Now that the lights no longer went out at ten, I did considerable
writing at night. I had to work, however, under difficulties, for Lolly
had no end of men callers. She had discouraged men calling on her at
the Y. W. C. A., but now that we had a place of our own, she liked them
to come. As she gaily put it to me one day: "Beaux make great meal
tickets, Nora."
And then, too, she liked men. She told me once I was the only girl chum
she had ever had, though she had had scores of men chums, who were not
necessarily her admirers as well.
Lolly was a born flirt. Hermann was her slave and her shadow now, and
so were several newspaper men and editors who seemed devoted to her.
There was only one man, however, for whom she cared a "button," so she
told me, and that was Marshall Chambers; and yet, she quarreled with
him constantly, and never trusted him.
Lolly's men friends were kind to me, too. They tried many devices to
entrap me to go with them. It was all I could do to work at night, for
even when I shut myself into the inner room, Lolly was always coming in
with this or that message and joke, and to urge me to "come on out,
like a good fellow, just for to-night." Though, to do Lolly justice,
many a time, when she thought the story I was working on was worth
while, she would try to protect me from being disturbed, and sometimes
she'd say:
"Clear out, the whole bunch of you! Nora's in the throes of creation
again."
However, I really don't know how I managed to write at all there.
Hermann came nearly every night in those days, and even when Lolly was
out, he used to sit in that outer room and wait, poor fellow, for her
to return. He never reproached Lolly, though he certainly knew she
did not return his love. Hermann just waited, with a sort of untiring
German patience and determination to win in the end. He was no longer
the gay and flippant "lady-killer." In a way I was glad to have Hermann
there at nights, for I was afraid of Chambers. Whenever he found me
alone, he would try to make love to me, and tell me he was mad about me
and other foolish things.
I asked him once what he would do if I told Lolly. He replied, with an
ugly smile, that he guessed Lolly would take his word before mine.
That marked him as unprincipled, and I hated him more than ever. Of
course I never told him I disliked him. On the contrary, I was always
very civil and joking with him. It's queer, but I have a good streak of
the "Dr. Fell" feeling in me. Hermann and I once talked over Marshall
Chambers, and his efforts to make love to me. Hermann said that that
was one of the reasons he was going to be there when he could. He said
that some day Lolly was going to find out, and he (Hermann) wanted to
be there to take care of her when that day came. Such was his dog-like
affection for Lolly, that, although he knew she loved this man, he was
prepared to take her when she was done with the other.
Occasionally Fred, too, came to see me in the evening, but if I was
writing, he would go away at once. My writing to Fred loomed as
something very important. He believed in me. Hamilton had called me
a wonderful girl, but Fred believed I was an inspired genius. He let
me copy all my stories on the type-writer at the office, and would
literally steal time for me in which to do it, making Red Top do work I
should have done.
Fred was "in bad" at the yards. It seems that his last "drunk" had
completely exasperated certain heads of the firm, and there was a
general opinion, so Hermann told me, that Fred's head might "come off"
any day now.
I was so worried about this that I tried to warn him. He stuck his
tongue in one cheek and winked at me. Then he said:
"Nora, I have an A No. 1 pull with old man Smith, and there ain't
nobody going to get my job here; but I'm working them for the New York
job. I want to go east."
That made me feel just as badly, for, if Fred was transferred to the
New York branch, what would become of me? I could not go, too, and I
disliked the thought of working under another.
I felt so badly about it that I wrote to Mr. Hamilton, who had not been
to see me for three weeks. I suppose if I had not been working so hard,
I should have felt worse about that, because I had thought he would be
sure to come and see me again soon. But he did not; nor did he even
write to me, though I wrote him four letters. My first letter was a
very foolish one. It was this: