As soon as I got up next day I called him on the telephone. It was so early that I probably woke him up, but I had to tell him what was on my mind.
"It's Nora," I said.
He replied:
"Last time you telephoned to me you were in trouble; do you remember? Are you in trouble now, little girl?"
I said I wasn't, but I just wanted to say Icouldn'tand wouldn't let him buy clothes for me.
I knew just as well as if I could see him how he was looking when I said that. He was used to having his own way, and that I dared to set my will against his always made him angry. After a moment he said:
"Will you do something else to please me, then?"
"What?"
"Don't go to work to-day."
"I'vegotto; truly I have."
"You only think that. Call up O'Brien and ask to be excused. If you don't, I will. Now I'll be up at your place about ten. I've something special to give you, anyway."
"What?"
"I can't tell you on the 'phone."
"We-ell," I weakened; "all right, then."
I was rewarded beautifully for that.
"That'smylittle girl!" he said.
Then he rang off. I never would have.
So I stayed home from work, the first time since I had been at the yards—and Fred's last day! Mr. Hamilton came over about ten. Lolly was still sleeping, so I had to see him down-stairs in the parlor. As soon as I saw him, I held out my hands and said:
"Where's the special thing?"
He laughed. I could make him laugh easily now, though I don't believe any one else could. He pinched my chin and said:
"Get your hat on. We're going shopping."
"Now, Mr. Hamilton, I am not going to let you buy things for me."
"Did I say I was going to do that?" he demanded.
"Well, then, how can we shop?"
"You have some money of your own, haven't you?"
"Yes, but I was saving it for furs and to go to New York."
"Well, you can get the furs later, and you're not going to New York. The main thing is you need a decent suit and a—er—heavy coat to wear to work, since youwillwork; and you need gloves and—let me see your shoes—" [I showed them] "and shoes, a hat and—"
"I haven't the money for all those things."
"Yes, you have. I know a place where you can get all kinds of bargains. Ever hear of bargain-shops?"
No, I had never heard of bargain-shops, though I had of bargain-sales, I told him. Well, it was the same thing, he said, except that this particular shop made a specialty of selling nothing but bargains.
That, of course, tempted me, and I went up to my room and put on my coat and hat. I had thirty dollars, and I borrowed ten from Lolly. So I was not so badly off. He was right; I really needed new things, and I might as well let him choose them for me.
That was a happy morning for me! All girls love to "shop," and there was a joy in trying on lovely things, even if I couldn't afford them. It was a small shop to which he took me, but the things there were really beautiful and astonishingly cheap. He made them try many things on me, not only suits, but negligées and evening gowns.
Then he chose a soft dark-blue velvet suit, trimmed with the loveliest gray fur at the neck and sleeves. I thought it must be very expensive, but the saleswoman said it was only fifteen dollars. I had neverheardof such a bargain, especially as a hat, trimmed with the fur, and a muff also went with the suit. I made up my mind I'd bring Lolly here. I told the lady who owned the store that I would bring a friend. That made her laugh, but she stopped, because Mr. Hamilton frowned and looked very angry. He liked tolaugh at me himself, but he didn't want others to do so, and I liked him for that.
Still, I felt uncomfortable. The woman's laugh had been peculiar, and the saleswomen were watching me. I bought, too, a heavy navy-blue coat, with a little cape, and belted, just the thing for every day, and gloves and two pairs of shoes. She said that, as I'd bought so much, she'd give me silk stockings to go with the shoes.
Of course I know now that I was a blind fool; but then I was only seventeen, and nine months before I had never been outside my home city, Quebec. For that matter, I hardly knew Quebec, so limited and confined is the life of the poor. I thought my forty dollars paid for all; Ididthink that!
Mr. Hamilton was in a fine humor now, and he made me wear the velvet suit and the hat to go to luncheon with him, and where do you suppose he took me? Right to his own hotel. There he introduced me to a man named Townsend who was waiting for him. I didn't at all like the way Mr. Townsend looked at me; but Mr. Hamilton did not seem to mind it, though he was quick to notice such things. When I had dined with him before, if any man stared at me, he used to lean over and say, without the slightest suggestion of a smile:
"Well, what shall I do to him? Turn the seltzer on him or push his face in?"
Mr. Townsend, however, was not trying to flirt withme, as, for instance, Mr. Chambers always was. He studied me curiously and, I thought, suspiciously. He talked in an undertone to Mr. Hamilton, and I am sure they were talking about me. I did hope that Mr. Townsend had not noticed any mistakes I made about the knives and forks.
I was glad when luncheon was over. We entered a cab again, and Mr. Hamilton directed the driver to take us to Mrs. Kingston's. I asked him who Mr. Townsend was. He said he was his lawyer, and began to talk about something else. He wanted to know if I wasn't curious to know what that special thing was he had to give me. I had forgotten about it. Now, of course, I wanted to know.
"Well," he said, "'open your mouth and shut your eyes, and in your mouth you'll find a prize.'"
I thought he was going to give me a candy, so I shut my eyes and opened my mouth, just like a foolish child; and then he kissed me. It wasn't like a kiss at all, because my mouth was open; but he seemed to think it very funny, and when I opened my eyes, he was sitting back in the carriage, with his arms folded, laughing hard. I think he thought that a good joke on me, because I dare say he knew I wanted him to kiss me. I didn't think it a good joke at all, and I wouldn't speak to or look at him, and my face grew hot and red, and at last he said teasingly:
"I'll have to keep you angry all the time, Nora. You look your prettiest then."
I said with dignity:
"You know very well I'm not even a little bit pretty, and I wish you wouldn't make fun of me, Mr. Hamilton."
He was still laughing, and he said:
"You know very well you are pretty, you little fraud, and my name is Roger."
