I went direct to Mrs. Kingston's. As soon as I walked in with my bag in my hand, she knew I had come to stay, and she was so delighted that she seized me in her arms and hugged me, saying I was her "dearest and only Nora." She took me right up to what she thought were to be my rooms, but I said I preferred the little one, and after we had talked it over a bit, she said she agreed with me. It was much better for me to have only what I myself could afford.
I didn't tell her a word about Lolly. That was my poor friend's secret; but I told her of my straitened affairs, my poor position and that I owed money to Bennet. When I ended, she said:
"That boy's an angel. I can't wish you any better luck than that you get him."
"Get him?"
"He is simply crazy about you, Nora. Can't talk about anything else, and you couldn't do better if you searched from one end of the United States to the other. He's of a splendid family, and he's going to make a big name for himself some day, you mark my words."
I agreed with all her praise of Bennet, but I told herI thought of him only as a friend, as I did of Fred O'Brien for instance.
She shook her head at me, sighed, and said that she supposed I still cared for "that man Hamilton," and I didn't answer her. I just sat on the side of the bed staring out in front of me. After a moment she said:
"Of course, if that's the way you feel, for heaven's sake! let poor Bennet alone; though if I were you, it wouldn't take me long to know which of those two men to choose between."
"You'd take Bennet, wouldn't you?" I asked heavily, and she replied:
"You better believe I would!"
"Don't you like Mr. Hamilton?" I asked wistfully.
"I don't entirely trust him," said she. "Candidly, Nora, that was a nasty trick he tried to play us here. I was 'on to him,' but I didn't know just where you stood with him, and I'm not in the preaching business. I let people do as they like, and I myself do what I please; and then, of course, Lord knows I need all the money I can get." She sighed. Poor woman, she was always so hard up! "So if he wanted to take those rooms and pay the price, I wasn't going to be the one to stand in the way. Still, I was not going to let him pull the wool over your eyes, poor kiddy."
"I suppose not," I assented languidly. I was unutterably tired and heartsick, with the long strain of those weeks, and now with this quarrel with Lolly, andI said, "Yet I'd give my immortal soul to be with him again just for a few minutes even."
"You would?" she said. "You want to see him as much as all that?"
I nodded, and she said pityingly:
"Don't love any man like that, dear. None of them is worth it."
I didn't answer. What was the use? She said I looked tired out, and had better go to bed, and that next day she would send the man who looked after the furnace for my belongings.
Mrs. Kingston was really delighted to have me with her. She said she could have had any number of girls in her house before this, but that she had set her heart on having just me, because I was uncommon. She had a funny habit of dismissing people and things as "ordinary and commonplace." I was not that, it seems.
Here was I now in a really dear little home, not a boarder, but treated like a daughter not only by Mrs. Kingston, but by Mrs. Owens, who quickly made me call her "Mama Owens." She was a pretty woman of about sixty, with lovely dark eyes, and white wavy hair that I often did up. She had periodical spells of illness, I don't know just what. Both Mrs. Kingston and Mrs. Owens were widows.
I brightened up a bit after I got there, for they wouldn't give me a chance to be blue. We had a merry time decorating the house with greens and holly, and we even had a big Christmas-tree. Mama Owenssaid she couldn't imagine a Christmas without one. Just think, though I was one of fourteen children (two of the original sixteen had died), I can never remember a Christmas when we had a tree!
Bennet came over and helped us with the decorations, and he and Butler were both invited to the Christmas dinner. Butler could not come, as he was due at some Hull House entertainment, but Bennet expected to have dinner with us before going to work. He was working nights now, and would not have Christmas off.
I was getting only twelve dollars a week at this time, so I had little enough money to spend on Christmas presents. I did, however, buy books for Bennet and Mrs. Kingston and Mrs. Owens. Also for Lolly, to whom I had written twice, begging her to forgive me. She never answered me, but Hermann wrote me a note, advising me to "leave her alone till she gets over it."
I had to walk to work for two days after that, as I didn't have a cent left, and I did without luncheon, too. I rather enjoyed the walk, but it was hard getting up so early, as I had to be at the office at eight. I was working for a clothing firm not unlike the one Estelle was with, and I had obtained the position, by the way, through Estelle.
On Christmas eve Margaret had to go to the house of a client in regard to some case, so mama and I were left alone. We were decorating the tree with stringsof white and colored popcorn and bright tinsel stuff, and I was standing on top of a ladder, putting a crowning pinnacle on the tree,—a funny, fat, little Santa Claus,—when our bell rang. Our front door opened into the reception hall, where our tree was, so when mama opened the door and I saw who it was, I almost fell off the ladder. He called out:
"Careful!" dropped his bag, came over to the ladder, and lifted me down. You can't lift a girl down from a ladder without putting your arms about her, and I clung to him, you may be sure. He kept smoothing my hair and cheek, and saying,—I think he thought I was crying against his coat,—"Come, now, Nora, it's all right! Everything's all right!" and then he undid my hands, which were clinging to his shoulders, and shook himself free.
Mama Owens had never met him, so I had to introduce them. She scolded me dreadfully afterward about the way I had acted, though I tried to explain to her that it was the surprise and excitement that had made me give way like that.
It was queer, but from the very first both Margaret and Mama Owens were prejudiced against him. Both of them loved me and were devoted to Bennet. They were planning to make a match between us. Hamilton was the stumbling-block; and although in time he partly won Margaret over, he never moved mama, who always regarded him as an intruder in our "little family."
