Part 6

That question hurt me more than I suppose he would have believed. Certainly I would need money to go to Chicago, but I hated to think of taking any from him. I felt like a beggar. Young, poor, ignorant as I was, even then I had an acute feeling of reluctance to permit any sordid considerations to come between this man and me. I was so long in answering him that he said lightly:

"Well, how many thousands or millions of shekels do you suppose it will take to support a little poetess in Chicago?"

I said:

"You don't have to support poetesses if they are the right sort. All I want is enough money to carry me to Chicago. I'll get work of some kind then."

"Well, let's see," he said. "I'll get you your ticket, and then you'd better have, say, a hundred dollars to start with."

"No! no!" I cried out. "I couldn't use a whole hundred dollars."

"What?"

"I never had that much money in my life," I said. "I shouldn't know what to do with it."

He laughed shortly.

"You'll know all right," he said, "soon after you get to Chicago." Then he added almost bitterly, "You'll be writing to me for more within a week."

"Oh, Mr. Hamilton, I won't do that! I'll never take any more from you--honestly I won't."

"Nonsense!" he returned lightly. "And now come along. You have time for a bite of luncheon before your train leaves."

He ordered very carefully a meal for us, and took some time to decide whether I should have something to drink or not. He kept tapping the pencil on the waiter's pad and looking at me speculatively, and at last he said:

"No, I guess not this time."

So I got nothing to drink.

It was a fine luncheon, and for the first time I had soft-shell crabs; also for the first time I tasted, and liked, olives. Mr. Hamilton seemed to take a grim sort of pleasure in watching me eat. I don't know why, I'm sure, unless it was because I frankly did not know what most of the dishes were, and I was helplessly ignorant as to which was the right fork or knife to use for this or that dish. I think I ate my salad with my oyster-fork, and I am sure I used my meat-knife for my butter. All these intricate things have always bothered me, and they do still.

I suppose my eyes were still considerably swollen from the crying I had done, and, besides, I had slept very little after that awakening. Mr. Hamilton made me tell him all over again, and in minute detail, just what happened, and when I told him how I cried the rest of the night in 'Mandy's arms, he said:

"Yes, I can see you did," which made me say quickly, I was so anxious to look my best before him:

"I look a fright, I know."

Whereupon he slowly looked at me and said, with a suggestion of a smile:

"You look pretty good to me," and that compensated for everything.

He gave me the hundred dollars while we were in the dining-room, and advised me, with a slight smile, to hide it in "the usual place."

I asked innocently where that was.

"No one told you _that_ yet?" he asked teasingly, and when I shook my head, he laughed and said:

"What a baby you are! Why, put it in your stocking, child."

I turned fiery red, not so much from modesty, but from mortification at my ignorance and his being forced to tell me. What is more, I _had_ kept money there before, and I remember the girl on the boat going to Jamaica had, too; but I did not suppose men knew girls did such things.

On the way to the station, as he sat beside me in the carriage, I tried to thank him, and told him how much I appreciated what he was doing for me. I said that I supposed he had done good things like this for lots of other unfortunate girls like me (oh, I hoped that he had not!), and that I never could forget it.

He said lightly:

"Oh, yes, you will. They all do, you know."

From this I inferred that there were "other girls," and that depressed me so that I was tongue-tied for the rest of the journey.

We found, despite the hotel's telephoning, that it was impossible for me to get a lower berth. I am sure I didn't care whether I had a lower or upper. So, as he said he wanted me to have a comfortable journey, he had taken a little drawing-room for me. I didn't know what that meant till I got on the train. Then I saw I was to have a little car all to myself. The grandeur of this rather oppressed me; I do not know why. Nevertheless, it was an added proof of his kindness, and I stammered my thanks. He had come on the train with me, and was sitting in the seat opposite me, just as if he, too, were going. The nearer it approached the time for the train to leave, the sadder I felt. Perhaps, I thought, I should never see him again. Perhaps he looked upon me simply as a poor little beggar whom he had befriended.