I never called him Mr. Hamilton after that.
When I introduced Mr. Hamilton to Mrs. Kingston, she put on her glasses and examined him curiously, and he said, with a rather formal smile, not at all as he smiled at me:
"I've heard quite a lot about you from Miss Ascough, and am very glad to meet you."
"I've known all about you for some time," she said, chuckling. And then she added, "I don't know what I expected to see, but you don't quite measure up to Nora's extravagant ideal."
"No, I suppose not," he said, his eyes twinkling. "I doubt if any man could do that."
We were all laughing, and I said:
"Oh, well, I know he's not much to look at; but I'm crazy about him, anyhow, and he wants to see the rooms."
He didn't think the little room nearly good enough for me, but he said that big suite of rooms in front was just the thing. That made me laugh. Did he suppose any stenographer could afford a luxurious suite of rooms like that? There was a long room that ran across the front of the house, with big bay-windows and a great fireplace, and opening out from this room was a large bedroom, with a bath-roomadjoining it. As one may see, they weren't exactly the rooms a girl getting fifteen dollars a week could afford.
I said:
"Tell him just how much you intend to 'soak' your prospective roomer for these palatial chambers."
She started to say, "Twenty-five dollars a week," which was what she had told me she expected to charge, when I saw him make a sign to her, and she hesitated. Then I knew he intended to get her to name a cheap price just for me, and pay the difference himself. But now I was too quick for him. He had actually deceived me about those clothes. I had not the remotest idea till months afterward that he had paid for them and for many other things I subsequently bought, or thought I bought; but Mrs. Kingston had already told me the price of that room. So I said:
"It's no use. I know the price."
"Yes, but for a friend," he replied, "I'm sure Mrs. Kingston would make—er—a considerable reduction."
She said nothing. I don't know how she felt. Of course she knew that I was in love with him, but, as she told me afterward, she couldn't quite make out just what our relations were.
"That's all very well," I said, "but Mrs. Kingston has to get her rent."
Then he said:
"Well, but—er—I'm sure her practice is goingto soar from now on. A great lawyer like Mrs. Kingston need not rent rooms at all."
Still she said nothing; but I saw her watching us both. He went on to urge me to have these rooms, but of course the idea was absurd. It was really provoking for him to keep pressing me to have things I simply could not afford and did not greatly want. I said all this. Besides, I added, it would be foolish for me to make any change at this time. Things were uncertain with me at the yards, now that Fred was leaving, and I should have to speak to Lolly, anyhow.
He argued that if I expected to write, I should have to move. No one could write in such disturbing circumstances. Of course that was true enough, and I said I'd talk it over that night with Lolly.
He took out some money then, and wanted to pay Mrs. Kingston so much down on the rooms, when I exclaimed that even if I did leave Lolly, I didn't mean to take these rooms, but the little one, if Mrs. Kingston was still willing to let me have it. She said she certainly was; that she badly wanted me to come. Both she and Mrs. Owens (the woman with her) needed a young person about the place to make them forget what old fogies they were, and that it would be like a real home to have me there, and we'd all be very happy.
It ended like this:hetook that suite of rooms. He said they'd be there for me to have at any time I wanted them. I told him it was just a waste of money,for I simply would not let him pay for my room any more than I would let him pay for my clothes, and that was all there was to it.
He smiled curiously at that, and asked Mrs. Kingston what she thought of my clothes. She said:
"I haven't been able to take my eyes off them. Nora iswonderful! Does it seem possible that clothes can make such a difference?"
She wanted to know where I got them. I told her, and how cheap they were. She was amazed at the price, and Mr. Hamilton went over to the window and looked out. How clearly this all comes back to me now!
All the way back to my rooms he argued with me about the matter. He said if I had a pleasant place like that to live in, I'd soon be writing masterpieces (ah, he knew which way my desires ran!), and soon I'd not have to work in offices at all. To take rooms like those, he said, was really an investment. Business men all did things that way. It was part of the game. He wanted me to try it, for a while, and at last I said in desperation:
"What's the use of talking about it? I tell you, I haven't got the money."
Then he said (I never knew a man who could so persist about a thing on which he had set his heart):
"Now, look here, Nora, I've got more money than is decent for any one person to have, and Iwantto spend it onyou. I want to give you things—comforts and luxuries and all the pretty things a girl like you ought to have. If you could see yourself now, you'd realize what a difference even clothes make. And so with other things. I want to take hold of you and make you over. I never wanted to do anything so much in my life before. Now you're going to be a good girl, aren't you, and not deny me the pleasure—the realjoyit gives me to do things for you, dear little girl?"
By this time I was nearly crying, but I set my teeth together, and determined not to be won over to something I knew was not right.
"You told me once," I said, "that all any one had ever wanted of you was your money—your 'dirty money,' you called it; and now, just because I won't take it from you, you get angry with me."
"Well, but, confound it! I didn't mean you then."
"Oh, yes, you did, too; because you said I'd be sending for more money in a week, and you said that I was made to have it, and men would give—"
He put a stop to my too vivid recollections.
"But,child, I had noideathen of the kind of girl you were,"—he lowered his voice, and added tenderly, he was trying so hard to have his way!—"of the exceptional, wonderful little girl you are."
"But I wouldn't be exceptional or wonderful," I protested, "if I took your money. I'd be common. No; I'm not going to let people say youkeepme!"
"Where did you hear that word?" he demanded roughly.
"From Lolly—and the girls at the Y. W. C. A. Oh, don't you suppose I know what that means?" I was looking straight at him now, and I saw his face turn red, but whether with anger or embarrassment, I do not know. He said in a sort of suppressed way:
"Don't you know that men who keep women are their lovers?"
I nodded.