I now hinted and hinted for her to leave us alone, but she wouldn't budge from the room for the longest time. So I just talked right before her, though she kept interrupting me, requiring me to do this or that. She didn't ask him to do a thing, though if Bennet had been there, she would have seated herself comfortably and let him do all the work.
However, I was so happy now that it didn't matter if all the rest of the world was disgruntled. I hugged Mama Owens, and told her if she didn't stop being so cross, Mr. Hamilton and I would go out somewhere and leave her "all by her lonesome." I could do almost anything with her and Margaret, and I soon had her in a good humor; she even went off to get some Christmas wine for Mr. Hamilton.
I had in a general way told Roger something of what I had been doing since I had seen him; but I did not tell him of the straits to which I had come, or of the money I had borrowed from Bennet. He suspected that I had passed through hard times, however. He had a way of picking up my face by the chin and examining it closely. The moment we were alone, he led me under the gas-light, and looked at me closely. His face was as grave as if he were at a funeral, and I tried to make fun of it; but he said:
"Nora, you don't look as well as you should."
I said lightly:
"That's because you didn't come to see me."
"I came," he returned, "as soon as you did what Itold you. As soon as Mrs. Kingston sent me word that you were here, I came, though it was Christmas eve, and I ought to be in Richmond."
I saw what was in his mind: he thought I had taken those rooms! I put my arm through his, just to hold to him in case he went right away, while I told him I had only the little room.
He said, with an expressive motion:
"Well, I give you up, Nora."
I said:
"No, please, don't give me up. I'll die if you do."
Margaret came in then, and she greeted him very cordially. She chuckled when I called her a "sly thing" for writing to him, and she said she had to let him know, since he had paid for the big room.
"Yes, but you didn't tell him I had the little room," I said.
"What does it matter?" laughed Margaret. "You two are always making mountains out of molehills. Life's too short to waste a single moment of it in argument."
Roger said:
"You are perfectly right. After this, Nora and I are not going to quarrel about anything. She's going to be a reasonable child."
I had to laugh. I knew what he meant by my being reasonable. Nothing mattered this night, however, except that he had come. I told him that, and put my cheek against his hand. I was always doing thingslike that, for although he was undemonstrative, and the nearest he came to caressing me was to smooth my cheek and hair, I always got as close to him as I could. I'd slip my hand through his arm, or put my hand in his, and my head against him; and when we were out anywhere, I always had my hand in his pocket, and he'd put his hand in over mine. He liked them, too, these ways of mine, for he used to look at me with a queer sort of grim smile that was nevertheless tender.
He was a man used to having his own way, however, and he didn't intend to give in to me in this matter of the rooms. So this is how he finally arranged things: I was to have the little room, and he would take the suite in front. When he was in Chicago, he would use these rooms; but when he was not, I was to have the use of them, and he made me promise that I would use the big room for writing.
This arrangement satisfied Mrs. Kingston and delighted me, but mama was inclined to grumble. She wanted to know just why he should maintain rooms in the house, anyway, and just what he was "after" me for. She was in a perverse and cranky mood. She talked so that I put my hand over her mouth and said she had a bad mind.
Roger explained to Margaret—he pretended to ignore mama, but he was talking for her especially—that they need have no anxiety in regard to his intentions toward me; that they were purely disinterested; in fact, he felt toward me pretty much as theydid themselves. I was an exceptional girl who ought to be helped and befriended; that he had never made love to me, and, he added grimly, that he never would. My! how I hated mama at that moment for causing him to say that. In fact he talked so plausibly that Margaret and I threw black looks at mama for her gratuitous interference, and Margaret whispered to me that it should not happen again. Mama "stuck to her guns," however, and finally said:
"Well, let me ask you a question, Mr. Hamilton. Are you in love with Nora?"
He looked over my head and said:
"No."
That was the first time he had directly denied that he cared for me, and my heart sank. I wouldn't look at him, I felt so badly, nor did I feel any better when, after a moment, he added:
"I'm old enough to be Nora's father, and at my time of life I'm not likely to make a fool of myself even for Nora."
"Hm!" snorted mama, "that all sounds very fine, but what about Nora? Do you pretend that she is not in love with you?"
His stiff expression softened, but he said very bitterly, I thought:
"Nora is seventeen."
Then he laughed shortly, and added: "I don't see how it can hurt her to have me for a friend, do you? As far as that goes, even if she does imagine herself inlove with me, a closer acquaintance might lead to a complete cure and disillusionment, a consummation, I presume, much to be desired."
He said this with so much bitterness, and even pain, that I ran over to him and put my face against his hand.
"Wait a bit, Nora. We'd better get this matter settled once and for all," he said. "Either I am to come here, with the understanding and consent of these ladies, whenever I choose and without interference of any sort, or I will not come at all."
"Then I won't stay, either," I cried. "Margaret,youknow that if he never comes to see me again, I'll jump into Lake Michigan."
They all laughed at that, and it broke up the strained conversation. Margaret said in her big, gay way:
"Of course you can come and go as you please. The rooms are yours, and I shouldn't presume to dictate to you." And then she said to mama: "Amy, you've had too much wine. Let it alone."
Everything being made clear, Roger and I went up to his rooms. He shut the door, and said that "the two old ones" were all right enough, but he had come over 250 miles to see me, and he didn't care a hang what they or any one else thought, and that if they'd made any more fuss, he'd have taken me away from there without further parley. Then he asked me something suddenly that made me laugh. He wanted to know if I was afraid of him, and I asked:
"Why should I be?"
