I felt ashamed of that letter after I mailed it. So then I sent another
to say I didn't mean it, and then I sent another immediately to say
that I did.
Then, for a time, as I received no answers, I didn't write to him,
but tried to forget him in my writing. It's a fact that I was fairly
successful. Once I started upon a story, my mind centered upon nothing
else; but as soon as I was through with it, I would begin to think
about him again, and I suppose he really was in my mind all the time.
But to get back to Fred. I wrote Mr. Hamilton that Fred was likely
to be transferred to the New York office, and in that event he would
take me with him. Of course it would be a fine opportunity for me, as
all the best publishing houses and magazines were in New York, and I
would have a chance to submit my work directly to the editors. Then,
too, if Fred was placed in charge of the New York offices, it would be
much pleasanter than in the stock-yards, since there would be merely a
handful of clerks. He never answered that letter, either. I wondered
why he never wrote to me. His silence made me blue and then reckless.
Lolly, who by this time knew all about Mr. Hamilton, offered me her
usual consolation and advice. The consolation was a cigarette, but I
didn't care for it at all. Cigarettes choked me every time I tried
to smoke them, and I couldn't for the life of me understand why she
liked them. She must have smoked a dozen packages a day, for she
smoked constantly. Her pretty fingers were nicotine-stained, and I've
known her even in the night to get up and smoke. So I could not accept
Lolly's consolatory cigarette. I did, however, follow her advice in a
way. She said:
"Nora, the only way to forget one man is to interest yourself in
another--or many others."
So toward the end of the month I began to go about with some of Lolly's
friends.
They took me to dinners, theaters, and some social and Bohemian clubs
and dances. At one of these clubs I met Margaret Kingston, a woman
lawyer, who became my lifelong friend. I don't know how old she was,
but to me then she seemed very "grown-up." I dare say she was no more
than forty or forty-five, though her hair was gray. She was a big woman
physically, mentally, and of heart. Good-humored, full of sentiment,
and with a fine, clear brain, I could not but be attracted to her at
once. She was talented, too. She wrote, she painted, she was a fine
musician, and a good orator. She was a socialist, and when very much
excited, declared she was also an anarchist. With all her talents,
possibly because of a certain impractical and sort of vagabond streak
in her, she was always poor, hard up, and scraping about to make both
ends meet.
She came over to the table where I was sitting with Lolly and Hermann
and a newspaper man, and she said she wanted to know the "little girl
with the black eyes." That was I. We liked each other at once, just as
Lolly and I had liked each other. I form attachments that way, quickly
and instinctively, and I told her much about myself, my writing, etc.,
so that she became at once interested in me and invited me to her
house. She said she "kept house" with another "old girl."
I went to see them that very next night. They had a pretty house on
G---- Avenue. Mrs. Kingston took me through the place. I suppose
I looked so longingly at those lovely rooms that she asked me if
I wouldn't like to come and live with them. She said she needed a
couple of "roomers" to help with the expenses, and offered me a dear
little room--so dainty and cozy!--for only seven dollars a week, with
board. There were to be no other boarders, so she said; but there was
a suite of two rooms and a bath in front, and these she intended to
rent without board. She laughingly said that as these rooms were so
specially fine, she'd "soak the affluent person who took them" enough
to carry our expenses. I wanted badly to move in at once, but I was
afraid Lolly would be offended, so I said I'd see about it.
On that very first visit to Mrs. Kingston, who asked me, by the way, to
call her "Margaret"--she said she felt younger when people called her
that; and if it didn't sound so ugly, she would even like to be called
"Mag"--I met Dick Lawrence, a _Tribune_ reporter.
One never knows why one person falls in love with another. See how I
loved Hamilton despite his frankly telling me he was only "interested"
in me. Dick Lawrence fell in love with me, and just as Hermann was
Lolly's shadow, so Dick became mine. He was as ambitious as I, and
quite as impractical and visionary. He wrote astonishingly clever
things, but never stuck at anything long enough to succeed finally. He
was a born wanderer, just like my father, and although still in his
early twenties, had been well over the world. At this time the woes of
Cuba occupied the attention of the American press, and Lawrence was
trying to get out there to investigate conditions. This was just prior
to the war.
I never really thought he would go, and was much astonished when only
two weeks after I met him he turned up one night for "two purposes,"
as he said. The first was to tell me that he loved me, and the second
to bid me good-by. Some newspaper syndicate was sending him to Cuba.
Dick asked me if I would marry him. I liked him very much. He carried
me away with his eloquent stories of what he was going to do. Moreover
I was sorry to think of his going out to hot and fever-wracked Cuba,
among those supposedly fiendish Spaniards; also he reminded me of
Verley Marchmont, so that I could not help accepting him. You see, I
had given up all hope of hearing from Mr. Hamilton again. He had not
answered my letters. I was terribly lonesome and hungry for some one
to care for me. Dick was a big, wholesome, splendid-looking boy, and
his tastes were similar to mine. Then he said he'd "move mountains," if
only I'd become engaged to him. He appeared to me a romantic figure as
I pictured him starting upon that perilous journey.
The long and short of it is, that I said, "All right." Whereupon Dick
gave me a ring--not a costly one, for he was not rich--and then, yes,
he kissed me several times. I won't deny that I liked those kisses.
I would have given anything in the world to have Mr. Hamilton kiss
me; but, as I said, I had reached a reckless stage, where I believed
I should not see him again, and next to being kissed by the man you
love, it's pleasant to be kissed by a man who loves you. However, that
may be with his strong young arms about me and his fervent declaration
that he loved me, I felt comforted and important.
Meantime Lolly came in soon after we were engaged, and she had a party
of men with her. Dick made me promise to tell no one. He sailed the
next morning for Cuba. I never saw him again.
When I told Lolly about my engagement she laughed, and told me to
"forget it." She said Dick had been on her paper a while, and she knew
him well. She said he never took girls seriously, and although he did
seem "hard hit" by me, he'd soon get over it once he got among the
pretty Cuban and Spanish _señoritas_. That was a dubious outlook for
me, I must say. Just the same, I liked to wear his ring, and I felt a
new dignity.
It's queer, but in thinking of Mr. Hamilton at this time I felt a
vindictive sort of satisfaction that I was now engaged. It was good to
know that even if he didn't love me enough to answer my letters, some
one did.
One day Fred came in very late from luncheon. I thought at first from
something strange in his attitude that he had been drinking again, but
he suddenly swung around in his seat and said:
"Do you know Mott?"
"No. Who is he?"
"Manager of the ---- Department."
"I don't know him by name," I said. "Point him out to me."
Fred said ominously:
"That's him; but he's not looking quite his usual handsome self."
I saw a man several departments off who even from that distance looked
as if his face and nose were swollen and cut.
"Then you never went out with him?" demanded Fred.
"Why, of course not," I declared. "I've never been out with any yards
men except you and Hermann. You know that."
"I thought so. Now look a-here," and he showed me his fists. The skin
was off the knuckles, and they had an otherwise battered look.
"That son of a blank," said Fred, "boasted that you had been out with
him. I knew that he lied, for no decent girl would be seen with the
likes of him; so I soaked him such a swig in the nose that he'll not
blow it again for a month."
I tell this incident because it seems to be a characteristic example
of what certain contemptible men say about girls whom they do not even
know. I have heard of men who deliberately boasted of favors from girls
who despised them and who assailed the character of girls who had
snubbed them. This was my first experience, and my only one of this
kind. That a man I had not known existed would talk lightly about me
in a bar-room full of men seemed to me a shameful and cruel thing. That
a man who did know me had defended me with his fists thrilled and moved
me. At that moment I almost loved Fred.
This incident, however, thoroughly disgusted me with everything
connected with the yards. I made up my mind that I would go with Fred
to New York. We talked it over, and he said that even if the firm would
not send me, he himself would engage me after he was settled there. So
I began to plan to leave Chicago, though when I paused to think of Mr.
Hamilton I grew miserable. Still, the thought of the change excited
me. Lolly said I'd soon forget him--I knew I wouldn't--and that there
was nothing like a change of scene to cure one of an infatuation of
that kind. She always called my love for Hamilton "infatuation," and
pretended never to regard it as anything serious. She said I was a
hero-worshipper, and made idols of unworthy clay and endowed them with
impossible attributes and virtues. She said girls like me never really
loved a man at all. We loved an image that we ourselves created.
I knew better. In my love I was simply a woman and nothing else, and
as a woman, not an idealist, I loved Hamilton. I never pretended he
was perfect. Indeed, I saw his faults from the first, but despite his
faults, not because of them, I loved him.