Chapter 34

LETTERS AND SCIENCE.

May 29.

I've revised my opinion of the newspapers. The Star has done me a good turn, a great service.

I had tried to borrow money of Cadge, for the third time, and she told me she had none--which was true, or she would have let me have it. Then she said:--

"Why don't you sell a story to some paper--either something very scientific, or else, 'Who's the Handsomest Man in New York?' or--"

"I think I ought to get something from them, after all the stuff they've printed; but how? To whom do I go?"

"Nobody! Heavens!" cried Cadge. "Want to create an earthquake on Park Row? You're a disturber of traffic. Let me manage. I know the ropes and it helps me at the office to bring in hot features. They might give you fifty for it, too."

And I actually did get $50 for digging out of the text books an essay on Rats as Disseminators of Bubonic Plague; they only used a little of it, but the pictures and the signature and the nonsense about me as a scientist were the real thing, Cadge said.

The money, the money, the money was the real thing to me! It has given me a breathing spell--. that and the hundred for signing a patent medicine testimonial; but I had to sacrifice more than half I got from both sources to pacify greedy creditors. And a month between remittances, and so little when they come! Father _can't_ refuse to mortgage; why doesn't he write to me?

The day I took the article to Cadge I had a long talk with her and with Pros. Reid, who spends at the eyrie every hour he can spare. One must have some society or go crazy, though perhaps they aren't exactly what I'd choose if my kingdom had opened to me.

Pros. has shrewd eyes that inspire confidence--gray eyes with the tired night work look in them. He talks amazing slang at times, at others not at all; and I wish every one might be as kind and thoughtful.

I could think of nothing all the evening but my bills, and at last I was moved to ask him abruptly:--

"What can a girl do to get money, Pros.?"

"'Pends on the girl."

"This girl; a somewhat educated person; and grasping. One who wants much money and wants it right now."

"Princesses don't earn money; they have it."

"Suppose the Princess were enchanted--or--or something? Oh, you may not think me serious, but I really don't know what I shall do, if my ship doesn't come in pretty soon."

He looked quizzically at me; he thinks I plead poverty as a joke; Cadge would never tell him how I have tried to borrow.

"'Twould be a hard case, supposing it possible," he said, "because you would want a good deal of money, and because you'd be a bother to have 'round--too beautiful. You couldn't sell many newspaper stories, because you'd soon cease to be a novelty as a special, and would get a press ticket to City Hall Park. Reporting's another coloured horse altogether--poor pay, and takes training to get it. Beauty's a disadvantage even there; too much beauty. Tell you what you could do, though, if ever you _should_ want to earn money--go on the stage."

"Girl I knew," said Cadge, "made a pot of money going round to summer resorts, giving women lessons, energizing and decomposing; kind of Delsarte; said it made her 'most die--to see 'em rolling on the floor like elephants, trying to get lean, and eating 'emselves fat four times a day, with caramels between--and not be able to laugh. Might try the Barnard girls. It can't be sure beauty to be up there; I've seen some of 'em. Say now; that's not so bad--'How to be Helen; in Twenty Lessons.' Or say, Princess; answer the great question: 'Does Soap Hurt the Skin?'"

She grinned. Cadge fancies, I suppose, that by any mail I may get a big check from home.

"You display almost human intelligence," said Pros, admiringly; "stage's better, though."

"But, Mr. Reid, that's too public."

"Inherited instinct; no more public than--than being a beauty." He gazed at me with mild audacity,--"Money getting's prosaic, off the stage. Most girls who want cash become tiddlety-wink typewriters at eight per; bargain price; fully worth four. Now that isn't your class; if $8 a week would satisfy you, which it wouldn't, do you suppose there's an office in town that'd have you? Men won't subject their clerks to the white light of beauty; wives won't stand for it, either. There are places where no girl can get work unless she's pulchritudinous. Catch the idea? A pretty London barmaid can't draw more beer than an ugly one, but draws more custom. What's a Princess to do with such jobs? You'd be like the man who wouldn't be fool enough to marry any woman who'd be fool enough to have him--in getting work, I mean. This is the other side of all that rot about Woman's Century and Woman's Widening Sphere. Never go into an office, Miss Winship; my wife won't, when we're married."