He sat up stiffly now, and he gave me a cold, almost sneering, look that made me shiver. Then he said:
"Have I ever given you the slightest reason to suppose I wanted to beyourlover?"
I shriveled up not only at his words, but at his look, and I turned my face away, and looked out of the window of the cab without seeing anything. It was true he had never pretended to care for me. I was the one who had done all the caring, and now it almost seemed as if he were throwing this up to me as something of which to be ashamed. But though my face was burning, I felt no shame, only a sort of misery.
"Well?" he prompted me, for I had not answered that last brutal query. Without looking at him, I said, in a shaking little voice, for I was heartbroken to think that he could use such a tone to me or look at me in that way:
"No, you haven't. In fact, if you had, perhaps I might have done what you wanted."
He came closer to me in the carriage when I said that, but I shrank away from him. I was nearer to disliking him then than at any time in my acquaintance with him.
"You mean," he said, "that if Iwereyour lover, youwouldbe willing to—live with me—like that? Is that what you mean, Nora?"
"Oh, I don't know what I mean," I said. "I don't pretend to be respectable and good in the way the women of your class are. I suppose I have no morals. I'm only a girl in love with a man; and if—if—he cared for me as I did for him, I'd be willing to do anything in the world he wished me to. I'd be willing to die for him. But if he didn't—if he didn't care for me, don't you see, I couldn't takeanythingfrom him. I should feel degraded."
It was a tangled, passionate sort of reasoning. For a long time after that we rode along in silence, I looking out of the window, and he looking constantly at me. I couldfeelhis eyes on me, and I did not dare to turn around. Then presently he said:
"I'm all kinds of a rotter, Nora, but I'm straight about you. You're my wonderful girl, the oasis in my life. I wouldn't harm a hair of your precious little head. If I were to tell you I loved you, I would precipitate a tragedy upon you that you do not deserve. So I am not going to say any such thing to you." He cleared his throat, and as I said nothing, he went on strongly, it seemed to me:
"Your friend, Lolly, is right about men, and I'm not different from other men as far as women are concerned; but in your case I am. My desire to do things for you is based on no selfish design. I assure you of that. I simply have an overwhelming desire to take care of you, Nora, to help you."
I said with as much composure as I could command:
"Thank you, I don't need help. I'm not so badly off as you think. I make pretty good money, and, anyway, I'm independent, and that's a big thing."
"But you have to work like a slave. I can't bear to think of that, and as for being independent, you won't be any the less so if you let me do things for you. You may go on with your life in your own way. I'll never interfere or try to dictate to you about anything."
Almost hysterically I cried out:
"Oh, please stop talking about this! Every time you come here you scold me about something."
"Why, Nora," he said aggrievedly, "I have never asked you to do anything but this. That's the only thing I ever scolded you about."
"Look how you acted that first night, when you saw me with Lolly and Mr. Chambers, and then the night I was up with Fred. You wanted tobeatme! I saw it in your face. You could no more help dictating to and scolding me than you can help coming to see me now."
The last sentence slipped out before I knew it, andhe sat up sharply at that, and then laughed, uncomfortably.
"I am a dog in the manger as far as you are concerned," he said; "but I'll turn over a new leaf if you'll let me do these things for you."
I smiled ruefully, for I was beginning to know him so well now, and I sighed. He asked me why I sighed, and then I asked him in turn just why he wanted to do these things for me. He paused a moment, and then said slowly, and not without considerable emotion:
"I've told you why before, Nora. I'm interested in you. You're my find, my discovery. I take a special pride in everything connected with you. You're the one thing in life I take a real interest in, and I want to watch you, and see you develop. I haven't the slightest doubt of your eventual success."
"Hum! You look upon me as a sort of curiosity, don't you?"
"Nonsense! Don't talk so foolishly!"
But I knew that that was just how he did regard me, and it made me sick at heart. My beautiful day had clouded over. I supposed that nothing in the world would ever induce this man to admit any feeling for me but interest. Well, I wanted to love and to be loved, and it was a cold sort of substitute he was offering me—pretty clothes and fine rooms. I could earn all those things myself in time.
"Now, then," he said, "youaregoing to be my darling, reasonable little girl, aren't you? After all, it isn't so much I am asking of you. All I want you to do is to leave your position and go to live with this Mrs. Kingston. She struck me as being all right, and the rooms are exceedingly attractive, though we'll furnish them over ourselves. And then you are going to let me get you the proper kind of clothes to wear. I'll choose them myself for you, Nora. Then, since you won't go to school,—and, you see, I'm willing to let that go,—why, we can arrange for you to take special lessons in languages and things like that, and there are certain English courses you can take up at Northwestern. And I want you to study music, too, piano and vocal—the violin, too, if you like. I'm specially fond of music, and I think it would be a good thing for you to take it up. Then in the spring you shall go abroad. I have to go myself about that time, and I want to see your face when you see Europe, honey." That was the only Southern endearing term he ever applied to me, and I had never heard it used before. "It will be a revelation to you. And now the whole thing is settled, isn't it?"
I hated, after all this, to have to refuse again, so I didn't answer him, and he said, taking my hand, and leaning, oh, so coaxingly toward me:
"It's all settled, isn't it, dear?"
I turned around, and shouted at him almost hysterically:
"No, itisn't. And I wish you'd shut up about those things. You only make me miserable."
If I had stung him, he could not have drawn back from me more sharply.
"Oh,verywell," he said, and threw himself back in his seat, his face looking like a thunder-cloud.
He didn't speak another word to me, and when the carriage stopped at my door, he got out, assisted me from the carriage, and then immediately got in again himself. I stood at the curb, my hand on the door of the carriage, and I said:
"Please don't go like this."
"I'm sorry, but I am taking the 6:09 train."
"Take a later train."
"No, thank you."
