Part 8

In her way Lolly was as slangy as Estelle, but there was a subtle difference between their slangs. Lolly was a lady. I do not care for the word, but gentlewoman somehow sounds affected here. Estelle was not. Yet Lolly was a cigarette fiend, and, according to her own wild tales, had had a most extraordinary career.

Lolly had the most charming smile. It was as sunny as a child's, and showed a row of the prettiest of teeth. She was impulsive, and yet at times exceedingly moody.

I told her I thought she was quite the prettiest girl in the place, whereupon she gave me a squeeze and said:

"What about yourself?"

Then she wanted to know what I did with myself all the time. I said:

"Why, I look for work all day."

"But at night?"

Oh, I just stayed in my room and tried to write or to practise on the type-writer.

"Pooh!" said Lolly, "you'll die of loneliness that way. Why don't you get a sweetheart?"

I suppose my face betrayed me, for she said:

"Got one already, have you?"

"No, indeed," I protested.

"Then why don't you get one?"

"You talk," I said, "as if sweethearts were to be picked up any day on the street."

"So they are, as far as that goes," said Lolly. "You just go down the avenue some night and see for yourself."

That really shocked me.

"If you mean make up to a strange man, I wouldn't do a thing like that, would you?"

"Oh, yes," said Lolly, "if I felt like it. As it is now, however, I have too many friends. I've got to cut some of them out. But when I first came here, I was so d---- lonely"--she used swear-words just like a man--"that I went out one night determined to speak to the first man who got on the car I took."

"Well?"

Lolly threw back her head and laughed, blowing her smoke upward as she did so.

"He was a winner from the word go, my dear. Most of the girls get acquainted with men that way. Try it yourself."

No, I said I wouldn't do that. It was too "common."

"Pooh!" said Lolly, "Lord knows I was brought up by book rule. I was the bell of D----, but now I'm just a working-girl. I've come down to brass tacks. What a fool I'd be to follow all the conventional laws that used to bind me. Then, too, I'm a Bohemian. Ever hear of that word?" she interrupted herself to ask.

I nodded.

Mama used to call papa that when she was angry with him.

"Well," said Lolly, "I'm the bona-fide Bohemian article. My family think I'm the limit. What do you think?"

"I think you are trying to shock me," I said.

"Well, have I?"

"No, not a bit."

"Then you're the only girl in the house I haven't," she said with relish. "You know, I'm in pretty bad here, a sore spot in the body politic. Out I'd go this blessed minute if it wasn't for the fact that they're all afraid of me--afraid I'll show 'em up scorchingly."

"Would you do that?" I asked.

"Watch me!" said Lolly, laughing.

The lights went out, and then she swore. She had to scramble about on the bed to find her cigarettes. When she was going out, she said:

"Oh, by the way, if you like, I'll give you a card to a fellow out in the stock-yards. You go out there to-morrow and see him. He may have something for you."

Have I, I wonder, in this first rough picture of Lolly done her an injustice? If so, I hasten to change the effect. Lolly was a true adventurer; I dare not say adventuress, for that has a nasty sound. I wonder why, when adventurer sounds all right. Though at heart she was pure gold, though her natural instincts were refined and sweet, she took a certain reckless pleasure in, as it were, dancing along through life with a mocking mask held ever before her. For instance, she took an almost diabolic delight in painting herself in black colors. She would drawl off one startling story after another about herself as with half-closed eyes, through the smoke, she watched my face to judge of the effect of her recital. Sometimes she would laugh heartily at the end of her confidences, and then again she would solemnly assert that every word was true.

The morning after her first visit she woke me up early and, although Estelle grumbled, came airily into our room and got into bed with me.

A queer sort of antagonism existed between Lolly and Estelle, which I never quite understood at the time, though perhaps I do now. Lolly, with her reckless, handsome stylishness and dash represented the finished product of what poor Estelle tried to be. To make a crude sort of comparison, since Estelle herself worked in a clothing house and used clothing-house figures of speech, it was as if Lolly were a fine imported model and Estelle the pathetic, home-made attempt at a copy. She had copied the outlines, but not the subtle little finishing touches. Lolly, moreover, was acutely, amusedly aware of this, and she took a wicked and heartless delight in teasing and gibing at Estelle with words fully as slangy as Estelle's own, but which fairly stung with their keenness and caustic wit.