"You're right," he replied, "and you need never be, Nora. You can always trust me."
I said mischievously:
"It's the other way. I thinkyou'reafraid of me."
He frowned me down at that, and demanded to know what I meant, but I couldn't explain.
He lighted the logs in the fireplace, and pulled up the big Morris chair and a footstool before it. He made me sit on the stool at his knee. Then we talked till it was pretty late, and mama popped her head in and said I ought to go to bed. I protested that as I didn't have to go to work next day, I need not get up early. Roger said she was right, and that he must be going.
I had thought he was going to spend Christmas with me, and I was so dreadfully disappointed that I nearly cried, and he tried to cheer me up. He said he wouldn't go if he could help it, but that his people expected him home at least at Christmas. That was the first time he had ever referred to his "people," and I felt a vague sense of jealousy that they meant more to him than I did. But I did not tell him that, for he suddenly leaned over me and said:
"I'd rather be here with you, Nora, than anywhere else in the world."
I sat up at that, and said triumphantly:
"Then youmustcare for me if that's so."
"Have I ever pretended not to?" he asked.
"You told them down-stairs—"
He snapped his fingers as though what he had said there didn't count.
"Well, but you must be more than merely interested in me," I said.
"Interest is a pretty big thing, isn't it?" he said slowly.
"Not as big as love," I said.
"We're not going to talk about love," he replied. "We'll have to cut that out entirely, Nora."
"But I thought you said you wanted me to go on loving you, and that I was not to stop, no matter what happened."
He stirred uneasily at that, and then, after a moment, he said:
"That's true. Never stop doing that, will you, sweetheart?"
You see, I was succeeding beautifully with him when he called methat. He regretted it a moment later, for he rose and began fussing with his bag. I followed him across the room. I always followed him everywhere, just like a little dog. He took a little package out of his bag, and he asked me if I remembered the day in the carriage, when he told me to open my mouth and shut my eyes. Of course I did. He said that I was to shut my eyes now, but I need not open my mouth. He'd give me the real prize now.
So then I did, and he put something about my neck. Then he led me over to the mirror, and I saw it was a pearl necklace.
At that time I had not the remotest idea of the value of jewelry. I had never possessed any except the ring Dick had given me. In a vague sort of way I knew that gold and diamonds were costly things, and of course I supposed that pearls were, too. It was not, therefore, the value of his present that impressed me, for I frankly looked upon it merely as a "pretty necklace"; but I was enchanted to think he had remembered me, and when I opened my eyes and saw them, they looked so creamy and lovely on my neck that I wanted to hug him for them. However, he held me off at arm's length, to "see how they looked" on me.
He said I was not to wear them to work, but only on special occasions, when he was there and took me toplaces, and that he was going to get me a little safe in which to keep them. I thought that ridiculous, to get a safe just to keep a string of beads in; and then he laughed and said that the "beads" were to be only the forerunner of other beautiful things he was going to give me.
I had never cared particularly about jewelry or such things. I had never had any, and never had wanted any. I liked pretty clothes and things like that—but I had never thought about the subject of jewelry. I told this to Roger and he said he would change all that.
He was, in fact, going to cultivate in me a taste for the best in everything, he said. I asked him why. It seemed to me that nothing was to be gained by acquiring a taste for luxurious things—for a girl in my position, and he replied in a grim sort of way:
"All the same, you're going to have them. By and by you won't be able to do without them."
"Jewels and such things?"
"Yes—jewels and such things." Then he added:
"There need never be a time in your life when I won't be able to gratify your least wish, if you will let me."
When he was putting on his coat, he asked me what sort of position I had, and I told him it was pretty bad. He said he wished me to go down to see Mr. Forman, the president of a large wholesale dry-goods firm. Headded that he had heard of a good position there—short hours and good salary. I was delighted, and asked him if he thought I'd get the position, and he smiled and said he thought I would.
He was drawing on his gloves and was nearly ready to go when he asked his next question, and that was whether I had made any new acquaintances; what men I had met, and whether I had been out anywhere with any particular man. He usually asked me those questions first of all, and then would keep on about them all through his visit. I hesitated, for I was reluctant to tell him about Bennet. He roughly took me by the shoulder when I did not answer him at once, and he said:
"Well, with whom have you been going out?"
I told him about Bennet, but only about his coming to see me, his reading to me, and of my going to his and Butler's rooms, and to Hull House. He stared at me so peculiarly while I was speaking that I thought he was angry with me, and he suddenly took off his coat and hat and sat down again.
"Why didn't you tell me about this chap before?" he asked me suddenly.
"I thought you wouldn't be interested," I quibbled.
"That is not true, Nora," he said. "You knew very well I would."
He leaned forward in the chair, with his hands gripped together, and stared at the fire, and then he said almost as if to himself:
"If I had come on, this wouldn't have happened."
"Nothing has happened," I insisted.
"Oh, yes, this—er—Bennet is undoubtedly in love with you."
"Well, suppose he is?" I said. "What does it matter to you? If you don't care for me, why shouldn't other men?"
He turned around and looked at me hard a moment. Then he got up, walked up and down a while, and then came over and took my face up in his hand.
"Nora, will you give up this chap if I ask you to?"
I was piling up proof that he cared for me more than he would admit. I said flippantly:
"Old 'Dog in the Manger,' willyoulove me if I do?"
He said in a low voice:
"Ican't."
I said sadly:
"Is it so hard, then?"
