Meantime, the girl in Chicago was walking in a new and hard way. She
brought to her task a disciplined mind, a fine artistic taste, a delicate
but healthy body, and a pair of willing, if unskilled, hands. To her
surprise, she discovered that the work for which she had so often lightly
given orders was beyond her strength. Try as she would, she could not
accomplish the task of washing and ironing table napkins and delicate
embroidered linen pieces in the way she knew they should be done. Will
power can accomplish a good deal, but it cannot always make up for
ignorance, and the girl who had mastered difficult subjects in college,
and astonished music masters in the old world with her talent, found that
she could not wash a window even to her own satisfaction, much less to
that of her new mistress. That these tasks were expected of her was a
surprise. Yet with her ready adaptability and her strong good sense, she
saw that if she was to be a success in this new field she had chosen, she
must be ready for any emergency. Nevertheless, as the weary days succeeded
each other into weeks, she found that while her skill in table-setting and
waiting was much prized, it was more than offset by her discrepancies in
other lines, and so it came about that with mutual consent she and Mrs.
Rhinehart parted company.
This time, with her reference, she did not find it so hard to get another
place, and, after trying several, she learned to demand certain things,
which put her finally into a home where her ability was appreciated, and
where she was not required to do things in which she was unskilled.
She was growing more secure in her new life now, and less afraid to
venture into the streets lest some one should be on the watch for her. But
night after night, as she climbed to her cheerless room and crept to her
scantily-covered, uncomfortable couch, she shrank from all that life could
now hold out to her. Imprisoned she was, to a narrow round of toil, with
no escape, and no one to know or care.
And who knew but that any day an enemy might trace her?
Then the son of the house came home from college in disgrace, and began to
make violent love to her, until her case seemed almost desperate. She
dreaded inexpressibly to make another change, for in some ways her work
was not so hard as it had been in other places, and her wages were better;
but from day to day she felt she could scarcely bear the hourly
annoyances. The other servants, too, were not only utterly
uncompanionable, but deeply jealous of her, resenting her gentle breeding,
her careful speech, her dainty personal ways, her room to herself, her
loyalty to her mistress.
Sometimes in the cold and darkness of the night-vigils she would remember
the man who had helped her, who had promised to be her friend, and had
begged her to let him know if she ever needed help. Her hungry heart cried
out for sympathy and counsel. In her dreams she saw him coming to her
across interminable plains, hastening with his kindly sympathy, but she
always awoke before he reached her.
[Illustration]