"Please!"
"Sorry. Good-by."
"Please don't be angry with me!"
He didn't answer. It was terrible to have him go like that, and I asked him when he was coming back.
"I can't say," was his curt response. Then his angry glance fixed me, and he said slowly:
"You can let me know when you take those rooms I chose for you. I'll come then—at once."
And that is the cruel way he left me. I was heartbroken in a way, but I was angry, too. I went up to my room, and sat on the couch, and as I slowly pulled off my new gloves, I was not thinking kindly of Mr. R. A. Hamilton. No man had a right to impose hiswill in this way on a girl and to demand of her something that she could not do without losing her self-respect. I asked myself whether, because I loved this man, I was willing to make of myself a pusillanimous little door-mat, or if I had enough pride to stand by my own convictions?
I had humbled myself enough to him; indeed, I had virtually offered myself to him. But he did not want me. He had made that clear enough. If, in the circumstances, I took from him the gifts he offered me, I would roll up a debt I could never wipe out. Now, although poor and working, I was a free woman. What I had, I honestly earned. I was no doll or parasite who needed to be carried by others. No! To retain my belief in my own powers, I must prove that they actually existed. Only women without resources in themselves, without gifts or brains, were "kept" by men, either as mistresses or wives or from charity, as Hamilton wished to "keep" me. I had the youthful conviction thatIwas one of the exceptional souls of the world, and could carry myself. Was I, then, to be bought by the usual foolish things that attract the ordinary woman? No! Not even my love could alter my character.
Now, there really was a fine streak in me, for I did want pretty things (what young girl does not?), I hated my work, and I loved this man, and wanted above all things on earth to please him.
Lolly said, to jerk one's mind from too muchbrooding over one man, one should think of another, I discovered another method of distraction. Pretty clothes are a balm even to a broken heart, and although I was clever, I was also eternally feminine. My things had arrived from the shop, and they were so lovely,—so much lovelier than I had thought,—that I was enchanted. Lolly came in while I was lifting the things from the boxes. I hadn't taken off my suit, and she turned me around to look at me.
"Isn't it stunning, Lolly?" I asked. "And, just think, it was only fifteen dollars, suit, hat, muff, and all."
Lolly's unbelieving glance swept me, then she threw her cigarette down, and said spitefully:
"For the love of Mike, Nora, cut it out! You're a poor little liar!"
"Liar! What do you mean, Lolly Hope?"
I was furious at the insult, capping all I had gone through.
"That suit you have on never cost one penny less than $150. The fur alone is easily worth half of that. It's silver fox, an inch of which is worth several dollars, and that muff—" She laughed disgustedly. "What do you take me for, anyhow, to try to spring that fifteen-dollar gag on me?"
"It was marked down, I tell you, at a bargain sale."
"Oh, come off, Nora! Don't try that on me. I know where you got those clothes. That manHamilton gave them to you. You didn't follow my advice, I see." She shrugged her shoulders. "Of course it's your own affair, and I'm the last to blame you or any other girl for a thing like that, but, for heaven's sake, don't think it necessary to make up fairy-tales to me!"
"Lolly, I swear to you that I paid for these myself."
"Tell it to the marines!" said Lolly.
"Then see for yourself. Here are the price-tags, and here's the bill," I cried excitedly, and I thrust them upon her. Everything came to exactly forty dollars. Lolly looked the bill over carefully; then she put her cigarette in her mouth, and looked at me. All of a sudden she began to laugh. She threw her head back upon the sofa pillows and just laughed and laughed, while I became angrier and angrier with her. I waited till she was through, and then I said, very much injured:
"Now you can apologize to me, Lolly Hope."
"You blessed infant," she cried, "I'm in the dust at your feet. One thing's sure, and I guess friend Hamilton is wise to that: there's no one likeyouin this dull old world of ours!"
My new "boss" at the yards was a sharp-nosed, sharp-eyed old-young man who seemed to think that his chief mission in life was to crack a sort of mental whip, like an overseer, over the heads of those under him, and keep us all hustling and rushing like frightened geese.
I had been accustomed to answer the correspondence of the soap department myself, Fred merely noting a few words in pencil on each letter, giving the gist of what he wanted said; but Mr. Hopkins dictated everything, and as soon as I was through one batch of correspondence, he would find something else for me to do. It seemed to give him a pain for my typewriter to be idle a moment. I think I was on his mind all the time except when he was thinking up work for Red Top.
My position, therefore, had become a very hard one. I worked incessantly from nine till six. Fred had let me off at five-thirty and often at five; but Mr. Hopkins kept me till six. I think he'd have made it seven, but the bell rang at six, and the office was supposed to close after that.
Many a time I've seen him glance regretfully at theclock or make an impatient movement with his shoulders at the clanging of the bell, at which moment I always banged my type-writer desk, and swiftly departed.
How I missed Fred! He had made life at the yards tolerable and even amusing for me with his jokes and confidences. And, then, there's a pleasure in working for some one you know approves of you and likes you. Freddidlike me. In a way, I don't think any one ever liked me better than poor Fred did.
It makes me sad to think that the best girl friend I ever had, Lolly, and the best man friend, Fred, are now both gone out of this world, where I may have still such a long road to travel.
I hated my position now. I was nothing but an overworked machine. Moreover, the routine of the work was deadening. When I answered the letters myself, it gave a slight diversion; but now I simply took dictation and transcribed it, and when I was through with that, I copied pages of itemized stuff. My mind became just like a ticker that tapped off this or that curt and dry formula of business letter in which soap, soap, soap stood out big and slimy.