"Yes, harder than you know," he replied.
Then he wanted to know what Bennet looked like. I painted a flattering picture. When was he coming? To Christmas dinner, I told him.
It was now very late, and I heard the clock in the hall strike twelve, and I asked him if he heard the reindeer bells on the roof.
"Nora, I don't hear or see anything in the world but you," he replied.
"If that's so, you must be as much in love with me as I am with you," I told him.
He said, "Nonsense," and looked around, as if he were going to put his things on again.
"Stay over Christmas!" I begged, and after staring at me a moment, he said:
"Very well, I will, then."
That made me tremendously excited. Mama came down the hall and called:
"Nora, aren't you in bed yet?" I called out:
"I'm going now." Then I seized his hand quickly, kissed it, and ran out of the room to my own.
Early next morning while we were at breakfast, a huge box of flowers and a Christmas package from Bennet came for me. It was fun to see Roger's face when I was unwrapping the flowers. I think he would have liked to trample upon them, he who did not love me! They were chrysanthemums, and the other present was a beautiful little painting. Mama asked Hamilton to hang it for us, and he said curtly that he didn't know anything about such things.
Christmas morning thus started off rather badly, for any one could see he was cross as a sore bear, which, I don't mind admitting, gave me a feeling of wicked joy. To make matters worse, mama began to talk about Dick. I tried to change the subject, but she persisted, and wanted to know when I had heard from him last and whether he was still as much in love with me as ever. There was no switching her from the subject, so I left the table, and pretended to fool with the books in the library. He followed me out there, and his face was just as black!
"So," he said, with an unpleasant laugh, "you've been having little affairs and flirtations right along,have you? You're not the naïve, innocent baby child you would like me to think, eh?"
"Now, Roger, look here," I said. "Didn't you tell me you weren't going to scold me any more, and you said I could do as I pleased, and be independent and—"
"I supposed you would be candid and truthful with me; I didn't suppose you'd be carrying on cheap little liaisons—"
When he got that far, I turned my back on him and walked out of the room.
I adored him, but I was not a worm.
I went back to the kitchen, and watched Margaret clean the turkey and make the stuffing. I thought I was much interested in that proceeding, but all the time I was wondering what he was doing, and soon I couldn't stand it any longer, and I went back to the living-room, which was also our library, but he was not there. I went up-stairs, with "my heart in my mouth," fearing he had gone. I found him, if you please, in my room. He was looking at the photographs on my bureau.
I came up behind him, slipped my hand through his arm, and rubbed my cheek against his sleeve. I could see his face in the mirror opposite us slowly softening.
"Are you still angry with me for nothing, Roger?" I asked.
"Was this fellow Lawrence in love with you, too?"
I nodded.
"All men aren't like you," I said slyly. "Some few of them do like me."
He took that in as if it hurt him.
"He's in Cuba, you say?"
I nodded.
"You hear from him?"
"Yes."
"Where are his letters?"
I couldn't show him the letters, I said. So then he tried to free himself from my hand, but he couldn't; I held so tightly.
"It wouldn't be square to Dick to show you his letters," I said.
"So it's 'Dick,' is it?" he sneered.
I nodded.
"Yes, just as it was 'Fred' with O'Brien."
"O'Brien wasn't in love with you."
"Oh, well, maybe Dick isn't. He just thinks he is."
"Any understanding between you?"
I hesitated. I really think he would have taken pleasure in hurting me then for that long pause. I said at last:
"He asked me to wait for him, but I'm not going to, if you'll come lots to see me."
"Did you promise to?"
Again I paused, and this time he caught up my face, but savagely, by the chin.
"Well?"
I lied. I was afraid of him now.
"No," I said.
For a man who did not love a girl he was the most violently jealous person I have ever known. When he got through questioning me about Dick, he started in all over again about Robert Bennet. I foresaw that we were to have a pretty quarrelsome Christmas, so I tried my best to change the subject.
I showed him all the photographs on my bureau, of my father, my mother, and my thirteen brothers and sisters, and told him about each of them. He listened with seeming politeness, and then swept the whole matter aside with:
"Hang your family! I'm not interested in them. Now, about this Bennet—" and he started in all over again.
Finally, thoroughly exasperated, I turned on him and said:
"You have no right to question or accuse me like this. No man has that right unless I specially give it to him."
He said roughly:
"Give me the right then, Nora."
"Not unless you care for me," I said. "You say you are only interested in me. Well, say you love me, and then I'll do anything you wish. I won't look at or speak to or think of any other man in the world."
"Well, suppose I admit that. Suppose I were totell you that I do love you, what would you want then, Nora?"
"Why, nothing," I said. "That would be everything to me, don't you see? I'd go to school then, just as you want me to, and I'd study so hard, and try to pull myself up till I was on your level—"
"Oh, good God!" he said, "you are miles above me now."
"Not socially," I said. "In the eyes of the world I'm not. I'm just a working-girl, and you're a man in—in—fashionable society, rich and important. I guess you could be President if you wanted to, couldn't you?"
"Oh, Nora!" he said, and I went on:
"Yes, you might. You can't tell. Suppose you got into politics. You said your grandfather was governor of your State. Well, why shouldn't you be, too? So don't you see, to be your wife, I'd have to—"
"To be—what?" he interrupted me, and then he said sharply and quickly:
"That's out of the question. Put all thought of anything like that out of your head. Suppose we change the subject right now. What do you say to a little sleigh-ride?"