It may be that some of my reflections were mirrored on my face, for he suddenly asked me what I was thinking about, and I told him.

"Nonsense!" he said. He had a way of dismissing things with "Nonsense!"

He got up and walked up and down the little aisle a moment, pulling at his lower lip in a way he had, and watching me all the time. I was huddled up on the seat, not exactly crying, but almost. Presently he said:

"Just as if it mattered whether you ever saw me again or not. After you've been in Chicago a while, you'll only think of me, perhaps, as a convenient old chap--a sort of bank to whom you can always apply for--" he paused before saying the word, and then brought it out hard--"money."

"Please don't think that of me!" I cried.

"I don't think it of you in particular, but of every one," he said. "Women are all alike. For that matter, men, too. Money is their god--money, _dirty_ money! That's what men, and women, exist for. They marry for money. They live for it. Good God! they die for it! You can have a man's wife or anything else, but touch his money, his dirty money--" He threw out his hands expressively. He had been talking disjointedly, and as if the subject was one that fascinated him, and yet that he hated. "You see," he said, "I know what I am talking about, because that's about all any one has ever wanted of me--my money."

I made a little sound of protest. I was not crying, badly as I felt, but my face was burning, and I felt inexpressibly about that money of his that I, too, had taken. He went on in the jerking, bitter way he had been speaking:

"Just now you think that such things do not count. That's because you are so young. You'll change quickly enough; I predict that. I can read your fate in your young face. You love pretty things, and were made to have them. Why not? Some one is going to give them to you, just as Dr. Manning--and, for that matter, I myself--would have given them to you here in Richmond. I don't doubt in Chicago there will be many men who will jump at the chance."

He made a queer, shrugging gesture with his shoulders, and then swung around, looked at me hard, and as if almost he measured me. Then his face slightly softened, and he said:

"Don't look so cut up. I'm only judging you by the rest of your sex."

I said:

"I'm going to prove to you that I'm different. You will see."

He sat down opposite me again, and took one of my hands in his.

"How will you prove it, child?" he said.

"I'll never take another cent from you," I said, "and I'll give you back every dollar of this hundred you have lent me now."

"Nonsense!" he said, and flushed, as if he regretted what he had been saying.

"Anyway," I went on, "you're mistaken about me. I don't care so much about those things--pretty clothes and things like that. I like lots of other things better. _You_, for instance. I--I--like _you_ better than all the money in the world."

"Nonsense!" he said again.

He still had my hand in his, and he had turned it over, and was looking at it. Presently he said:

"It's a sweet, pretty little hand, but it badly needs to be manicured."

"What's that?" I asked, and he laughed and set my hands back in my lap.

"Now I must be off. Send me your address as soon as you have one. Think of me a little, if you can."

Think of him! I knew that I was destined to think of nothing else. I told him so in a whisper, so that he had to bend down to hear me, but he merely laughed--that short unbelieving, reluctant laugh, and said again twice:

"Good-by, good-by."

I followed him as far as the door, and when he turned his back toward me, and I thought he could not see me, I kissed his sleeve; but he did see me,--in the long mirror on the door, I suppose,--and he jerked his arm roughly back and said brusquely:

"You mustn't do things like that!"

Then he went out, and the door shut hard between us.

I said to myself:

"I will die of starvation, I will sleep homeless in the streets, I will walk a thousand miles, if need be, in search of work, rather than take money from him again. Some one has hurt him through his money, and he believes we are all alike; but I will prove to him that I indeed am different."

A sense of appalling loneliness swept over me. If only a single person might have been there with me in my little car! If I had but the smallest companion! All of a sudden I remembered my little dog. My immediate impulse was to get directly off the train, and I rushed over to the door, and out upon the platform. He was down below, looking up at the window of my compartment; but he saw me as I came out on the platform and started to descend. At the same moment the train gave that first sort of shake which precedes the starting, and I was thrown back against the door. He called to me:

"Take care! Go back inside!"

