again. If you can, you must forget these days. I want you to blot them out from your mind altogether."
I thought of that question he had asked me on the train when I had read to him my poem: "Wouldn't you like to go to school?" Now, indeed, neither my pride nor my vanity was piqued. I could even smile at his tone of authority. He was so sure I would obey him; but I was not going to let him do anything in the world for me unless he could say to me what I was able to say to him.
"Well?" after a moment he prompted me.
"No, Mr. Hamilton," I said, "I am not going to school. I cannot afford to."
"I will send you," he said.
"You cannot do that if I refuse to go."
"Why should you refuse?" he said.
"Because it would cost you money—dirty money," I said.
"Nonsense!" He said that angrily now. "Iwantyou to go."
"Thank you; but, nevertheless, I am not going."
He sat up stiffly, and I could feel his frown upon me. He shot out his words at me as if he wished each one to hit me hard:
"You are an ignorant, untrained, undisciplined girl. If you wish to accomplish the big things you plan, you will have to be educated. Here is your chance."
"I'm sorry, but I'll have to get along the best way I can."
"You are stubborn, pig-headed, foolish. Don't youwantto be educated? Are you satisfied with your present illiterate condition?"
"I can't afford to be," I said.
"But if I am willing—"
I broke in:
"I took nearly six weeks to earn the money to pay you back. I told you I'd never take another cent from you, and I never will."
"Why not?"
"Because I want you to know that I care nothing, nothing at all—nothing, nothing, about your money, that you said every one else wanted.Ionly care foryou. I do."
I had run along headlong with my speech, and now I was afraid of what I had said.
He did not say a word after that, and presently I added shakily:
"Don't you see that I can't let you help me again unless you care for me as I do for you? Don't you see that?"
He poked at the gravel with his cane, and after a moment he said very gently:
"I see that you are a very foolish little girl."
"You mean because I—care for you?" I asked.
"Because you've made yourself believe you do," he said.
"Ido," I said earnestly. "I haven't thought of anything else except you."
"Nonsense! You mustn't get sentimental about me. Let's talk of something else. Have you been writing anything lately?"
I told him of the stories I was writing about my mother's land, and he said:
"But you've never been there, child."
"I know," I said; "but, then, I have an instinctive feeling about that country. A blind man can find his way over paths that he intuitively feels. And so with me. I feel as if I knew everything about that land, and when I sit down to write—why, things just come pouring to me, and I can writeanythingthen."
I could feel his slow smile, and then he said:
"I believe you can. I don't doubt that you will accomplish all that you hope to. You are awonderfulgirl."
He stood up, and held out his hand to help me, saying we had better be returning now, as he expected to take a train at eleven. My heart sank to think that his visit was to be so short, and I felt a passionate regret that there was nothing I could do or say that would keep him longer.
As we were walking down the avenue, he put the hand nearest me behind his back, and with the other swung his cane slightly. He seemed to be thinking all the time.
I asked him whether he was going to come and see me again, and he said quickly:
"If you do what I tell you."
"You mean about the school?" I asked.
"No-o. We'll let that go for the present; but you've got to get out of both that er—institution—"
"The Y. W. C. A.?" I queried, surprised.
"Yes, your precious Y. W. C. A."
He was talking in a low and rather guarded voice, as if anxious that no one passing should hear us.
"I want you to get bright, pretty rooms. You'll feel better and work better in attractive surroundings."
"I did intend to move, anyway," I said. "Lolly and I were planning to look for rooms to-morrow."
He said quickly:
"I wouldn't go with her. Get a place of your own."
"Well, but, you see, together we can get a better room for less money," I explained.
He made an impatient sound, as if the discussion of expense provoked him.
"Get as nice a place as you can, child," he said, and added growlingly, "If you don't, I'll not come to see you at all."
"All right," I said; "I'll get a nice place."
"And now about your position—"
"It's not bad," I asseverated. "Fred's awfully good to me."
"Fred?"
"Yes; he's my boss—Fred O'Brien."