I nodded and I tried to smile, but he had hurt me as hard as it is possible for a man to hurt a woman.
It was not that I looked upon marriage as such a desirable goal; but it was at least a test of the man's sincerity. As he had blundered on with his senselessjealousy of men who did want to marry me, I had dreamed a little dream.
We had our ride, and then dinner in the middle of the afternoon. Bennet was there for dinner. He thought Mr. Hamilton was our new lodger, and before him at least I did conceal my real feelings. Anyhow, I confess that I felt none too warmly toward Roger now. He had descended upon me on this Christmas day, and while putting his gifts on my neck with one hand, he had struck me with the other. Do not suppose, however, that my love for him lessened. You can soothe a fever by a cooling drink; you cannot cure it.
Bennet had to go immediately after dinner, and I went with him as far as the door. All our rooms on the ground floor ran into one another, so that from the dining-room one could see directly into the reception-hall. Bob—for I always called him that—led me along by the arm, and suddenly mama clapped her hands loudly, and he seized me and kissed me! I was under the mistletoe. Roger knocked over his chair, and I heard him swear. Bob also heard, but neither of us cared.
That Christmas visit of Roger's was the first of many in that house. From that time he came very frequently to see me, sometimes three or four times a month; in fact, a week rarely passed without his appearing. All of his visits were not so tempestuous as the one I have described, but he was a man used to ruling people, and he wished to govern and absorb me utterly. Well, I made a feeble enough resistance, goodness knows. I was really incredibly happy. I always used to come home from work with the excited hope of finding him there, and very often he was, indeed.
Of course he was exacting and at times even cruel to me. He really didn't want me to have any friends at all, and he not only chose all my clothes, but he tried to sway my tastes in everything. For instance, Bennet had cultivated in me a taste for poetry. Roger pretended that he didn't care for poetry. He said I would get more good from the books he had chosen for me, and just because, I suppose, Bennet had read aloud to me, he made me read aloud to him, sometimes my own stories, sometimes books he would select; but never poetry.
The first thing he would always say when he came in, after he had examined my face, was:
"What's my wonderful girl been reading?"
Then I'd tell him, and after that I'd have to tell him in detail everything that had happened through the week, several times sometimes. He knew, of course, that Bennet came regularly to see me, and he used to ask me a thousand questions about those visits; and I had a hard time answering them all, particularly as I did not dare to tell him that every day Bennet showed by his attitude that he was caring more for me. He asked me so many questions that I once asked him seriously if he was a lawyer, and he threw back his head and laughed.
I had secured a very good position through his influence, for I was private secretary to the president of one of the largest wholesale dry-goods firms in Chicago. I had easy hours, from ten till about four. I had no type-writing at all to do, for another girl took my dictation. What is more, I received twenty-five dollars a week.
Besides my good position, Fortune was smiling upon me in other ways. The Western magazine began to run my stories. I was the most excited girl in Chicago when the first one came out, and I telegraphed to Roger to get the magazine.
And now I must record something about Robert Bennet. He had been pushed from my pages, just as he was from my life, by Roger, and yet during all thistime I really saw more of him than of Roger himself. The day I paid him back the money he lent me he told me he loved me. Now, I had for him something the same feeling I had for Fred O'Brien—a blind sort of fondness rather than love, and overwhelming gratitude. It was not so much because of the money he had lent me, but for the many things he was always trying to do for me. In a way he and Mr. Butler tried to educate me. They planned a regular course of reading for me, and helped me in my study of English. I should not have dared to admit it to Roger, but those boys were really doing more for me than he was, and they wished me to enter Cornell, and wrote to certain professors there about me.
It's a fact that nearly every man (and some women) who became interested in me during this period of my career seemed to think himself called upon to contribute to my education. I must have been truly a pathetic and crude little object; else why did I inspire my friends with this desire to help me? And everybody gave me books. Why, that Western editor, after he had met me only once, sent me all sorts of books, and wrote me long letters of advice, too.
But about Bennet. When he told me he loved me—and it is impossible for me to say in what a manly way he declared himself—I was too overwhelmed with mingled feelings, and I was such a sentimental, impressionable little fool, that I did not have thestrength to refuse him. The first thing I knew, there I was engaged to him, too!
It was a cruel, dishonest thing for me to accept him. I see that now; but somehow, then, I was simply too weak to tell him the truth—that I loved another man. Well, then, as I've said, I was engaged to Bennet.
In a psychological way it might be interesting to note my feelings at this time toward both Hamilton and Bennet. I truly was more afraid for Bennet to find out about Hamilton than for the latter to find out about Bennet. To Roger I could have defended my engagement; but how could I have justified myself to Robert Bennet, whose respect and liking I desired very much? Indeed, they were now a potent influence in my life, a clean, uplifting influence.
Robert Bennet had unconsciously given me a new ideal of life. My own crude, passionate views were being adjusted. It was slowly dawning upon me that, after all, this thing we call convention, which I had previously so scouted, is in fact a necessary and blessed thing, and that the code which governs one's conduct through life is controlled by certain laws we cannot wilfully break. I had just grown, not like a flower, but like an unwieldy weed. Robert Bennet and George Butler were taking me out and showing me a new world. I was meeting people who were doing things worth while, sweet women and big men, and there were times in my life when I realized that the spellunder which Roger held me was an enchantment that in the end could lead only to degradation or tragedy.
Nevertheless, I could no more break away from his influence than the poor victim of the hypnotist can from the master mind that controls him. What is love, anyhow, but a form of hypnotism? It's an obsession, a true madness.
