Onoto Watanna

“ Then Marchmont took my arm, and we started.
That interminable walk in the fearful Jamaica heat and sun recurs sometimes to me still, like a hectic breath of hateful remembrance. The penetrating sun beat its hot breath down upon our backs. The sand beneath our feet seemed like living coals, and even when we got into the cooler paths of the wooded country, the closeness and oppressive heaviness of the atmosphere stifled and crushed me.
At intervals the driver of that Burbank carriage would draw up beside us on the road, and Marchmont would entreat me to get in ”

“ There was something so tremendously good about Bennet, so overpoweringly human and great, that I felt the same as I would have felt if a woman had offered to help me. On the other hand, I was desperately in love with Hamilton. I wanted to impress him. I wanted his good opinion. I unconsciously assumed a pose—perhaps that is it—and I had to live up to it. Then I have often thought that almost any woman would have confidently accepted help from Bennet, but might have hesitated to take anything from Mr. Hamilton.
Some men inspire us with instant confidence; we are "on guard" with others. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I saw, in fact, nothing in the world save Roger Hamilton, who had come across the room to me, and, with an odd air almost of proprietorship, had taken me quietly from Chambers.
Without saying a word to each other, we sat for some time in the Y. W. C. A., with girls coming and going. I glanced only once at his face, and then I looked away, for I could not bear his expression. It was like that of the previous night. It was as if he examined me critically, cruelly, not only my face, but even my clothes and my gloved hands. Presently he said in a low voice:
"There are too many people here. ”

“ Of course, alas! that thrill is brief, and soon one finds, with wonder, that the world is actually going on just the same, and, more wonder of wonders! there are still trouble and pain and tragedy and other ugly things crawling about upon the face of the earth. Ah me! They say the weird, seeking sound of a new soul is the most beautiful music on earth to the ears of a mother. I think a poet feels that way toward his first poem or story that comes to life. The ecstasy, the pain, and thrill of creating and bearing—are they not all here, too? ”

“ She was all the things that I was not, a statuesque beauty, with a form like Juno and a face like that of a great sleepy ox. Beside her, what was I? Women like her were the kind men loved. I knew that. Women like me merely teased their fancy and curiosity. We were the small tin toys with which they paused to play.
I crushed that accursed sheet. No, no, she was not better than I. Strip her of her glittering clothes, put her in rags over a wash-tub, and she would have been transformed into a common thing. ”

“ Hermann then told me that Fred had once been jilted by a girl in Milwaukee, and that had started him to drinking.
As the bus took us through the yards, I thought how terrible and sad it was for a man who was in such a condition to be left to his own devices. It was just as if one left a helpless baby to mind himself, or threw a poor sick person out upon the street, expecting him to be cured without treatment. ”

“ Yes, Bob had held me in his arms,—he believed I was to be his wife,—but I was not the thing Roger accused me of being. My relations with Bennet were as pure as a girl's can be. It would have been impossible for a girl to have any other kind of relations with a man like Bennet. I stood bewildered under the storm of his accusations and cruel reproaches, and the revelation of the things he had done for me without my knowledge or consent. ”

“ How I missed Fred! He had made life at the yards tolerable and even amusing for me with his jokes and confidences. And, then, there's a pleasure in working for some one you know approves of you and likes you. Fred did like me. In a way, I don't think any one ever liked me better than poor Fred did.
It makes me sad to think that the best girl friend I ever had, Lolly, and the best man friend, Fred, are now both gone out of this world, where I may have still such a long road to travel. ”

“ Now, look here, Nora, I've got more money than is decent for any one person to have, and I want to spend it on you. I want to give you things— [Pg 237] comforts and luxuries and all the pretty things a girl like you ought to have. If you could see yourself now, you'd realize what a difference even clothes make. And so with other things. I want to take hold of you and make you over. I never wanted to do anything so much in my life before. Now you're going to be a good girl, aren't you, and not deny me the pleasure—the real joy it gives me to do things for you, dear little girl? ”

“ I was better equipped than she to earn a living. For one's mere physical beauty is, after all, a poor and dangerous asset. And Marion was earning her living by her beauty. She was a professional model, getting fifty cents an hour.
I thought of other sisters, one of whom had passed through a tragic experience, and another—the eldest, a girl with more real talent than I—who had been a pitiful invalid all her days. ”

“ Deliver it, Nora! Deliver it!"
"Tell me how! O Lolly, tell me how!"
"Get away from this city; go to New York. Cut that man out of your brain as if he were a malignant cancerous growth. Use the knife of a surgeon, and do it yourself. Soldiers have amputated their own legs and arms upon the battle-field. You can do the same." ”

“ Roger.
Stay in bed! I never felt better in my life. I had my stew, and then I went up-stairs and finished copying my novel.
At noon to the minute Roger returned. He had all sorts of things for me: flowers,—orchids, mind you!—squab, fruit, jelly, and magazines. One would think I was an invalid, and I had to laugh at his look of disapproval when he discovered me busy at work. ”