"'Cause she'll be in one already," interrupted Cadge; "why, if I had to mope 'round all day in a flat, I'd be driven to drink--club tea. Imagine it; Cadge Bryant a clubwoman!"

"Clubwomaning is exciting enough, election time."

"But men get money," I persisted. "Isn't there anything a girl can do?"

"I've a sister," said Reid, "--other sister out in Cincinnati--who wants a profession; law's the one I'm recommending. It's so harmless. Course she'll never have any practice; she won't get out and hustle with the greasy Yahoudis who run the bar now-a-days. No, so long as my sister has the career fever, I say law, every time. Cadge, why don't you study law?"

"The dear boy does so enjoy talking nonsense," Cadge explained indulgently.

"In ordinary business," Reid went on, "pretty women are only employed as lures for men. Swell milliners have 'em to overawe with their great grieving eyes the Hubbies who're inclined to kick at market rates for bonnets. Now there's dry goods, chief theme of half the race. You'd think there'd be a show there for a pretty girl; well, there ain't. It's retail trade; one girl can sell about as many papers of pins in a day as another."

"Some pretty cloak and suit models get big wages," said Cadge.

"Yes, in the jobbing houses. That's wholesale trade, and every dicker counts. Have to corset themselves to death, though."

"It's a fact," Cadge put in. "Many's the filler I've written about it. Girl has to destroy her beauty to get a living by her beauty."

"Sure! Fashions not made to fit women, but women to fit fashions. Then those girls have an awful time, if they're careful about their associates. Why, it's getting so a model is expected to sell goods herself--held responsible if she doesn't. No sale, no job next week. See the situation," Pros. added, "--on the one hand the buyer, a vain man away from home, with thousands to invest; on the other a girl who must get that money for her firm. Well, of course it's not so bad as that, but----"

"But _I_ wouldn't corset myself Redfern shape and go into such horrid places for the world," I cried.

No more than Judge Baker, or Father, or any one else, could Reid see my situation. What do I care about earning $8 a week--or $80? I must have a great deal of money, at once; to pay my debts and to live upon. Men get money quickly--in Wall Street or by inventions or----

"Course not," said Pros. "You're the Princess; and Princesses may be Honorary Presidents and ask questions and take an interest, but they don't do things."

"Pros. is right about the stage," said Cadge; "that's the best sort of wholesale business. You sell a chance to look at you to fifteen hundred people at once; and folks can't paw you over to see how your clothes fit, either. I'd like it myself, but I'm too--well, after all, I might do; I'm at least picturesquely ugly."

And so the antiphony of discouragement ended in a laugh.

I wonder--women on the stage do get big sums, and they often graduate from it to society. If even a music hall singer can become a duchess----

Bellmer's father made his money in sugar, they say. If I had it, I could storm any position. I suppose Mrs. Terry has shooed him off on that automobile tour I heard about; but he must come back--and so must Strathay.

I can't wait long, I'm not safe an hour from human vultures hungry for money, though I've none to yield them.

I must do something. No sooner had Mrs. Whitney vanished from the flat in a whirlwind of tears and reproaches than in came the furniture man, as if he had been watching the house, to threaten that, unless I pay at once, he will take away everything. He was not rude in words, but oh, so different from the oily people who sold me the things. His ferret eyes searched the apartment; he seemed counting every article.

"The furniture's safe," I said; "it won't walk away."

"Of course it's safe," he answered with a suspicion of a sneer; "but when'll it be paid for?"

"I don't know; go away!" I said. "I've written to my father."

The fellow looked at me with open admiration.