I could understand why Estelle hated Lolly, but I never could understand Lolly's contempt for Estelle. She always dismissed her as "Trash, Nora, trash!"

So now Estelle turned over in bed and snorted loud and long as Lolly got into mine.

Lolly said:

"George! how the _hoi-polloi_ do snore!"

Estelle lifted her head from the pillow, to show she was not sleeping, and, as she would have put it, "petrified" Lolly with one long, sneering, contemptuous look.

Lolly had come in, in fact, on an errand of mercy toward me, to whom she had taken a sudden fancy very much reciprocated by me. She said she wanted me to go out to the stock-yards as early as possible, as she understood this man she knew there wanted a stenographer right away. His name, she said, was Fred O'Brien, and she gave me a card which read, "Miss Laura Hope, the _Inter Ocean_." On the back she had written:

"Introducing Miss Nora Ascough."

I was delighted. It was like having another reference. I asked her about this Mr. O'Brien. She said, with a smile and significantly, that she had met him on a recent expedition to the yards in an inquiring mood for the _Inter Ocean_ in regard to the pigs'-hair department, of which he was then manager.

"Pigs' hair!"

I had never heard of such a thing, and Lolly burst into one of her wildest peals of laughter, which made Estelle sit up savagely in bed.

"You'll be the death of me yet," said Lolly.

That was all the explanation she gave me, but all the way to the stock-yards, and as I was going through them, I kept wondering what on earth pigs' hair could be. I must say I did not look forward with any degree of delight to working in the pigs'-hair department.

XIV

Have you ever ridden through the Chicago stock-yards on a sunny day in the month of June? If you have, you are not likely to forget the experience.

As I rode with about twenty or thirty other girls in the bus, all apparently perfectly contented and happy, I thought of some of my father's vivid stories of old Shanghai, the city of smells.

I shall not describe the odors of the Chicago stock-yards. Suffice it to say that they are many, varied, and strong, hard to bear at first, but in time, like everything else, one becomes acclimated to them, as it were. I have heard patriotic yards people, born and reared in that rarefied atmosphere, declare that they "like it." And yet the institution is one of the several wonders of the world. It is a miraculous, an astounding, a mighty organization.

Again, as on that first day in Chicago, at the railway station, I was one of many atoms pouring into buildings so colossal that they seemed cities in themselves. I followed several of the stenographers--only the stenographers rode in the busses; the factory girls of the yards walked through, as did the men--up a few flights of stairs, and came to a vast office where, I believe, something like three thousand clerks are employed on one floor. Men, women, girls, and boys were passing along, like puppet machines, each to his own desk and chair.

The departments were partitioned off with oak railings. There was a manager and a little staff of clerks for every department, and, oh! the amazing number of departments! During all the months I worked there I never knew the names of more than half the departments, and when I come to think of what was on the other floors, in other buildings, the great factories, where thousands were employed, I feel bewildered and stupendously impressed.

To think of the stock-yards as only a mighty butcher shop is a great mistake. It is better to think of them as a sort of beneficent feeder and provider of humanity, not merely because of the food they pour out into the world, but for the thousands to whom they give work.

I heard much of the abuses there, of the hateful actions of many of the employers; but one loses sight of these things in contemplating the great general benefit of this astounding place. Of course I, in the offices, saw perhaps only the better and cleaner side of the yards, and therefore I cannot tell what went on elsewhere.

I asked a boy for Mr. O'Brien, and he said:

"Soap department."

I went along the main railing, inquiring for the soap department, and a sharp-eyed youth (in the pickled snouts department) with a pencil on his ear, undertook to take me to O'Brien.

As I passed along with him, I found myself the attacked of many eyes. A new girl is always an object of interest and speculation in the yards. I tried to look unconcerned and unaware, an impossibility, especially as some of the clerks coughed as I went by, some grinned at me, one winked, and one softly whistled. I felt ashamed and silly, and a fierce sort of pity for myself that I should have to go through this.