Yet Roger Hamilton, in his way, had not deceived me. He had never once professed to love me. On the contrary, he had denied that very thing in the presence of Mrs. Kingston and Mrs. Owens. Perhaps if he had cared for me, if he had given me even some slight return, my own passion for him, from its very force, would have spent itself. But he did not. He kept consistently to his original stand. I was his special protégé, his wonderful girl, his discovery, his oasis, and compensation for everything else in life, which he said was sordid, nasty, and wrong. But that was all I was, it seems, despite his incomprehensible jealousy, and his occasional unaccountable moods of almost fierce tenderness toward me.
There were few times that he called me by endearing terms. Twice, I think, I was his "sweetheart," and several times I was his "precious girl." Once I was his "poor little darling," and I was always his "wonderful girl."
Nor was he a man given to demonstrations of affection. My place was always on the stool at his knee. I used to put my head there, and look with him intothe fire. He never took me in his arms during those days, though I was always clinging to his hand and arm. He kissed my hands, my hair, and once my arms when I was in a new evening gown that he had chosen for me; but he never kissed my lips.
I loved him blindly and passionately. I used to save things that he had touched—absurd things, like his cigar-butts, a piece of soap he had used, his gloves, and a cap he wore on the train. He hunted everywhere for it, but I did not give it up. I was like a well-fed person, with an inner craving for something impossible to possess.
On my eighteenth birthday Roger gave me a piano. He had already given me many jewels, some of them magnificent pieces that I never wore except when he was there. I kept them locked up in the little safe. The piano, however, troubled me more than the jewels. It was big and, therefore, impressed me. When I protested to him about accepting it, he declared that he had bought it for himself as much as for me, but he arranged with a German named Heinrach to give me vocal lessons, and with a Miss Stern to teach me the piano. Heinrach said I had an exceptionally fine contralto voice, but I think Roger told him to say that. However, I enjoyed the lessons, though I soon realized that my voice was just an ordinarily good contralto. Roger said it was good enough for him, and that he wanted me to sing to him only. He chose all my songs, French, German, and English.
If I stop here to tell of the attentions and proposals I received from other men at this time, I'm afraid you will agree with Lolly that my head was a bit turned. But, no, I assure you it was not. I realized that almost any girl, thrown among men as I was, half-way good-looking, interesting, and bright, was bound to have a great many proposals. So I'll just heap all mine together, and tell of them briefly.
One of the chief men in the firm where I worked asked me to marry him. He was a divorcé, a man of forty-five, but looked younger. He said he made fifteen thousand dollars a year. He wanted me to marry him and accompany him on a trip he was to make to England to buy goods. I refused him, but—away from Roger, I confess there were the germs of a flirt in me—I told him to ask me again as soon as he got back. I might change my mind. Before sailing, he brought his young son, a youth of twenty, to see me. Papa had scarcely reached the English shores before the son also proposed to me! He was a dear child.
An insurance agent offered himself to me as a life policy.
An engineer, a politician (Irish), and two clerks in our office were willing to take "chances" on me.
A plumber who mended our kitchen sink proposed to me just because I made him a cup of tea.
I had a proposal from a Japanese tea merchant who years before had been my father's courier in Japan. Now he was a Japanese magnate, and papa had toldme to look him up. He made a list of every person he had ever heard me say I did not like, and he told me if I would marry him, he would do something to every one of them.
A poet wrote lovely verse to me, and the Chicago papers actually published it. Finally, that Western editor proposed to me upon his fourth visit to Chicago, and I am ashamed to confess that I accepted him, too. You see, he had accepted my stories, and how could I reject him? He lived far from Chicago, and the contemplated marriage was set for a distant date, so I thought I was safe for the present.
I was now, as you perceive, actually engaged to three men, and I was in love with one who had flatly stated he would never marry me. I lived a life of not unjoyous deceit. I had only a few qualms about deceiving Roger, for with all these other men proposing to me, I resented his not doing so, too. However, I was by no means unhappy. I had a good position, a charming home, good friends, a devoted admirer in Bennet, and was not only writing, but selling, stories, with quite astonishing facility. Add to this my secret attachment to Roger, and one may perceive that mine was not such a bad lot. But I was dancing over a volcano, and even dead volcanos sometimes unexpectedly erupt.
Bob was not an exacting fiancé. As he worked at night, he could not often come to see me; but he wrote me the most beautiful letters—letters that filled mewith emotion and made me feel like a mean criminal, for all the time I knew I could never be more to him than I was then.
Like me, he was an idealist and hero-worshiper, and in both our cases our idols' feet were of clay. I deliberately blinded myself to every little fault and flaw in Roger. His selfishness and tyranny I passed over. It was enough for me that for at least a few days in the month he descended like a god into my life and permitted himself to be worshiped.
I made all sorts of sacrifices and concessions to his wishes. Time and again I broke engagements with my friends, with Bob and with others, because unexpectedly he would turn up. He never told me when he was coming. I think he expected some time to surprise me in doing some of the things he often accused me of doing, for he was very suspicious of me, and never wholly trusted me.
It was Bennet's letters that finally got me into trouble with Roger. I had been engaged to him only a little more than two weeks, and I must have dropped one of his letters in Roger's sitting-room, for on arriving home from work one afternoon I found that he had come in my absence, and, as Margaret warned me before I went up-stairs, seemed to be in a "towering rage" about something.
