"Before you met Bennet?"
Again I nodded.
He laughed bitterly.
"Personally I suspected you from the first. I had an intuitive feeling
that there was something under cover about you. I never could see what
Bennet saw in you. He was head and shoulders above you in every way.
You're not in his class at all. I don't mean that in the cheap social
sense--simply morally. Bennet's been my friend for years. I know him.
There's no one like him. It's damned hard luck, I can tell you, for me
to see him come up against a proposition like you. According to your
own story, you must have deceived him from the first. Women like you--"
He stopped there, for I was crying so bitterly that mama came in to see
what the trouble was. Margaret was listening all the time at the head
of the stairs. Butler then just clapped his hat on his head, picked up
his stick, and went.
And that was the opinion of me of one of the brightest men in the
United States, a man who subsequently became internationally famous.
Nothing could have equaled the contempt of his looks or his cutting
words. He had stripped me bare. For one startling moment the scales
dropped from my eyes. I _saw_ myself! And I shrank before what I
saw--shrank as only a weak coward can.
O'Brien had called me a "dead-game sport"; Roger once said I was a
"mongrel by blood, but a thoroughbred by instinct"; Lolly had called me
a "snake"; but George Butler, that keen-sighted, clear-headed man, knew
me for something to be despised! What did I think of myself? Like every
one else, I was capable of staring wide-eyed at my own shortcomings
only for a little while, and then, like every one else, I charitably
and hastily and in fear drew the curtains before me, and tried to hide
myself behind them.
I pitied Bennet, whom I had hurt; but I had a vaster pity for myself,
whom Roger had hurt.
Perhaps it will not be out of place for me to say here that Bennet
achieved all that I tried to do. Such fame (if fame I may call it) as
came to me later was not of a solid or enduring kind. My work showed
always the effect of my life--my lack of training, my poor preparation
for the business of writing, my dense ignorance. I can truly say of my
novels that they are strangely like myself, unfulfilled promises. But
Bennet! He climbed to the top despite me, and there he will always be.
It may well be believed that the days that followed were unhappy ones
for me. Not only had I lost my two best friends, Bennet and Lolly, but
Roger had disappeared, as it were, completely from my life.
I went to Mr. Townsend's office, as he had told me to do, but I did not
accept the "arrangements" that Roger had made for me, and this despite
the very earnest exhortations of his lawyer. I did not want, and I
would not touch, the money that Roger had directed should be put in
banks for me. He ought to have known I would not do that.
All day long my face burned. Something within me, too, was burning
like a wild-fire. A thousand thoughts and ideas came rushing upon me.
Everything that Roger had ever done for or said to me recurred to my
mind, and jumbled with these thoughts came others of Bennet.
His was the most honest heart in the world. The little he had done for
me had all been open and above board. He had not even declared his love
for me until the day I was out of his debt, and free, therefore, to
give him an honest answer.
But Roger! When I would not take what he tried to force upon me, he had
found tricky channels through which they would fall upon me, anyway,
and then had taunted me with their possession!
When I got home from work that night I asked Margaret if she knew that
Roger had been paying for most of my clothes. She answered, with a
chuckle:
"Naturally."
"What made you think that?" I asked.
"Because no girl working as you are could afford such things. That
Paquin gown alone is easily worth two hundred dollars, if not more."
"I paid twenty for it," I said.
She laughed. I told her about the shop where there were "bargains," and
she, as Lolly had done, laughed in my face.
"No shop," she said, "could give you a bargain in sables such as you
have."
I had a brown fur set. I did not know they were sables. I had been less
than a year in America. I was just eighteen. I came from a large, poor
family. I did not know the value of clothes or jewels any more than
poor, green Irish or Polish immigrant girls would know it in that time.
What could I know of sables?
We lived very quietly now. I had to stay at home, as I had promised
Roger to go out with no one till he returned. And then, of course,
Bennet and Butler no longer came, and I abandoned my music lessons. I
had never taken more than a half-hearted interest in them.
A restless spirit possessed me at this time, and I could not settle
my mind to anything. I used to wander about Roger's rooms, with my
thoughts disjointed and jumbled. I thought I was brooding over his
absence, and then again I thought I was worrying about Bob. Then one
day as I stood staring into the leaping flames of that fireplace,
almost like an inspiration there came to me a great idea for a story.
For an hour I sat staring into the flames, the story slowly taking root
in my mind, and the fascinating plot and characters unraveling before
me. It was ten o'clock at night when I began to write, and I worked
without stopping till the dawn.
That was how I began to write my first novel. I lived now with only one
avid thought in my mind--the story I was writing. It infatuated me as
nothing I had ever done before had infatuated me.
I resigned my position, and took a half-day place. I had a little over
a hundred dollars saved, and the new position paid me seven dollars a
week. As I supplied my own type-writer, I had the privilege of taking
outside work in the afternoons.
I think Mr. Forman was really relieved when I told him I had decided to
go, though he asked me anxiously whether I had consulted Mr. Hamilton
about it. I said that I had written and told him. I had done my work
there adequately (he gave me an excellent reference), but he had
dismissed a faithful secretary, to whom he was attached, to make a
place for me at Mr. Hamilton's request. I never knew this when I took
that position, else I would not have taken it.
I left because of what Roger had said, for one thing. I preferred not
to be under obligations to him for my position. Besides, I wanted a
little more time in which to write my novel. The seven a week just paid
for my board, and I had enough saved to carry me along otherwise.
My new position was in a school, a sort of dramatic school where
calisthenics, fencing, and other things were also taught. I had a
chance to see something of the young men and women who were studying
there, mostly of wealthy families. The courses were very expensive. A
great many Chicago society women took fencing lessons there, and one
of them was kind enough to offer to pay for lessons for me. I would
have liked to learn, but I could not afford the time. Every minute
that I had away from the school I gave to my precious novel. I used
to get home about two. I'd have a glass of milk and a cracker for my
luncheon, and then I would write until six. Then came dinner, and then
again I wrote, sometimes till as late as midnight. I wrote my novel in
twenty-two days. It is impossible for me to describe my delight and
satisfaction when I put the last word to my manuscript.
Then for a long time I sat by the fire and re-read my story, and it
seemed to me I had created a treasure. Roger, who professed to know
something about palmistry, had averred there was a gold-mine in my
hand, and he said that it was he who was going to put it there; but
when I read my story that night I had a prophetic feeling that my mine
would be of my own creating.