"Lady for you, Fred," at last sang out my escort as we approached an inclosure, and then smiling, he opened a little gate, and half pushed, half led, me in.

I found myself at the elbow of a long, lanky young man who was doubled over in such a position that his spine looked humped up in the middle. He had a large box before him, in which were a lot of pieces of soap, and he kept picking up pieces and examining them, sometimes smelling them. There was one other person in the inclosure, or department, and he was a very red-haired, freckle-faced boy of about twelve.

For some time the long, lanky young man did not even look up, but continued to examine the soap. I was beginning to think he was ignorant of my presence at his elbow when he said, without taking his nose out of the box, and shifting his unlighted cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, in a snarling sort of voice, like the inquiring bark of a surly dog:

"Wa-al, what d' yer want?"

"A position as stenographer," I answered promptly.

He straightened up in his seat at that, and took a look at me. His cheek-bones were high and lumpy; he had a rather pasty-colored skin, sharp-glancing eyes, and a humorous mouth. It was a homely face, yet, curiously enough, not unattractive, and there was something straightforward about it. He wore his hat on the back of his head, and he did not remove it in honor of me. After scrutinizing me in one quick glance, in which I felt he had taken in all my weaknesses and defects, he said in a less-snarling tone:

"Sit down."

I sat.

Lolly's card I timidly proffered. He took it, stared at it with an astonished expression, and then snorted so loudly it made me think of Estelle, and I felt a quaking fear that Lolly's card was a poor recommendation. He spat after that snort, looked at me again, and said:

"Well, I like her nerve!"

Of course, as I was not aware of just what he meant by that (I subsequently learned that Lolly had gone to work for O'Brien supposedly as a stenographer, and then had written up and exposed certain conditions in the yards), I stared at him questioningly, and he repeated with even more eloquent emphasis:

"Well, I like her _nerve_! It beats the _Dutch_!"

Then he chuckled, and again scrutinized me.

"That all the reference you got?" he asked.

I produced Mr. Campbell's, and as I watched him read it with a rather puzzled expression, I hastily produced Canon Evans's reference as to my character, which my father had sent me for the Y. W. C. A. O'Brien handed the letters back to me without comment, but he kept Lolly's card, putting it carefully away in his card-case, and chuckling as he did so.

"What do you know?" at last he said to me. "Good stenographer, are you?"

"Yes, very good," I eagerly assured him.

"Humph! How much salary do you expect to get?"

"I got ten a week in the West Indies," I said. I never even thought that that "free board" at the hotel amounted to something, too. Ten dollars was my salary, and so I said ten.

He hugged his chin reflectively, studying me, and after a moment he said:

"I wasn't expecting to take any one on for a day or two, but so long as you're here, and come so highly recommended,"--and he grinned,--"you may stay. Salary fifteen per."

"Oh, thank you!" I said so fervently that he got angrily red, and turned away.

The red-haired office boy, who had been acutely listening to the conversation, now came up to me and pertly asked me if I was engaged. Which insolent question I at first declined to answer. When I realized that he did not mean engaged to be married, but engaged for the position, then I said, with scarlet face, that I was.

"Red Top," as they called him, then showed me my desk, next to Mr. O'Brien's, filled my ink-wells, brought me pens, pencils, and note-books. I was inwardly congratulating myself that there was no sign of a type-writer when the boy pulled up the lid of my desk, and, lo! there was a fine, glistening machine.

I suppose some girls really take a sort of pride in their machine, just as a trainer does in his horse. I confess that I felt no fond yearnings toward mine, and while I was debating how in the world I was ever going to copy the letters, Mr. O'Brien pulled out a slat on my desk, leaned over, and began to dictate. All the time he was dictating he was chewing tobacco, stopping once in a while to spit in a cuspidor at his feet, and watching my face out of the corner of his eye. This was a sample of the letters I took, and you can judge of my feelings as I wrote:

Messrs. So and So. Gentlemen:

I send you F.O.B. five hundred broken babies, three hundred cracked babies, one thousand perfect ones, etc.

