Part 15

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 upon my 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 was unable 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. I _know_ he 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.

"_How_ do 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't he? 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 mean he 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 no trunk, 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.

XXVI

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 her I 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, and I 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 Owens said 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 strings of 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 I told 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 things like 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 they did 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 in love 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, _you_ know 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."

XXVII

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 think _you're_ afraid 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 you _must_ care 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 me _that_. 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.