I don't know whether it was the effect of Mr. Hamilton's visit or not,
but I was not so contented after that. Things about the Y. W. C. A.
that I had not noticed before now irritated me.
A great many unjust requirements were made of the girls. It was not
fair to make us attend certain sermons. Goodness knows, we were tired
enough when we got home, and most of us just wanted to go to our rooms;
and if we did desire entertainment or relaxation, we wanted to choose
it for ourselves. I believe some of these old rules are not enforced
to-day.
Then that ten o'clock rule! Really it _was_ a shame! Just fancy writing
feverishly upon some beautiful (to me it was beautiful) story or poem,
and all of a sudden the lights going out! That was maddening, and
sometimes I swore as Lolly did, and I cried once when I had reached a
place in my story that I simply _had_ to finish, and I tried to do it
in the dark.
So I was determined to move, and Lolly went about looking for rooms for
us. I told her I'd like anything she got.
Meanwhile life in the yards began to "get upon my nerves." I never
before knew that I _had_ nerves; but I knew it now. No one, not even
a girl of the abounding health and spirits I then enjoyed, could work
eight hours a day at a type-writer and two or three hours writing at
night, and be in love besides, and not feel some sort of strain.
And I _was_ in love. I don't suppose any girl was ever more utterly and
hopelessly in love than I was then. No matter what I was doing or where
I was,--even when I wrote my stories,--he was always back there in my
mind. It was almost as though he had hypnotized me.
Loving is, I suppose, a sort of bliss. One can get a certain amount of
real joy and excitement out of loving; but it's pretty woeful when one
must love alone, and that was my case. You see, though I knew I had
made a kind of impression upon Mr. Hamilton, or, as he himself put it,
he was "interested" in me, still he certainly was not in love with me,
and I had little or no hope now of making him care for me.
I realized that he belonged to a different social sphere. He was a
rich, powerful man, of one of the greatest families in America, and
I--I was a working-girl, a stenographer of the stock-yards. Only in
novels or a few sensational newspaper stories did millionaires fall
in love with and marry poor, ignorant working-girls, and then the
working-girl was sure to be a beauty. I was not a beauty. Some people
said I was pretty, but I don't think I was even that. I had simply the
fresh prettiness that goes hand in hand with youth, and youth gallops
away from us like a race-horse, eager to reach the final goal. No, I
was not pretty. I looked odd, and when I began to wear fine clothes, I
must have appeared very well, for I had all sorts of compliments paid
to me. I was told that I looked picturesque, interesting, fascinating,
distinguished, lovely, and even more flattering things that were not
true. It showed what clothes will do.
I was not, however, wearing fine clothes at this time. My clothes were
of the simplest--sailor shirtwaist, navy-blue cloth skirt, and a blue
sailor hat with a rolled-up brim. That was how I dressed until the
night Lolly lent me some of her finery.
My only hope lay in pulling myself up by my talent. If I achieved fame,
that, perhaps, I felt, would put me on a level with this man. But fame
seemed as elusive and as far away as the stars above me.
Then, his insistence that I should be educated and his statement that I
was illiterate made me pause in my thought to take reckoning of myself.
If, indeed, my ignorance was so patent that it was revealed in my mere
speech, how, then, could I hope to achieve anything? I felt very badly
about that, and when I read over some of my beloved poems, instead
of their giving me the former pride and delight, I felt, instead, a
deep-seated grief and dissatisfaction, so that I tore them up, and then
wept just as if I had destroyed some living thing.
Yes, I was very unhappy. I kept at my work, doing it efficiently; but
the place now appeared hideous and abhorrent to me, and every day I
asked myself:
"How much longer can I bear it?"
I remember leaving my desk one day, going to the girls' dressing-room,
and just sitting down alone and crying, without knowing just what I was
crying about--I who cried so little!
I suppose things would have gone from bad to worse for me but for two
things that happened to distract me.
We moved, Lolly and I. I can't say that our rooms were as attractive
and clean-looking as the ones we had at the Y. W. C. A., and of course
they cost more. Still, they were not bad. We had two small rooms.
Originally one large room, a partition had made it into two. By putting
a couch in the outer room, we made a sitting-room, and were allowed to
have our company there. Whichever one was up the last with company was
to sleep on the couch.
Lolly made the rooms very attractive by putting pretty covers over the
couch and table, and college flags that some men gave her on the wall,
with a lot of pictures and photographs. The place looked very cozy,
especially at night, but somehow I missed the cleanly order of my room
of the Y. W. C. A.
I wrote a letter to Mr. Hamilton and gave him our new address. I could
not resist telling him that I had been very unhappy; that I realized
he was right, and that I could never go very far when my equipment in
life was so pitifully small. However, I added hopefully that I intended
to read a lot that winter, and that Lolly and I were going to join the
library. I could take a book with me to work. There were many intervals
during the day when I could read if I wished to; in the luncheon hour,
for instance, and on the cars going to and from work. One could always
snatch a moment. Didn't he think I would improve myself much by reading?
He did not answer me, but a few days later three large boxes of books
came to the house for me.
Lolly and I were overjoyed. We had a great time getting shelves for the
books and setting them up. We had Balzac, Dumas, Flaubert, Gautier,
Maupassant, Carlyle's "French Revolution," and the standard works of
the English authors. Also we had the Encyclopædia Britannica. I was so
happy about those books that my depression dropped from me in a moment.
I felt that if my little arms could have embraced the world, I should
have encircled it. It was not merely the delight of possessing books
for the first time in my life, but because _he_ had chosen and sent
them to me.
The second thing that came up to divert me from a tendency to
melancholia at this time happened at the yards immediately after that.
One day O'Brien did not come to work till about five in the afternoon.
As soon as he came in I noticed that there was something wrong with
him. His hat was tipped over one eye, and his mouth had a crooked
slant as he moved his cigar from side to side. Without noticing me,
he took his seat, and slightly turned his back toward me. I chanced
just then to catch Hermann's eye. He made a sign to me. I could not
understand at first what he meant till he lifted an empty glass from
his desk, held it to his lips, and then pretended to drain it. Then I
knew: Fred had been drinking.
I suppose I ought not to have spoken to a man in his condition, but I
think for the first time in my life there swept over me a great wave of
maternal feeling toward this big uncouth boy who had been so good to
me. I said:
"Fred!"
He turned around slightly, and looked at me through bleary eyes. His
lips were dirty and stained with tobacco, and the odor that came from
him made me feel ill. His voice, however, was steady, and he had it
under control.
"Nora," he said, "I'm soused."
"You'd better go home," I whispered, for I was afraid he would get into
trouble if one of the firm were to see him. "I'll finish your work for
you. I know just how."
"I'm not going home till _you_ do," said Fred. "I'm going with you.
You'll take care of me, won't you, Nora?"
"O Fred," I said, "please do go home!"
"I tell you I'm going with you. I want to tell you all about myself. I
never told you before. Got to tell you to-night."
"I'd rather hear it to-morrow night."
"Don't care what you'd rather. I'm going to tell you to-night,"
persisted Fred, with the irritable querulousness of a child.
"But I go out on the bus with the girls," I said. "And that leaves at
5:30."
"Tha' 's true," said Fred. "Tell you what I'll do. I'll start off now,
and I'll meet you at the end of the yards when the bus comes out. See?"
I nodded. Fred settled his hat more crookedly on his head, and, with an
unlighted cigar twisting loosely in his mouth, went staggering down the
aisle.
Hermann came over to my desk, and when I told him what Fred had said,
he advised me to slip off the bus quickly and make a run for the
nearest car. He said if Fred "got a grip" on me, he'd never let go
"till he had sobered up."