Broken babies, cracked babies, perfect ones! What sort of place was this, anyway? The pigs' hair department was mystifying and horrifying enough, and I _had_ heard that sausages were made from dogs and horses; but a trade in _babies_--cracked and broken!

I suppose my face must have betrayed my wonder and perhaps horror, for O'Brien suddenly choked, though I don't know whether he was laughing or coughing, but he made a great noise. Then he said, clearing his throat:

"Got all that?"

I nodded.

"That's all," he said, and turned back to his soapbox. There was nothing for me to do now but to type-write those letters. I stared at that machine blindly, and to put off the evil moment, I tried to engage my "boss" in conversation while pretending to dust the machine.

"Mr. O'Brien, have--have you many babies here?" I asked.

"Thousands," he returned.

"It must be like a hospital," said I.

He grunted. I've often thought that O'Brien delighted to put stenographers through that "baby" joke, but I don't suppose any other girl was ever quite so gullible as I.

"I'd like to see some of them," I said.

"You're looking at them now," said he.

I looked about me, but I saw no babies. O'Brien was digging down in the box. Suddenly he tossed up a handful of odd-shaped pieces on his desk. Then I understood. They were all in the shape of babies--Wool-Soap babies! O'Brien, with his tobacco in his cheek, thought it a good joke on me.

I stuck the paper into the type-writer, and then I began slowly to write, pecking out each letter with my index-finger. I felt rather than saw O'Brien slowly turning round in his seat, and though I dared not look up, I felt both his and Red Top's amazed eyes on my slowly moving fingers. Suddenly O'Brien stood up.

"Well, upon my word," said he, "you sure are a twin of that friend of yours! I like your nerve!"

I sat still in my seat, just staring at the type, and a fearful lump came up in my throat and almost choked me. I could not see a thing for the tears that came welling up despite myself, but I held them back fiercely.

Suddenly O'Brien snapped out in his most angry and snarling tone:

"Say, who are you staring at, anyway?"

I thought he meant me, and I started to protest that I was merely looking at the type, when I heard the feet of Red Top shuffle, and he said, oh, so meekly and respectfully:

"Yes, sir; I ain't staring at _her_, sir."

I was relieved, anyway, of a part of the pressure, for the office boy was now busy at some files. I found enough courage at last to look at O'Brien. He was studying me as if I were some strange curiosity that both amused and amazed him.

"You're a nice one, aren't you," said he, "to take a job at fifteen per as an experienced and expert stenographer and--"

I said quickly:

"I am an expert stenographer. It's just the type-writing I can't do, and, oh! if you'll only give me a chance, I'll learn it in a few days, honestly I will. I'm cleverer than most girls, really I am. I taught myself shorthand, and I can type-writing, too. I'll practise every night, and if you'll just try me for a few days, I'll work so hard--and you won't be sorry; I'm sure you won't."

I got this all off quickly and warmly.

To this day I do not know what impulse moved Fred O'Brien to decide that he wanted me as his stenographer. His was an important department, and he could have had as good a stenographer as fifteen dollars a week will get, and that's a fair salary for work of that kind. Here was I, palpably a green girl, who could not type a line! No man's voice ever sounded nicer than that gruff young Irishman's when he said that I could stay, that for the first week I could do the letters by hand; but I was to practise every opportunity I got, and I could help him a lot if I would write the letters without making it necessary for him to dictate them.

In justification of my boast to O'Brien that I would "make good," let me say that I stayed in his department all the time I was at the yards, and this is the reference he gave me when he himself left to take charge of the New York office:

To Whom it may Concern:

This is to certify that Miss Nora Ascough, who has been in my employ for the past few months as stenographer and typewriter, is an A No. 1 Crack-a-Jack.

Smith & Co. Per, Fred O'Brien, Mgr.

Some one once said of me that I owed my success as a writer mainly to the fact that I used my sex as a means to help me climb. That is partly true not only in the case of my writing, but of my work as a stenographer. I have been pushed and helped by men who liked me, but in both cases I _made good_ after I was started.

