Now my life assumed a new phase. No man like Bennet can come into a
woman's life and not make a deep impression. I have said that Dick
was my "shadow." Bennet was something better than that. He was my
protector, my guide, and my teacher. He did not, as Dick had done,
begin immediately to make love to me, but he came persistently to see
me. Always he brought some book with him, and now for the first time in
my life the real world of poetry began to open its doors for me. I a
poet! Oh, me!
Hamilton had filled my bookshelves with novels, chiefly by French
authors. They were of absorbing interest to me, and they taught me
things just as if I had traveled; but Bennet read to me poetry--Keats,
Shelley, Byron, Browning, Tennyson, Heine, Milton, and others. For
hours I sat listening to the jeweled words. No, I could not write
poetry,--I never shall,--but I had the hungry heart of the poet within
me. I know it; else I could not so vividly, so ardently have loved the
poetry of others.
I cannot think of my acquaintance with Bennet without there running
immediately to my mind, like the refrain of an old song, some of those
exquisite poems he read to me--read so slowly, so clearly, so subtly,
that every word pierced my consciousness and understanding. Else how
could a girl like me have gasped with sheer delight over the "Ode to a
Grecian Urn"? What was there in a poem like that to appeal to a girl of
my history?
When we did not stay in and read, Bennet would take me to some good
theater or concert, and I went several times with him to Hull House.
There twice a week he taught a class in English poetry. The girls in
his class were chiefly foreigners,--Russian Jewesses, Polish and German
girls,--and for the most part they worked in factories and stores; but
they were all intelligent and eager to learn. They made me ashamed of
my own indolence. I used to fancy that most of his pupils were secretly
in love with Bennet. They would look at his inspired young face as if
they greatly admired him, and I felt a sense of flattering pride in
the thought that _he_ liked only me. Oh, I couldn't help seeing that,
though he had not then told me so.
Sometimes he took me over to his rooms. They were two very curious,
low-roofed rooms down in the tenement-house district, completely lined
with books. Here Butler, with his pipe in his loose mouth, used to
entertain me with long talks on Socialism, and once he read me some
of Kipling's poems. That was my first acquaintance with Kipling. It
was an unforgettable experience. In these rooms, too, Bennet read me
"Undine," some of Barrie's stories, and Omar Khayyam.
Those were clean, inspiring days. They almost compensated for
everything else that was sad and ugly in my life. For sad and ugly
things were happening to me every day, and I had had no word, no single
sign, from Mr. Hamilton. I tried to shut him from my mind. I tried hard
to do that, especially as I knew that Robert Bennet was beginning to
care for me too well. Through the day, it was easy enough. I could do
it, too, when Bennet read to me from the poets; but, ah, at night, that
was when he slipped back insidiously upon me! Sometimes I felt that if
I did not see him soon, I should go mad just from longing and desire to
see his dear face and hear the sound of his cruel voice.
I got a position about two weeks after I met Bennet. It was in a steel
firm; I stayed there only two days. There were two other stenographers,
and the second day I was there, the president of the firm decided to
move me from the outer to his private office, to do his work. Both
of the girls looked at each other so significantly when my desk was
carried in that I asked them if anything was the matter. One of them
shrugged her shoulders, and the other said:
"You'll find out for yourself."
Within ten minutes after I entered that inner office I did. I was
taking dictation at a little slat on the desk of the president when
he laid a photograph upon my book, and then, while I sat dumfounded,
trying to look anywhere save at what was before me, he laid more
photographs, one after the other, on top of that first one, which was
the vilest thing I have ever seen in my life.
The girls at the Y. W. C. A. and the girls at the stock-yards used to
talk about their experiences in offices, and we used to laugh at the
angry girls who declared they did this or that to men who insulted
them. As I have written before, I had become hardened to such things,
and when I could, I simply ignored them. They were one of the dirty
things in life that working-girls had to endure. But now, as I sat
at that desk, I felt rushing over me such a surge of primitive and
outraged feeling that I could find no relief save in some fierce
physical action. I seized those photographs, and slammed them into the
face of that leering old satyr.
After that I went from one position to another. I took anything I
could get. Sometimes I left because the conditions were intolerable;
sometimes because they did not pay me; usually I was allowed to go
after a brief trial in which I failed to prove my competence. I was
very bad at figures, and most offices require a certain amount of that
kind of work from their stenographers. These were the places where I
failed.
Of course, changing my position and being out of work so much, I made
little progress, and although I had had only twenty dollars from
Bennet, I was unable to pay him back. I had hoped to by Christmas, now
only a week off.
And now something happened that caused a big change in my life; that
is, it forced me at last to separate from Lolly. For some time she had
been most unhappy, and one evening she confided to me her suspicions of
Chambers. She said she had "turned down" Hermann, who wanted to marry
her, for Chambers, though friends had warned her not to trust him; but
that though he had at times been brutal to her, she adored him. Pacing
up and down the room, she told me that she wished she knew some way to
prove him. It was then that I made my fatal offer. I said:
"Lolly, I could have told you long ago about Chambers. I _know_ he is
no good. If I were you, I'd have nothing more to do with him."
Lolly stopped in her pacing, and stared at me.
"_How_ do you know?" she demanded.
"Because," I said, "he's tried several times to make love to me."
"You lie, Nora Ascough!" she cried out in such a savage way that I was
afraid of her. If I had been wiser, perhaps, I might have reassured her
and let her think I did lie. Then the matter would have ended there;
but I had to plunge in deeper.
"Lolly, I'll prove it to you, if you wish."
"You can't," retorted Lolly, her nostrils dilating.
"Yes, I can, I say. He's coming to-night, isn't he? Well, you stay in
that inner room, by the door. Let me see him alone here. Then you'll
see for yourself."
She considered the suggestion, with her eyes half closed, blowing the
smoke slowly from her lips, and looking at the tip of her cigarette.
Then she shrugged her shoulders and laughed sneeringly.
"The trouble with you, Nora, is that because a lot of muckers at the
Union Stock-Yards got 'stuck' on you, a few poor devils of newspaper
men are a little smitten, and a fast rich man tried to keep you, you
imagine every other man is after you."
I couldn't answer that. It was untrue. None the less, it hurt. I had
never in my life boasted to Lolly about men. I supposed she knew that,
like every other girl who is thrown closely into contact with men, I
naturally got my share of attention. I had long ago realized the exact
value of this. The girls at the yards, for instance, used to say that
the men would even go after a hunchback or a girl that squinted if she
gave them any encouragement. And as for Robert Bennet and Dick, it
was mean of Lolly to refer to them in that contemptuous way. Lolly, I
think, regretted a moment later what she had said. She was as generous
and impulsive as she was hasty in temper. Now she said:
"Forget I said that, Nora. Just for fun I'll try your plan. Of course,
it's ridiculous. Marshall has never looked upon you as anything but
a joke. I mean he thinks you're a funny little thing; but as for
anything else--" Lolly blew forth her cigarette smoke in derision at
the notion.
Chambers came about eight-thirty. They never announced him, but we knew
his double knock, and Lolly slipped into the inner room, but did not
close the door tight.
I had taken up Lolly's mandolin, and now I painfully tried to pick out
a tune on the strings. Chambers stood watching me, smiling, and when I
finally did manage "The Last Rose of Summer," he said:
"Bully for you!"
Then he looked about quickly and said:
"Lolly out?"