"Oh, yes. Fred was drunk, and he wanted me with him; so I walked with
him in L---- Park, and then he fell asleep on a bench with his head on
my lap."
He jumped to his feet, and looking up, I saw his face. It was so black
with astounded fury that I thought he was going to strike me; but I was
not afraid of him. I felt only a sudden sense of wonder and pain. His
voice, though low, had a curious sound of suppressed rage.
"Do you mean to tell me that you have been out all night with that man?"
I looked into his face, and then I nodded, without speaking. He gave me
a hard look, and then he laughed shortly, brutally.
"So you are _that_ sort, are you?" he said.
"Yes," I returned defiantly, "I am that sort. Fred was good to me. He
took me on trust. If I had left him last night, he might have gone on
drinking, or a policeman would have arrested him. You can't imagine the
state he was in--just like a helpless child."
While I was speaking he kept staring at me. I was so nervous that I
wrenched my hands together. And then I saw his face change, just as if
it were broken, and in place of that hard, sneering expression there
came that beautiful look that I had seen on his face that day on the
train when he had asked me if I would like to go to school.
He came over and sat down again beside me on the couch. He took my
hands in his, and held them as if he were warming them. Then I put my
face against his arm and began to cry. He didn't say a word to me for
the longest time. Then he asked me very gently to tell him all over
again just what happened. So I did. He wanted to know if Fred had said
anything offensive to me, or if he had been familiar or tried to kiss
me. I said, "No; Fred is not that kind." If he had been, he asked me,
what would I have done? I didn't know, I told him.
"You'd have permitted him to?" he demanded sharply, and I said I didn't
think I would; but then, of course, one couldn't tell what a drunken
man might do. He said that that was the whole point of the matter,
and that I could see for myself that I had done a very foolish and
dangerous thing.
By this time he was walking up and down. After a while, when he had
gotten over his excitement and wrath about Fred, he shook up all the
sofa pillows on the couch, and made me lie down. When I sat up, he
lifted up my feet, and put them on the couch, too. So I had to lie
down, and I was so tired and happy that he was there, and _cared_,
that I would have done anything he ordered me to. Then he drew up a
chair beside me, and began to talk again on the subject of my going to
school. Goodness! I had thought that matter was settled. But, no; he
had the persistency of a bull-dog in matters about which he cared.
He said it was nonsense for me to be expending my strength like this,
when I ought to be studying and developing myself. He said association
at my age meant everything; that I had the impressionable temperament
of the artist, and was bound either to be benefited or hurt by the
people with whom I associated.
I let him go on, because I loved to hear him talk, anyway, even though
he was so cross about it. He kept frowning at me, as if he were
administering a scolding, and driving the fist of his right hand into
the palm of his left in a way he had when talking. When he was through,
I said:
"If I go to school, will you come to see me, like this?"
"Of course I'll come to see you," he said. "Not--like this exactly; but
I shall make it a point of coming to see you."
"Well, would I be alone with you ever?" I asked.
He said, yes, sometimes, but that I ought to know what boarding-schools
were like. I smiled up at him at that, and he frowned down at me, and I
said:
"I'd rather live like this, with all my besotted ignorance, and have
you come to see me, and be with me all alone, just like this, than go
to the finest boarding-school in the world."
He said, "Nonsense!" but he was touched, for he didn't say anything
more about my going to school then. Instead, he began to urge me to
leave my position at the yards. When I said I couldn't do that, he
grew really angry with me. I think he would have gone then, for he
picked up his hat; but I told him I hadn't had any dinner. Neither, of
course, had he, as I had come in about six-thirty. So then I made him
wait while I dressed, and he took me out to dinner.
There were a number of restaurants near where I lived, but he knew of a
better place down-town; so we went there, by carriage, instead. On the
way he asked me where I got the suit I had on, and I told him. Then he
wanted to know what I paid for it, and I told him $12. It was a good
little blue serge suit, and I had a smart hat to go with it. In fact,
I was beginning to dress better, and more like American girls. I asked
him if he liked my suit. He said roughly:
"No," and then he added, "it's too thin." After a moment he said:
"I'm going to buy you decent clothes first of all."
I had a queer feeling that so long as I took nothing from this man, I
should retain his respect. It was a stubborn, persistent idea. I could
not efface from my mind his bitter words of that day on the train, and
I wanted above all things to prove to him that I cared for him only for
himself and not for the things I knew he could give me and wanted to
give me. I never knew a man so anxious to give a woman things as was
Mr. Hamilton to do things for me from the very first. So now I told him
that I couldn't let him get clothes for me. That made him angrier than
ever, and he wouldn't speak to me all the rest of the way. While we
were having dinner (he had ordered the meal without reference to me at
all, but just as if he knew what I should like), he said in that rough
way he often assumed to me when he was bent upon having his way about
something:
"You want me to take you with me when I come to Chicago, don't you--to
dinner, theaters, and other places?"
I nodded. I did want to go with him, and I was tremendously proud to
think that he wanted to take me.
"Very well, then," he said; "you'll have to dress properly."
I couldn't find any answer to that, but I inwardly vowed that I would
spend every cent I made above my board on clothes.
I think he was sorry for having spoken unkindly to me, because he
ceased to urge me about the school, my position, my lodgings, which he
did not like at all, and now my clothes. He made me tell him all over
again for the third or fourth time about last night. He kept asking me
about Fred, almost as if he were trying to trap me with questions, till
finally I grew so hurt by some of his questions that I wouldn't answer
him. Then again he changed the subject, and wanted to know what I had
been writing. That was a subject on which he knew I would chatter
fluently, and I told him how I had actually dared to submit my latest
to a mighty publication in New York. He said he wished he were the
editor. I said:
"Would you take my stories?"
"You better believe I would," he said.
"Why?"
"Well, why do you suppose?"
"Because you think my stories are good or because you like me--which?"
He laughed, and told me to finish my coffee.