"Better 'tend to this thing; better write again to--your father," he said and walked off, leaving me cold and tremulous with rage.

I must have imagined the pause, the inflection; but he has me under surveillance. Like a thief!

I flew to the dining-room and swallowed a glass of sherry, for I was faint and quivering; but before I had turned from the sideboard Cadge bounced into the room, tearing through the flat to find me, and stopped to stare, open-eyed.

"Drop that!" she cried.

"Oh, don't preach! I've just been having such a time!"

"Everybody has 'em; I've had fifty a year for fifty years. And I don't mind your drowning sorrow in the flowing bowl, either. But do it like a man, in company. Honest now, Helen."

She changed the subject abruptly to the errand that had brought her; but, before she went away, she looked curiously at the sideboard and said:----

"Helen, you really don't----"

"Mercy, no! Scarcely at table, even. Why I used to be shocked to see how things to drink are thrust upon women, even in department stores. But they're not all deadly; there's 'creme de menthe' now--the pep'mint extract Ma used to give me for stomach-ache."

Cadge laughed with me, but she turned quickly grave again.

"Mind what I tell you, Princess," she said, "and never, never drink even 'pep'mint extract' in the house like that, alone; if you do, I see your finish; reporters learn a thing or two."

She's right--for ordinary women. But I told her the truth; I don't care for wine. I've seen girls flushed at dinner, but I know too much of physiology, and I care too much for my beauty.

Still, in emergencies----

Emergencies--oh! I could have named to her the very day I first tasted wine. It was here in the Nicaragua, the day Darmstetter----

Well, well,--I mustn't think about that. I can't understand why I don't hear from Father. Impossible to make him see how different are my present tastes and pressing needs from those I brought from home. I hope he won't delay long about the money.

My position is becoming intolerable. I owe the butcher, grocer, furniture dealer, photographer--and the milliner is the worst of all. The money I got from the _Star_ is filched from me by people who need it far less than I. Why, I even owe money to the maids, and I can't discharge either of them, because I'd have to pay her. But they must somehow be sent away.

I wonder if Father couldn't sell the farm. That would bring more than a mortgage; but it might take months, and even then I need in a single year more than all he has in the world.

Will any woman who reads the story of my life--the real story which sometime I shall write, leaving out the paltry details which now harass me--will any woman believe that the most beautiful woman in the world in the wonderful year, of the finding of the Bacillus actually thought of tramping the streets, looking for work, like a story heroine seeking her fortune? I shall have to do something--anything!

But I can't work; I'm not calm enough, and it would ruin my beauty.

The luck must change!

Sometimes I see more clearly than the sordidness of this horrible existence, a big palace with a terraced front and a mile long drive straight to the park gate, past great trees and turf that is always green; and long rows of stately ladies looking down on me from their frames on the lofty wall beside soldiers that have stood silent guard there three hundred years. I can see a beautiful woman courtesying to a Queen and all the world reading it in the morning paper; and a big town house with myriad lights blinking through the fog outside, where shivering wretches watch the carriages drive up to my door. For twenty--no thirty years--I might be the one inimitable and wholly adorable being, clothed with rare garments, blazing with jewels, confidant of statesmen, maker of the men who make history. History! I should _be_ history!

I could do it all myself--I have never had a chance, never yet the glimmer of a chance, but I could do anything, conquer anything, achieve anything!

It is so little that I ask--the money to live upon, and a chance, only the chance--it is maddening to be denied that!--and fair play to live my life and carry out my destiny.

There was a time when I wanted less, expected less; like Cadge with queer, devoted Pros. or Kitty Reid, her hair blowing about her face, happy with her daubs, messing about in the studio. Was I happier when I was like that? I would not go back to it! I would not barter my beauty for any other gift on earth. I shall fight and fight to the last ditch. I don't propose to be a pawn on the chess-board.

If it comes to that, I shall know what to do!