The train was now moving, and I was holding to the iron bar.

"Oh, Mr. Hamilton," I cried, "I've forgotten Verley! I've forgotten my little dog!"

He kept walking by the train, and now, as its speed increased, he was forced to run. He put his hand to his mouth and called to me:

"I'll _bring_ him to you, little girl. Don't you worry!"

Worry!

I went back to my seat, and all that afternoon I did not move. The shining country slipped by me, but I saw it not. I was like one plunged in a deep, golden dream. There was a pain in my heart, but it was an ecstatic one, and even as I cried softly, soundlessly, something within me sang a song that seemed immortal.

XI

I saw Chicago first through a late May rain--a mad, blowing, windy rain. The skies were overcast and gray. There was a pall like smoke over everything, and through the downpour, looking not fresh and clean from the descending streams, but dingy and sullen, as if unwillingly cleansed, the gigantic buildings shot up forbiddingly into the sky.

Such masses of humanity! I was one of a sweeping torrent of many, many atoms. People hurried this way and that way and every way. I rubbed my eyes, for the colossal city and this rushing, crushing mob, that pushed and elbowed, bewildered and amazed me.

I did not know what to do when I stepped off the train and into the great station. For a time I wandered aimlessly about the room, jostled and pushed by a tremendous crowd of people, who seemed to be pouring in from arriving trains. It must have been about eight in the morning.

All the seats in the waiting-room were taken, and after a while I sat down on my suitcase, and tried to plan out just what I should do.

I had a hundred dollars, a fabulous sum, it seemed to me. With it I presumed I could live wherever I chose, and in comparative luxury. But that hundred dollars was not mine, and I had a passionate determination to spend no more of it than I should actually need. I wanted to return it intact to the man who had given it to me.

As I had lain in my berth on the train I had vowed that he should not hear from me till I wrote to return his money. "Dirty money," he had called it, but to me anything that was his was beautiful. I planned the sort of letter I should write when I inclosed this money. By that time I should have secured a remarkable position. My stories and my poems would be bought by discerning editors, and I--ah me! the extravagant dreams of the youthful writer! What is there he is not going to accomplish in the world? What heights he will scale! But, then, what comfort, what sublime compensation for all the miserable realities of life, there is in being capable of such dreams! That alone is a divine gift of the gods, it seems to me.

But now I was no longer dreaming impossible dreams in my berth. I was sitting in that crowded Chicago railway station, and I was confronted with the problem of what to do and where to go.

It would of course be necessary for me to get a room the first thing; but I did not know just where I should look for that. I thought of going out into the street and looking for "furnished-room" signs, and then I thought of asking a policeman. I was debating the matter rather stupidly, I'm afraid, for the crowds distracted me, when a woman came up and spoke to me.

She had a plain, kind face and wore glasses. A large red badge, with gilt letters on it, was pinned on her breast.

"Are you waiting for some one?" she asked.

"No," I answered.

"A stranger?" was her next question.

"Yes."

"Just come to Chicago?"

"Yes. I just arrived."

"Ah, you have friends or relatives here?"

I told her I did not know any one in Chicago. What was I doing here, then, she asked me, and I replied that I expected to work. She asked at what, and I replied:

"As a journalist."

That brought a rather surprised smile. Then she wanted to know if I had arranged for a room somewhere, and I told her that that was just what I was sitting there thinking about--wondering where I ought to go.

"Well, I've just got you in time, then," she said, with a pleasant smile. "You come along with me. I'm an officer of the Young Women's Christian Association." She showed me her badge. "We'll take care of you there."

I went with her gladly, you may be sure. She led me out to the street and up to a large carriage, which had Y. W. C. A. in big letters on it. I was very fortunate.

Unlike New York's Y. W. C. A., which is in an ugly down-town street, Chicago's is on Michigan Avenue, one of its finest streets, and is a splendid building.