He was walking up and down, and he swung around and glared at me savagely as I stood in the doorway. He had a paper in his hand (Bennet's letter), and his face was so convulsed and ugly and accusing that involuntarily I shrank back as he came toward me. I have never seen a man in such an ungovernable rage. He did not give me a chance to say anything. There was nothing of which he did not accuse me. I was a thing whose meaning I did not even know. He, so he said, had been a deluded fool, and had let himself be led along by a girl he had supposed too good to take advantage of him. Yet all the while, while I was taking gifts—yes, the clothes on my back—and other favors, even my position, which I kept only because of Mr. Forman's obligations to him, I had, it seems, given myself to another man!
The accusations were so gross and monstrous and black that I could not answer him. I knew what was in Bennet's letter—terms of endearment, expressions of undying love,and(this is where I came under the judgment of Roger) the desire to see me soon again and hold me in his arms.
Yes, Bob had held me in his arms,—he believed I was to be his wife,—but I was not the thing Roger accused me of being. My relations with Bennet were as pure as a girl's can be. It would have been impossible for a girl to have any other kind of relations with a man like Bennet. I stood bewildered under the storm of his accusations and cruel reproaches, and the revelation of the things he had done for me without my knowledge or consent. At first, as he denounced me, I had flinched before him, because I was aware of having really deceived him, in a way; but as he continued to heap abuse upon me, some rebellious spirit arose in me to defy him. I had not had an Irish grandmother for nothing.
I waited till he was through, and then I said:
"You think you are a man, but I declare you are a brute and a coward. Yes, it is true, I am engaged to Mr. Bennet, and I defy you to say to him what you have said to me."
Then I fled from his room to my own. I locked myself in there. He came knocking at my door, and rattling at the handle, but I would not open it, and then he called out:
"Nora, I am going away now—forever—never to come back, you understand. You will never see my face again unless you come out and speak to me now."
But I would not open my door. I heard him going down-stairs and the slam of the front door. Now I realized what had happened. He had actually gone! Never before had he left me like this. I opened my door, went down-stairs, and then I saw him waiting for me in the living-room. I tried to run back, but he was too quick for me. He sprang after me, caught me in his arms, and half carried me up to his room. There he locked the door, and put the key into his pocket. I wouldn't look at him, I wouldn't speak to him. He came over, and tried to put his arms about me, but I shoved him away, and he said in a voice I had never heard from him before:
"So I've lost you, have I, Nora?" And then, as I would not answer him: "So Bennet cut me out. That's it, is it?"
I said:
"No; no one cut you out but yourself. You've shown yourself to me just as you are, and you're ugly. Ihateyou!" and I burst into tears.
He knelt down beside me. I was sitting on the edge of the big Morris chair, and all the while he talked to me I had my face covered with my hands.
"Listen to me, Nora. I know I've said things to you for which I ought to be horsewhipped; but I was nearly insane. I am still. I don't know what tothink of you, what to do to you. The thought thatyou, whom I have cherished as something precious and different from every one else in my life, have been deceiving me all these months drives me distracted. I couldkillyou without the slightest compunction."
I looked at him at that, and I said:
"Roger, you don't think I've done anything wrong, do you?"
"I don't know what to think," he said. "It is a revelation to me that you were capable of deceiving me at all."
"But I am onlyengagedto Bob; that's all."
"Onlyengaged! In heaven's name! what do you mean? Do you intend to marry this man?"
"No, I never did; but—"
I was beginning to soften a bit to him. I could see his point of view. He was holding me by the arms so I couldn't get away from him, and when you are very close like that to a man you love (almost in his arms) you cannot help being moved. I was, anyway, and I said:
"I'll try and explain everything to you, if you won't be too angry with me."
"Go on."
"Well, you know when I got that fifty dollars, and gave up my position? Well, I spent it all and got down to ten cents, and I couldn't get work, and I was nearly starving—honestly I was. That last day I didn't have any dinner and hardly any luncheon orbreakfast. Well then, I met Bob, and I told him—that very first night—and he lent me ten dollars, and insisted that I should take something from him each week till I got a position."
"In God's name, why did you not askme?"
"Icouldn't, Roger; I couldn't."
"Why not? Why not?"
"Because—because—Iloved you. I could take help from a man I didn't love, but not from one I did."
I began to sob, and he sat down in the Morris chair, and lifted me up on his knee, but he held me off, so I could continue with my story.
"Go on now."
So then I told him everything: how, later, when I at last returned the money to Bennet, he had proposed to me, and how I couldn't help accepting him. "And, anyway," I finished, "engagements are nothing. I'm engaged to two other men as well."
I thought this was my chance to make a reckless clean breast of everything.
He tumbled me out of his lap at that, stared at me, gasped, threw back his head, and burst into a sort of wild laughter, almost of relief. Then suddenly he pulled me up into his arms, and held me hard against his breast for the longest time, just as if he were never going to let me go again, and then I knew just as well as anything that he did love me, even though he wouldn't admit it. So, with that knowledge, Iwas ready to forgive him for anything or everything.
You see, things were all turned about now, and I was in the position of the accuser and not of the accused, and that despite the attitude he pretended to assume. He wanted to know if all three of my friends had kissed me, and I had to admit that they had, and tell him just how many times. Dick had kissed me just that one time, Bob four times, and the Western editor just once. It was a bitter pill for Roger to swallow, and he said:
"And I have been afraid to touch you."
"That's not my fault," I said. "You can kiss me any time you wish."