I now neither wrote at night nor went out. I was too tired from the incessant labor at the type-writer, and when I got to sleep,—after two or three hours, in which I lay awake thinking of Mr. Hamilton and wondering whether I would ever see him again; I always wondered about that when he was away,—Ideclare, I would hear thetap-tappingof that typewriter all night long! Other type-writists have had the same experience. One ought to escape from one's treadmill at least in sleep.
But this is a world of miracles; doubt it who can.
There came a glorious day late in the month of November—to be exact, it was November 24. No, Mr. Hamilton did not come again. He was still waiting for my capitulation anent the rooms at Mrs. Kingston's.
This is what happened: I was type-writing, when Red Top came in with the mail. He threw down on my desk some personal letters that had come for me. Although Mr. Hopkins was at his desk, and I knew it was a criminal offense to stop any office work to attend to a personal matter, I reached over and picked up my letters. I heard my "boss" cough significantly as I glanced through them. Two were from home, and I put them down, intending to read them at noon. One was from Fred. I put that down, too. And the other! Oh, that other! It was from—listen! It was from the editor of that great magazine in New York! I opened it with trembling fingers. The words jumped up at me and embraced me! My story was accepted, and a check for fifty dollars accompanied that brief, but blessed, note.
Mr. Hopkins was clearing his throat so pronouncedly now that I turned deliberately about in my chair and grinned hard at him. He glared at me indignantly.Little idiot! He thought I was trying to flirt with him!
"Are you through, Miss Ascough?" he asked.
"No, Mr. Hopkins," I responded blandly, "and I never will be now. I've just come into some money, and I'm not going to work for you any more."
"What! What!" he said in his sharp little voice, just like a duck quacking.
I repeated what I had said, and I stood up now, and began gathering my things together—my pocketbook, handkerchief, odds and ends in my desk, and the rose that Mr. Smith had given me that day.
Mr. Hopkins had a nasal, excitable, squeaking sort of voice, like the querulous bark of a dog—a little dog.
"But, Miss Ascough, you don't mean to say you are leaving now?"
"Yes, I do mean to say it," I replied, smiling gloriously.
"But surely you'll finish the letter on the machine."
"I surely will not," said I. "I don'thaveto work any more. Good-by." And out I marched, or, rather, flew, without waiting to collect three days' pay due me, and resigning a perfectly good fifteen-dollar-a-week job on the first money I ever received for a story!
I did not walk on solid ground, I assure you. I flew on wings that carried me soaring above that Land of Odors, where I had worked for four and a half hardmonths, right up into the clouds, and every one knows the clouds are near to heaven.
Mr. Hamilton? Oh, yes, I did remember some such person. Let me see. He was the man who thought I was incapable of taking care of myself, and who grandiloquently wanted to "make me over"; who once said I was "ignorant, uncivilized, undisciplined," and would never get anywhere unless I followed his lordly advice. How I laughed inwardly at the thought of the effect upon him of those astounding conquests that I was to make in the charming golden world that was smiling and beckoning to me now.
As soon as I got to my room, I sat down and wrote a letter to him. I wantedhimto know right away. In fact, I had a feeling that ifhedidn't know, then all the pleasure of my triumph might go. This is what I said to him:
Dear Roger:
Dear Roger:
[Yes, I called him Roger now.]
Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the inclosed thrilling, extraordinary, and absorbing indorsement ofYour abused and forsakenNora.
Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the inclosed thrilling, extraordinary, and absorbing indorsement of
Your abused and forsakenNora.
How had he the heart not to answer that letter of mine, I wondered.
Girls love candies, pretty clothes, jewelry, geegaws, and, as the old song has it, "apples and spices and everything nicest," they like boys and men and all suchtrifling things. Those are the things that make them giggle and thrill and weep and sometimes kill themselves; but I tell you there isn't a thrill comparable with that electric and ecstatic shock that comes to a young girl writer when, after many rebuffs, her first story is accepted. Of course, alas! that thrill is brief, and soon one finds, with wonder, that the world is actually going on just the same, and, more wonder of wonders! there are still trouble and pain and tragedy and other ugly things crawling about upon the face of the earth. Ah me! They say the weird, seeking sound of a new soul is the most beautiful music on earth to the ears of a mother. I think a poet feels that way toward his first poem or story that comes to life. The ecstasy, the pain, and thrill of creating and bearing—are they not all here, too? I know that often one's "child" is unworthy, uncouth, sometimes deformed, or, worse, a misshapen and appalling monster, a criminal product, as it were; but none the less he is one's own, and one's love will accompany him, even as a mother's, to the gallows.
"It never rains but it pours," says a homely old adage. I thought this was the case with me now. Within a few days after I got that letter and check, lo and behold! I had three stories accepted by a certain Western magazine. I was sure now that I was not only going to be famous immediately, but fabulously wealthy.
Three stories, say, at fifty dollars each, made ahundred and fifty; add the fifty I had from the New York magazine, and you perceive I would possess two hundred dollars. Then do not forget that I had as well a little black suitcase full of other stories and poems, and an abortive effort at a novel, to say nothing of a score of articles about Jamaica. Besides, my head was teeming with extraordinary and unusual plots and ideas,—at least they seemed extraordinary and original to me,—and I felt that all I had to do was to shut myself up somewhere alone, and out they would pour.
I now sat down on the floor, with my suitcase before me, and I made a list of all my stories, put prices opposite them, added up the list, and, bedad! as O'Brien would say, I was a rich girl!
In fact I felt so confident and recklessly happy that nothing would do but I must treat Lolly and Hermann to a fine dinner and the theater. My fifty dollars dropped to forty. But of course I was to get one hundred and fifty for those other three stories. It's true, the letter accepting them did not mention the price, but I supposed that all magazines paid about the same, and even though in the case of the Western magazine I was to be "paid upon publication," I was sure my stories would be published soon. In fact, I thought it a good thing that I was not paid all at once, because then I might be tempted to spend the money. As it was, it would come in just about the time I was through with the fifty.