I was taken to the secretary of the association, a well-dressed young woman with a bleak, hard face. She looked me over sternly, and the first thing she said was:

"Where are your references?"

I took Mr. Campbell's letter of recommendation from my pocket-book, and handed it to her:

It was as follows:

To Whom it may Concern:

The bearer of this, Miss Nora Ascough, has been on the staff of _The Lantern_ for some time now, but unfortunately the tropical climate of Jamaica is not suited to her constitution. In the circumstances she has to leave a position for which her skill and competency eminently qualify her.

As a stenographer, amanuensis, and reporter I can give her the highest praise. She has for the entire session of the local legislature reported the proceedings with credit to herself and _The Lantern_, notwithstanding she was a stranger to her surroundings, the people, and local politics. These are qualities that can find no better recommendation. I confidently recommend her to any one requiring a skilled amanuensis and reporter.

I was justifiably proud of that reference, which Mr. Campbell had unexpectedly thrust upon me the day I left Jamaica. I broke down when I read it, for I felt I did not deserve it. The secretary of the Y. W. C. A., however, said in her unpleasant nasal voice as she turned it over almost contemptuously in her hand:

"Oh, this won't do at all. It isn't even an American reference, and we require a reference as to your _character_ from some minister or doctor."

Now, on the way to the association the lady who had brought me had told me that this place was self-supporting, that the girls must remember they were not objects of charity; but, on the contrary, that they paid for everything they got, the idea of the association being to _make_ no money from the girls, but simply to pay expenses. In that way the girls were enabled to board there at about half the price of a boarding-house. Under these circumstances I could not but inwardly resent the tone of this woman, and it seemed to me that these restrictions were unjust and preposterous. Of course I was not in a position to protest, so I turned to my friend who had brought me from the station.

"What shall I do?" I asked her.

"Can't you get a reference from your minister, dear?" she asked sympathetically. Why, yes, I thought I could. I'd write to Canon Evans, our old minister in Quebec. My friend leaned over the desk and whispered to the secretary, who appeared to be very busy, and irritated at being disturbed.

All public institutions, I here assert, should have as their employees only people who are courteous, pleasant, and kind. One of the greatest hardships of poverty is to be obliged to face the autocratic martinets who seem to guard the doorways of all such organizations. There is something detestable and offensive in the frozen, impatient, and often insulting manner of the women and men who occupy little positions of authority like this, and before whom poor working-girls--and, I suppose, men--must always go.

She looked up from her writing and snapped:

"You know our rules as well as I do, Miss Dutton."

"Well, but she says she can get a minister's reference in a few days," said my friend.

"Let her come here _then_," said the secretary as she blotted the page on which she was writing. How I hated her, the cat!

"But I want to get her settled right away," protested my friend.

How I loved her, the angel!

"Speak to Mrs. Dooley about it, then," snapped the secretary.

As it happened, Mrs. Dooley was close at hand. She was the matron or superintendent, and was a big splendid-looking woman, who moved ponderously, like a steam-roller. She gave one look at me only and said loudly and belligerently:

"Sure. Let her in!"

The secretary shrugged then, and took my name and address in Quebec. Then she made out a bill, saying:

"It's five dollars in advance."

I was greatly embarrassed to be obliged to admit that my money was in my stocking. Mrs. Dooley laughed at that, my friend looked pained, and the secretary pierced me with an icy glare. She said:

"Nice girls don't keep their money in places like that."

It was on the tip of my tongue to retort that I was not "nice," but I bit my tongue instead. My friend gave me the opportunity to remove my "roll," and I really think it made some impression on these officers of the Y. W. C. A., for the secretary said:

"If you can afford it, you can have a room to yourself for six a week."

I said:

"No, I can't. This money is not mine."

The elevator "boy" was a girl--a black girl.