"You call him Fred?"
"Yes; every one does at the yards."
"Humph! I think it would be an excellent plan for you to leave those yards just about as expeditiously as you can."
"But I can't. Why, I might not be able to get another position. Just look how I tramped about for weeks before I got that."
He stopped abruptly in the street.
"Don't you know, if you stay in a place like that, every bit of poetry and—er—charm—and fineness in you, and every other worth-while quality that you possess, will be literally beaten out of you? Why, that is no place for a girl like you. Now you get a pretty room—several, if you wish—and then go to work and write—write your poetry and stories and anything you want."
"But, Mr. Hamilton, I can't afford to do that."
He switched his cane with a sort of savage impatience.
"Nonsense!" he said. "You can afford to have anything you want. I'll give you anything—anything you want."
He repeated this sweepingly, almost angrily, and after a moment I said:
"Well, why should you do this for me?"
I was saying to myself that I would let him do anything for me if he did it because he cared for me. If not, I could take nothing from him. I waited in a sort of agony for his answer. It came slowly, as if he were carefully choosing his words:
"I want to do it," he said, "because I am interested in you; because it pleases me to help a girl like you; because I believe you are, as I have said, a wonderful girl, an exceptionally gifted girl, and I want to give you a chance to prove it."
"Oh!" I tried to speak lightly, but I wanted to sob. His belief in my talent gave me no pride. I vastly preferred him to care for me personally. "Thank you," I said, "but I can't let you give me a room and support me any more than I can let you send me to school."
We had now reached the Y. W. C. A. I could see the door girl watching us through the glass. It was after ten, and I had to go in. I held out my hand, and he took it reluctantly and immediately let it go. His manner plainly showed that I had offended him.
"Don't think," I said, "because I can't let you help me that I'm not grateful to you, for I am."
"Gratitude be damned!" he said.
Estelle and I had a little stock of candles, and when the lights went out before we were in bed, we used to light one. I had trouble finding one in the dark that night, and I tripped over the rocking-chair and hurt my ankle. Estelle sat up in petulant wrath.
"Say, what's biting you lately, anyhow?" she demanded. "Getting gay in your old age, are you?" she inquired.
"You shut up!" I said crossly, nursing my ankle. "I believe you hide those candles, anyway."
"I sure do," retorted Estelle. "If you think I'm going to let your swell friend burn my little glimmers, you've got one more guess coming."
By my "swell friend" she meant Lolly.
She got out of bed, however, felt under the bureau, and produced and lighted a candle. Then she examined and rubbed my ankle, and, grumbling and muttering things about Lolly, helped me undress and into bed. When I supposed she had dropped off asleep, she sat up suddenly in bed.
"Say, I'd like to ask you something. Have you got a steady?" she said.
"No, Estelle; I wish I had," I replied mournfully.
"Well," said Estelle, "you sure are going the way aboutnitto get one. You let them swell guys alone that come nosing around you. Say, do you knowIthought you were in for a nice, steady fellow when I seen Pop-eyes"—Pop-eyes was her term for Hermann—"hanging round here. Then I seenMissHope"—with a sneer—"had cut you out. Say, I'd 'a' like' to have handed her one for that. Who was the swell took you out last night?"
"His name's Chambers. He's Lolly's friend."
"And who was the man to see you to-night? Looked to me as ifhewere stuck on you."
I sat up in bed excitedly.
"Oh, Estelle, did it?"
"Humph! I was right there next to you, on the next sofa with Albert, but, gee! you didn't see nothing but him, and he was looking at you like he'd eat you up if you give him half a chance."
I sighed.
"I gave him a chance all right," I said mournfully.
"And nothing doing?" asked Estelle, sympathetically.
"No—nothing doing, Estelle," I said.
"Well, what do you care?" said my room-mate, determined to comfort me. "Say, what does any girl want with an old grand-pop like him, anyway?"
I laughed, I don't know why. Somehow, I wasgladthat Mr. Hamilton was old. Oh, yes, forty seems old to seventeen.