"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."