We went up and up and up. My heart was in my mouth, for I had never been in an elevator before. Never had I been in a tall building before. We did not have one in Quebec when I was there. We got off at the top floor. Oh, me! how that height thrilled me, and, I think, frightened me a little! On the way to the room, my friend--though I had learned her name, I always like to refer to her as "my friend." Ah, I wonder whether she is still looking for and picking up poor little homeless girls at railway stations!--said:

"You know, dear, we have to be careful about references and such things. Otherwise all sorts of undesirable girls would get in here."

"Well," I said, "I don't see why a girl who has a reference from a minister is any more desirable than one who has not."

"No, perhaps not," she said; "but then, you see, we have to use some sort of way of judging. We do this to protect our good girls. This is frankly a place for good girls, and we cannot admit girls who are not. By and by you'll appreciate that yourself. We'll be protecting you, don't you see?"

I didn't, but she was so sweet that I said I did.

XII

Oh, such a splendid room! At least it seemed so to me, who had seen few fine rooms. It was so clean, even dainty. The walls and ceiling were pink calcimine, and some one had twisted pink tissue-paper over the electric lights. I didn't discover that till evening, and then I was delighted. No beautiful, costly lamps, with fascinating and ravishing shades, have ever moved me as my first taste of a shaded colored light in the Y. W. C. A. did.

Our home in Quebec had been bare of all these charming accessories, and although my father was an artist, poor fellow, I remember he used to paint in the kitchen, with us children all about him, because that was the only warm room in the house. In our poor home the rooms were primitive and bare. Papa used to say that bare rooms were more tolerable than rooms littered with "trash," and since we could not afford good things, it was better to have nothing in the place but things that had an actual utility. I think he was wrong. There are certain pretty little things that may be "trash," but they add to the attractiveness of a home.

Though papa was an artist, there were no pictures at all on our walls, as my older sisters used to take his paintings as fast as he made them, and go, like canvassers, from house to house and sell them for a few dollars. Yet my father, as a young man, had taken a gold medal at an exhibition at the Salon. Grandpapa, however, had insisted that no son of his should follow the "beggarly profession of an artist," and papa was despatched to the Far East, there to extend the trade of my grandfather, one of England's greatest merchant princes. When misfortune overtook my father later, and his own people turned against him, when the children began to arrive with startling rapidity, then my father turned to art as the means of securing for us a livelihood.

One of my sisters was known in Quebec as the "little lace girl." She sold from door to door the lace that she herself made. Marion followed in her steps with papa's paintings. Other sisters had left home, and some were married. I was the one who had to mind the children,--the little ones; they were still coming,--and I hated and abhorred the work. I remember once being punished in school because I wrote this in my school exercise:

"This is my conception of hell: a place full of howling, roaring, fighting, shouting children and babies. It is supreme torture to a sensitive soul to live in such a Bedlam. Give me the bellowings of a madhouse in preference. At least there I should not have to dress and soothe and whip and chide and wipe the noses of the crazy ones."

Ah, I wish I could have some charming memories of a lovely home! That's a great deal to have. It is sad to think of those we love as in poor surroundings.

I suppose there are people in the world who would smile at the thought of a girl's ecstatic enthusiasm over a piece of pink paper on an electric light in a room in the Chicago Y. W. C. A. Perhaps I myself am now almost snob enough to laugh and mock at my own former ingenuousness. That room, nevertheless, seemed genuinely charming to me. There were two snow-white beds, an oak bureau, oak chairs, oak table, a bright rug on the floor, and simple white curtains at the window. At home I slept in a room with four of my little brothers and sisters. I hate to think of that room. As fast as I picked up the scattering clothes, others seemed to accumulate. _Why_ do children soil clothes so quickly!

There was even a homey look about my room in the Y. W. C. A., for there were several good prints on the wall, photographs on the mantel and the bureau, a bright toilet set on the bureau, and a work-basket on the table. From these personal things I speculated upon the nature of my room-mate to be, and I decided she was "nice." One thing was certain, she was exceedingly neat, for all her articles were arranged with almost old-maid primness. I determined to be less careless with my own possessions.