If my ignorance in this matter seems infantile, I think I may confidently refer my readers to certain other authors who in the beginning of their careers have been almost as credulous and visionary as I. It's a matter of wonder how any person who is capable of writing a story can in other matters be so utterly impractical and positively devoid of common sense.
I never saw fifty dollars fly away as quickly as that fifty dollars of mine. I really don't knowwhatit went for, though I did swagger about a bit among my friends. I took Mrs. Kingston and Mrs. Owens, the woman who lived with her, to the theater, and I went over to the Y. W. C. A. several times and treated Estelle and a lot of my old acquaintances to ice-cream sodas and things like that.
I avidly watched the news-stands for the December number of that Western magazine to appear, and when it did come out, I was so sure at least one of my stories was in it, that I was confounded and stunned when I found that it was not. I thought some mistake must have been made, and bought two other copies to make sure.
I was now down to my last six dollars. I awoke to the seriousness of my position. I would have to go to work again and immediately. The thought of this hurt me acutely, not so much because I hated the work, but because I realized that my dream of instant fame and fortune was in fact only a dream.
The December number of the New York magazinealso was out, but my story was not in it. I wrote to the editors of both the Eastern and Western magazines, and asked when my stories would appear. I got answers within a few days. The New York magazine said that they were made up for several months ahead, but hoped to use my story by next summer,—it was the first week in December now,—and the Western magazine wrote vaguely that they planned to use my stories in "the near future."
I wrote such a desperate letter to the editor of that Western magazine, imploring him to use my stories very soon, that I must have aroused his curiosity, for he wrote me that he expected to be in Chicago "some time next month," and would be much pleased to call upon me and discuss the matter of the early publication of my stories and others he would like to have me write for them.
I said my fifty dollars flew away from me. I except the last six dollars. I performed miracles with that. I paid my share of our room-rent for a week—three dollars—and lived eleven days on the other three. At the end of those eleven days I had exactly ten cents.
For two reasons I did not tell Lolly. In the first place, while I had not lied to her, I had in my egotistical and fanciful excitement led her to believe that not only had I sold the four stories, but that they had been paid for. And in the second place, Lolly at this time was having bitter troubles of her own. Theyconcerned Marshall Chambers. She was suffering untold tortures over that man—the tortures that only a suspicious and passionately jealous woman who loves can feel. She had no tangible proof of his infidelities, but a thousand little things had occurred that made her suspect him. They quarreled constantly, and then passionately "made up." So I could not turn to Lolly.
I had not heard a word from Mr. Hamilton, and after that glowing, boastful letter I had written, howcouldI now appeal to him? The mere thought tormented and terrified me.
Toward the end, when my money had faded down to that last six dollars, I had been desperately seeking work. I think I answered five hundred advertisements at least, but although now I was well dressed, an asset to a stenographer, and had city references (Fred's), I could get nothing. My strait, it will be perceived, was really bad, and another week's rent had fallen due.
I didn't have any dinner that evening when I went over to Mrs. Kingston's, but I had on my beautiful blue velvet suit. My luncheon had been a single ham sandwich. Mrs. Kingston had called me up on the telephone early in the day, and invited me over for the evening, saying she had some friends who wished to meet me.
Her friends proved to be two young men from Cincinnati who were living and working in Chicago.One, George Butler, already well known as a Socialist, was head of a Charities Association Bureau (I hysterically thought it an apropos occasion for me to meet a man in such work), and the other, Robert Bennet, was exchange editor of theNews. Butler was exceedingly good-looking, but he had a thick, baggy-looking mouth, and he dressed like a poet,—at least I supposed a poet would dress something like that,—wearing his hair carelessly tossed back, a turn-over soft collar, flowing tie, and loose-fitting clothes that looked as if they needed to be pressed.
Bennet had an interesting face, the prominent attribute of which was an almost shining quality ofhonesty. It illuminated his otherwise rugged and homely countenance, and gave it a curious attraction and strength. I can find no other word to describe that expression. He wore glasses, and looked like a student, and he stooped a little, which added to this impression. Both boys were in their early twenties, I should say, and they roomed together somewhere near Jane Addams's Hull House, where both worked at night, giving their services gratuitously as instructors in English. They were graduates of Cornell.
Butler talked a great deal about Socialism, and he would run his hand through his hair, as Belasco does on first nights. Bennet, on the other hand, was a good listener, but talked very little. He seemed diffident and even shy, and he stammered slightly.
On this night I was in such a depressed mood that,despite Mr. Butler's eloquence, I was unable to rouse myself from the morbid fancies that were now flooding my mind. For the imagination that had carried me up on dizzying dreams of fame now showed me pictures of myself starving and homeless; and just as the first pictures had exhilarated, now the latter terrified and distracted me.
Mrs. Kingston noticed my silence, and asked me if I were not feeling well. She said I did not seem quite myself. I said I was all right. When I was going, she asked me in a whisper whether I had heard from Mr. Hamilton, and I shook my head; and then she wanted to know whether he knew of my "success." Something screamed and cried within me at that question. My success! Was she mocking me then?
Bennet had asked to see me home, and as it was still early,—only about nine,—he suggested that we take a little walk along the lake.
It was a beautiful night, and though only a few weeks from Christmas, not at all cold. Mrs. Kingston had apparently told Mr. Bennet of my writing, for he tried to make me talk about it. I was not, however, in a very communicative mood. I talked disjointedly. I started to tell him about my stories, and then all of a sudden I remembered how I was fixed, and then I couldn't talk at all. In fact, I pitied myself so that I began to cry. It was dark in the street, and I cried silently; so I didn't suppose he noticed me until he stopped short and said:
"You're in trouble. Can't you tell me what is the matter?"