I think it would have broken my heart not to have "made good" to Fred O'Brien after he had trusted me in this way. This man, the first I worked for in America, was probably the best friend I ever had or will have. I do not mean so much while I worked for him, but later in my life.

I have spoken of the mild sensation I made as I walked down that main aisle. All through the day, in whatever direction I looked, I encountered interested eyes bent upon me. Some were those of girls like myself, some office boys, a number of department managers, and nearly all the clerks in my vicinity. Some craned their necks to get a glimpse of me, some came officiously to talk to O'Brien. Thus it was an embarrassing day for me, especially at luncheon-hour, when I did not know quite what to do. Then a girl from another department came over and asked me to go to luncheon with her. She said that her "boss," whose name was Hermann, and who was a chum of O'Brien, had bade her look out for me.

She pointed Hermann out to me as we passed along, and he seized his hat, and came after us; but as he was passing our department, O'Brien seized him, and, looking back, I saw them both laughing, and I felt sure O'Brien was telling him about me.

Hermann was about twenty-five. He had a stiff thatch of yellow hair which he brushed up straight, and which stood up just like bristles on his head. He had wide-awake eyes, and looked like a human interrogation-point, dressed very dudishly, and flirted right and left with all the girls. Though born in America, and wiry and active, nevertheless there was the stamp of "Made in Germany" everywhere upon him. Later in the afternoon he stuck so insistently about our department that O'Brien finally introduced us, and then said with a grin:

"Now clear out. You got what you wanted."

Two or three departments to the left of me I had noticed a very blond, plumpish, rather good-looking young man, who watched me unceasingly throughout the day, but, whenever I looked at him, would blush, just like a girl, and look down and fuss with papers on his desk. Well, about the middle of the afternoon, and while O'Brien was away from the department, a boy came over and laid a note on my desk. It was folded ingeniously, twisted into a sort of bowknot, and it was addressed, "Stenographer, Soap Dept."

I thought it was some instruction from O'Brien, especially as the boy said:

"Any answer?"

I unfolded the note, and this is what I read:

I'm stuck on you. Will you keep company with me?

I had to laugh, though I knew my furiously red swain was watching me anxiously.

"Any answer?" again asked the boy. I wrote on a piece of paper the one word, "Maybe."

People who have called me clever, talented, etc.,--oh, all women writers get accused of such things!--have not really reckoned with a certain weak and silly side of my character. If as I proceed with this chronicle I shock you with the ease and facility with which I encouraged and accepted and became constantly engaged to men, please set it down to the fact that I always felt an inability to _hurt_ by refusing any one who liked me enough to propose to me. I got into lots of trouble for this,--call it moral lack in me,--but I could not help it at the time. Why, it's just the same way that I once felt in a private Catholic hospital, and little Sister Mary Eulalia tried to convert me. Out of politeness and because I loved _her_, I was within an ace of acknowledging her faith, or any other faith she might choose.

If you could have seen the broad smile of satisfaction that wreathed the face of my first stock-yards "mash," you, in my place, would not have regretted that little crumb of hope that I had tossed him. Yet I had no more intention of "keeping company" with him that I had of flying.

It pleases me much to record that on this my first day in the yards I received three "mash" notes, which one of the girls later told me "was going it some for fair."

My second note was a pressed flower, accompanied by these touching lines:

The rose is red; the violet's blue, Honey's sweet, and so are you! And so is he, who sends you this, And when we meet we'll have a kiss.

I don't know who sent me this, but I suspected an office boy in a neighboring department.

My third note came just about an hour before leaving. It was from Hermann, and in a sealed envelop. It was as follows:

How about "Buffalo Bill" to-night?

O'Brien leaned over me as I opened the note, deliberately took it from me, and read it. As he did so, Hermann stealthily pelted him with tightly chewed wads of paper, though, from his hunched-over position at his desk, no one would have suspected who was throwing those pellets. I saw him, however, and he winked at me as if I were in a conspiracy with him, and as much as to say:

"We'll fix him."

O'Brien, his cigar moving from one side of his mouth to the other, answered the note for me.