He didn't accept my hint or invitation. He was walking up and down now, pulling at his lip, and at last he said:
"Nora, get your things all packed. I'll have to take you with me."
"Where?"
"I'm obliged to go abroad on a certain pressing matter. I came here to-day specially to be with you before leaving. I see I can't leave you behind."
"Do you mean—" I said, and for one delirious moment I imagined something that was impossible.
"I mean simply that, though it will be devilishly inconvenient, I shall be obliged to take you with me. I can't trust you here."
That thought still persisted in my foolish head, and I said:
"Roger, do you mean that we are going to be married?"
He stared at me a moment, and then said shortly:
"No. That's impossible."
I swallowed a lump that came up hard in my throat, and I could not speak. Then after a moment I said:
"You want to take me, then, because you are afraid some other man might get me, not because you want me yourself."
He said, with a slight smile:
"The first part of your statement is certainly true; the second part is questionable."
"I'm not going," I told him.
"Oh, yes, you are."
"Oh, no, I'm not."
"Are we to have another combat?"
"I'm not going."
"Can't leave your fiancé?" he asked.
"I'm just not going, that's all."
"What do you intend to do, then, while I'm gone?"
"Just what I'm doing now."
"You intend to continue your—er—engagement?"
"No; I'll break that off." I looked at Roger. "I owe that tohim."
"H-m! Owe nothing to me, eh?"
My eyes filled up. I did owe much to him. He came over, picked my face up by the chin, and then drew me back to the seat by the fireplace, seatinghimself in the Morris chair, with me on the stool. He talked very gently to me now, and as if he were speaking to a child; but I could think only of one thing—that he was going away and Icouldnot go with him. Why, he had not even told me he loved me, and though a few moments before I had believed he did, now the torturing doubts came up again. If he loved me, would he not want to marry me? Other men, like Bob and Dick, did.
"Roger, tell me this," I said. "Suppose I went to school and then to college, would I be like—other girls—I mean society girls—girls in your class?"
"You're better than they are now. You are in a class all by yourself, Nora."
"Don't answer me like that. You know what I want to know. Would I be socially their equal, for instance?"
"Why, naturally. That's a foolish question, Nora."
"No, it isn't. I just want to know. Now, supposing I got all that—that—culture—and everything, and I had nice manners, and dressed so I looked pretty and everything—and you wouldn't be a bit ashamed of me, and we could say my people were all sorts of grand folks,—they really are in England—my father's people,—well, suppose all this, and then suppose that you really loved me, just as I do you, then wouldn't I be good enough to be your wife?"
"Nora, why do you persist about that? I tell youonce and for all that that is absolutely out of the question. I'm not going to marry you. In fact, I can't."
"Why?"
"I won't go into details. Let it suffice that there are reasons, and put the idea out of your head."
So, after that, there was nothing more for me to say; but he realized I would not go with him. When he at last resigned himself to this, he made me promise that while he was gone I would not only break my engagements with Bennet and the Western editor and Dick, but that I would in no circumstances let any man kiss or touch me, or make love to me in any way. He said if I'd promise him that, he'd be able to make his trip to Europe without undue anxiety, and that he would come back just as soon as he could.
"All right, then," I said; "I cross my neck."
I wrote three letters that night, all of which he read. If he had had his way, I would have rewritten them and worded them differently. He thought I ought to say: "Dear Mr. Bennet," "Dear Mr. Lawrence," etc., instead of "Dear Bob," "Dear Dick." My letters were virtually the same in each case. I asked to be released from my engagement; but I begged Bob to forgive me, and I said I should never forget him as long as I lived. Roger argued with me a whole half-hour to take that out. But I didn't, and I even cried at the thought of how I was hurting this boy who loved me. I was so miserable, in fact, that Roger saidwe'd go out and hear some music, and that would cheer me up.
Conscience is a peculiar thing. We can shut it up tightly, and delude ourselves with diversions that infatuate and blind us. I did not think of Bob while Roger was with me. I put on my prettiest dress, one of the dresses I now knew that he had paid for! It was a shimmering, Oriental-looking thing that had the stamp of Paquin upon it, and I had a wonderful emerald necklace, and a wreath of green leaves, with little diamonds sprinkled like dew over it, in my hair. Roger said that there was no one in the world like me. I suppose there was not. I certainly hope there was not. I was a fine sort of person!
I think it was the Thomas Orchestra we heard. I forget. I should have enjoyed it, I suppose, in ordinary circumstances, but I could not think of anything that night except that Roger was going away and that I might never see him again. And I thought of all the accidents that occurred at sea, and even though he was holding my hand under the program, I felt that I was the most unhappy girl in the world.
We couldn't stop to have even a little supper after the theater, for he was taking a train to New York, whence he was to sail.
His man Holmes (it was the first time I had ever seen him) was at the house when we got back, and had his bag and everything ready, waiting for him. I thought as he was going away on such a long triphe would at least kiss me good-by, and I could not keep from crying when, after we got in, he said right before Holmes, whowouldn'tleave the room:
"I'll have to rush now. Be a good girl."
Then he said I was to go down to Mr. Townsend's (his lawyer's) office, and he would tell me about some arrangements he himself had made for me, and I was to write to him every day, though he said nothing about writing to me. He wrote down an address in London where I was to send my letters. The only thing he did that approached a caress was that, when his man went ahead of him down the stairs, he stopped in the upper hall, lifted my face, and gave me a long, searching look. Then he said:
"I'm not likely to think about anything but you, darling." Then he went quickly down the stairs, leaving me sobbing up there.