"I've got only ten cents in the world," I blurted out.
"What!"
"Just ten cents," I said, "and Ican'tget work."
"Good heavens!" he exclaimed. "You poor girl!"
He was so sorry for me and excited that he stammered worse than ever, and I stopped crying, because, having told some one my secret, I felt better and knew I'd get help somehow.
So then I told him all about how I had come down to such straits; how I had worked all those months, and my implicit belief that that fifty dollars would last till I was paid for the other three stories.
When I was through, Bennet said:
"N-now, l-look here. I get thirty dollars a week. I don't need but half of that, and I'm going to give you fifteen a week of it till you get another place."
I protested that I wouldn't think of taking his money, but I was joyfully hailing him in my heart as a veritable savior. Before we had reached my lodging-place, I had not only allowed him to give me ten dollars, but I agreed to accept ten dollars a week from him till I got work.
It is curious how, without the slightest compunction or any feeling even of hurt pride or shame, I was willing to accept money like this from a person whom Ihad never seen before; yet the thought of asking Hamilton filled me with a real terror. I believe I would have starved first. It is hard to explain this. I had liked to think of myself as doing something very unusual and fine in refusing help from Hamilton, and yet where was my logic, since without a qualm I took money from Bennet? Our natures are full of contradictions, it seems to me. Perhaps I can explain it in this way, however. There was something so tremendouslygoodabout Bennet, so overpoweringly human and great, that I felt the same as I would have felt if a woman had offered to help me. On the other hand, I was desperately in love with Hamilton. I wanted to impress him. I wanted his good opinion. I unconsciously assumed a pose—perhaps that is it—and I had to live up to it. Then I have often thought that almost any woman would have confidently accepted help from Bennet, but might have hesitated to take anything from Mr. Hamilton.
Some men inspire us with instant confidence; we are "on guard" with others. I can write this analysis now; I could not explain it to myself then.
Now my life assumed a new phase. No man like Bennet can come into a woman's life and not make a deep impression. I have said that Dick was my "shadow." Bennet was something better than that. He was my protector, my guide, and my teacher. He did not, as Dick had done, begin immediately to make love to me, but he came persistently to see me. Always he brought some book with him, and now for the first time in my life the real world of poetry began to open its doors for me. I a poet! Oh, me!
Hamilton had filled my bookshelves with novels, chiefly by French authors. They were of absorbing interest to me, and they taught me things just as if I had traveled; but Bennet read to me poetry—Keats, Shelley, Byron, Browning, Tennyson, Heine, Milton, and others. For hours I sat listening to the jeweled words. No, I could not write poetry,—I never shall,—but I had the hungry heart of the poet within me. I know it; else I could not so vividly, so ardently have loved the poetry of others.
I cannot think of my acquaintance with Bennet without there running immediately to my mind, like the refrain of an old song, some of those exquisite poems heread to me—read so slowly, so clearly, so subtly, that every word pierced my consciousness and understanding. Else how could a girl like me have gasped with sheer delight over the "Ode to a Grecian Urn"? What was there in a poem like that to appeal to a girl of my history?
When we did not stay in and read, Bennet would take me to some good theater or concert, and I went several times with him to Hull House. There twice a week he taught a class in English poetry. The girls in his class were chiefly foreigners,—Russian Jewesses, Polish and German girls,—and for the most part they worked in factories and stores; but they were all intelligent and eager to learn. They made me ashamed of my own indolence. I used to fancy that most of his pupils were secretly in love with Bennet. They would look at his inspired young face as if they greatly admired him, and I felt a sense of flattering pride in the thought thatheliked only me. Oh, I couldn't help seeing that, though he had not then told me so.
Sometimes he took me over to his rooms. They were two very curious, low-roofed rooms down in the tenement-house district, completely lined with books. Here Butler, with his pipe in his loose mouth, used to entertain me with long talks on Socialism, and once he read me some of Kipling's poems. That was my first acquaintance with Kipling. It was an unforgettable experience. In these rooms, too, Bennet read me"Undine," some of Barrie's stories, and Omar Khayyam.
Those were clean, inspiring days. They almost compensated for everything else that was sad and ugly in my life. For sad and ugly things were happening to me every day, and I had had no word, no single sign, from Mr. Hamilton. I tried to shut him from my mind. I tried hard to do that, especially as I knew that Robert Bennet was beginning to care for me too well. Through the day, it was easy enough. I could do it, too, when Bennet read to me from the poets; but, ah, at night, that was when he slipped back insidiously upon me! Sometimes I felt that if I did not see him soon, I should go mad just from longing and desire to see his dear face and hear the sound of his cruel voice.
I got a position about two weeks after I met Bennet. It was in a steel firm; I stayed there only two days. There were two other stenographers, and the second day I was there, the president of the firm decided to move me from the outer to his private office, to do his work. Both of the girls looked at each other so significantly when my desk was carried in that I asked them if anything was the matter. One of them shrugged her shoulders, and the other said:
"You'll find out for yourself."
Within ten minutes after I entered that inner office I did. I was taking dictation at a little slat on the desk of the president when he laid a photograph uponmy book, and then, while I sat dumfounded, trying to look anywhere save at what was before me, he laid more photographs, one after the other, on top of that first one, which was the vilest thing I have ever seen in my life.
The girls at the Y. W. C. A. and the girls at the stock-yards used to talk about their experiences in offices, and we used to laugh at the angry girls who declared they did this or that to men who insulted them. As I have written before, I had become hardened to such things, and when I could, I simply ignored them. They were one of the dirty things in life that working-girls had to endure. But now, as I sat at that desk, I felt rushing over me such a surge of primitive and outraged feeling that I could find no relief save in some fierce physical action. I seized those photographs, and slammed them into the face of that leering old satyr.
After that I went from one position to another. I took anything I could get. Sometimes I left because the conditions were intolerable; sometimes because they did not pay me; usually I was allowed to go after a brief trial in which I failed to prove my competence. I was very bad at figures, and most offices require a certain amount of that kind of work from their stenographers. These were the places where I failed.
Of course, changing my position and being out of work so much, I made little progress, and although I had had only twenty dollars from Bennet, I wasunable to pay him back. I had hoped to by Christmas, now only a week off.
And now something happened that caused a big change in my life; that is, it forced me at last to separate from Lolly. For some time she had been most unhappy, and one evening she confided to me her suspicions of Chambers. She said she had "turned down" Hermann, who wanted to marry her, for Chambers, though friends had warned her not to trust him; but that though he had at times been brutal to her, she adored him. Pacing up and down the room, she told me that she wished she knew some way to prove him. It was then that I made my fatal offer. I said:
"Lolly, I could have told you long ago about Chambers. Iknowhe is no good. If I were you, I'd have nothing more to do with him."
Lolly stopped in her pacing, and stared at me.
"Howdo you know?" she demanded.
"Because," I said, "he's tried several times to make love to me."
"You lie, Nora Ascough!" she cried out in such a savage way that I was afraid of her. If I had been wiser, perhaps, I might have reassured her and let her think I did lie. Then the matter would have ended there; but I had to plunge in deeper.
"Lolly, I'll prove it to you, if you wish."
"You can't," retorted Lolly, her nostrils dilating.
"Yes, I can, I say. He's coming to-night, isn'the? Well, you stay in that inner room, by the door. Let me see him alone here. Then you'll see for yourself."
She considered the suggestion, with her eyes half closed, blowing the smoke slowly from her lips, and looking at the tip of her cigarette. Then she shrugged her shoulders and laughed sneeringly.
"The trouble with you, Nora, is that because a lot of muckers at the Union Stock-Yards got 'stuck' on you, a few poor devils of newspaper men are a little smitten, and a fast rich man tried to keep you, you imagine every other man is after you."
I couldn't answer that. It was untrue. None the less, it hurt. I had never in my life boasted to Lolly about men. I supposed she knew that, like every other girl who is thrown closely into contact with men, I naturally got my share of attention. I had long ago realized the exact value of this. The girls at the yards, for instance, used to say that the men would even go after a hunchback or a girl that squinted if she gave them any encouragement. And as for Robert Bennet and Dick, it was mean of Lolly to refer to them in that contemptuous way. Lolly, I think, regretted a moment later what she had said. She was as generous and impulsive as she was hasty in temper. Now she said:
"Forget I said that, Nora. Just for fun I'll try your plan. Of course, it's ridiculous. Marshall has never looked upon you as anything but a joke. I meanhe thinks you're a funny little thing; but as for anything else—" Lolly blew forth her cigarette smoke in derision at the notion.
Chambers came about eight-thirty. They never announced him, but we knew his double knock, and Lolly slipped into the inner room, but did not close the door tight.
I had taken up Lolly's mandolin, and now I painfully tried to pick out a tune on the strings. Chambers stood watching me, smiling, and when I finally did manage "The Last Rose of Summer," he said:
"Bully for you!"
Then he looked about quickly and said:
"Lolly out?"
I nodded. Whereupon he sat down beside me.
"Want to learn the mandolin?" he asked.
I nodded, smiling.
"This is the way," he said. He was on my left side, and putting his arm about my waist, and with his right hand over my right hand, he tried to teach me to use the little bone picker; but while he was doing this he got as close to me as he could, and as I bent over the mandolin, so did he, till his face came right against mine, and he kissed me.
Then something terrible happened. Lolly screamed. She screamed like a person gone mad. Chambers and I jumped apart, and I felt so weak I was afraid to go inside that room. Just then Hermann came rushing in with the landlady. She had heard Lolly's screams,and she wanted to know what was the trouble. I said Lolly was ill; but as soon as she went out, I told Hermann the truth. When Chambers realized that he was the victim of a trap, and while Lolly was still crying,—a moaning sort of cry now,—he picked up his hat and made for the door. There he encountered Hermann, all of whose teeth were showing. Hermann's hand shot up to Chambers's collar, and he threw him bodily from the room. How he did this, I am sure I don't know, for Chambers was a larger and seemingly much stronger man than Hermann. Then Hermann went in to Lolly, and I, feeling like a criminal, followed.
I had never seen a woman in hysterics before. Lolly was lying on her back on the bed, with her arms cast out on each side. Her face was convulsed, and she was gasping and crying and moaning and laughing all at the same time. Hermann put his arms about her, and tried to soothe and comfort her, and I, crying myself now, begged her to forgive me. She screamed at me, "Get out of my sight!" and kept on upbraiding and accusing me. She seemed to think that I must have been flirting with Chambers for some time, and she said I was a snake. She said she hated me, and that if I did not go "at once! at once! at once!" she'd kill me.
I didn't know what to do, and Hermann said:
"For God's sake! Nora, go!"
I packed my things as quickly as I could. I had notrunk, but two suitcases, and I made bundles of the things that would not go into them. I told Hermann I'd send for the things in the morning. Then I put on my coat and hat, and took the suitcase with my manuscripts and my night things. Before going, I went over to the bed and again begged Lolly to forgive me, assuring her that I never had had anything to do with Chambers till that night. I told her that I loved her better than any other girl I knew, better than my sisters even, and it was breaking my heart to leave her in this way. I was sobbing while I talked, but though she no longer viciously denounced me, she turned her face to the wall and put her hands over her ears. Then I kissed her hand,—women of my race do things like that under stress of emotion,—and, crying, left my Lolly.