“ Robert Bennet and George Butler were taking me out and showing me a new world. I was meeting people who were doing things worth while, sweet women and big men, and there were times in my life when I realized that the spell [Pg 297] under which Roger held me was an enchantment that in the end could lead only to degradation or tragedy.
Nevertheless, I could no more break away from his influence than the poor victim of the hypnotist can from the master mind that controls him. What is love, anyhow, but a form of hypnotism? It's an obsession, a true madness. ”

“ The words came with difficulty.
"Damn him!" cried young Verley Marchmont, clenching his hands.
There was a long silence between us after that. He had been kneeling all this time by my chair, and at last he said:
"I don't blame you for leaving this accursed hole, and I wish I were going with you. I wish I were not so desperately poor. Hang it all!" he added, with a poor little laugh. "I don't get much more than you do."
"I don't care anything about money," I said. "I like people for themselves."
"Do you like me, Nora?" He had never called me Nora till this night. ”

“ 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. ”

“ O'Brien, his cigar moving from one side of his mouth to the other, answered the note for me.
"Nothing doing," was his laconic response to Hermann's invitation, and he despatched it by Red Top. He let me out with the five-thirty girls instead of the six, and he said:
"Now step lively, and if you let Hermann catch up with you, I'll fire you in the morning."
I went flying down the aisle with my heart as light as a feather. Next to being in love, there is nothing finer in the world, for a working-girl, than to have a good "job" and to know that some one is "stuck" on you. ”

“ That's a great deal to have. It is sad to think of those we love as in poor surroundings.
I suppose there are people in the world who would smile at the thought of a girl's ecstatic enthusiasm over a piece of pink paper on an electric light in a room in the Chicago Y. W. C. A. Perhaps I myself am now almost snob enough to laugh and mock at my own former ingenuousness. That room, nevertheless, seemed genuinely charming to me. There were two snow-white beds, an oak bureau, oak chairs, oak table, a bright rug on the floor, and simple white curtains at the window. ”

“ Campbell and Sir Henry Drake and other people have—as something queer and amusing, and perhaps he is laughing inside at me." I regretted that I had told him about myself one minute, and the next I was glad that I had. Then suddenly I had an eloquent desire to prove to him that really there was a great deal more to me than he supposed. Down in my heart there was the deep-rooted conviction, which nothing in the world could shake, that I was one of the exceptional human beings of the world, that I was destined to do things worth while. ”

“ My happiness was dashed when he said he had to return to Richmond on the eleven o'clock train. I had been secretly hoping he would remain in Chicago a few days. When I faltered out this hope, he said rather shortly:
"I can only run down here occasionally for a day or a few hours at a time. My affairs keep me in Richmond."
Little things exhilarate me and make me happy, and little things depress me and make me sad. ”

“ Twenty-four men asked me to "go out" with them the first week I was there. I kept a note of this, just to amuse myself and O'Brien, who was vastly interested in the sensation he fatuously believed I was creating. He took a comical pride in my "success"! Ah, dear Fred! No one, not even I, was ever prouder of my later "success" than he. Every day he would ask me, "Well, who's asking you out to-night?" and I would show him my "mash" notes, most of which he confiscated, later, I suspect, to torment their authors.
The men out here did not ask if they could call upon a girl. ”

“ Lolly came in while I was lifting the things from the boxes. I hadn't taken off my suit, and she turned me around to look at me.
"Isn't it stunning, Lolly?" I asked. "And, just think, it was only fifteen dollars, suit, hat, muff, and all."
Lolly's unbelieving glance swept me, then she threw her cigarette down, and said spitefully:
"For the love of Mike, Nora, cut it out! You're a poor little liar!"
"Liar! What do you mean, Lolly Hope?" ”

“ Even in the dark the birds began to call to one another, and when the first pale streak from the slowly rising sun crept stealthily out of the east, these winged little creatures dropped to earth in search of food, and a small, soft, inquiring-eyed squirrel jumped right in the path before me, and stood with uplifted tail and pricked-up head, as if to question my presence there. ”

“ Again, as on that first day in Chicago, at the railway station, I was one of many atoms pouring into buildings so colossal that they seemed cities in themselves. I followed several of the stenographers—only the stenographers rode in the busses; the factory [Pg 139] girls of the yards walked through, as did the men—up a few flights of stairs, and came to a vast office where, I believe, something like three thousand clerks are employed on one floor. Men, women, girls, and boys were passing along, like puppet machines, each to his own desk and chair. ”

“ He laughed, but said seriously:
"Nora, if you play with fire, you'll be burned. Burns leave scars. Scars are ugly things, and I love only pretty things, like my precious little girl."
"Aha!" I said triumphantly, "then you admit it at last." ”

“ In Canada we never say "newspaper work." Journalism seems a politer and more dignified term. To Estelle I said, "I write," thinking that that would be clear; but it was not. She thought I meant I wrote letters by hand, and she said at once:
"Say, if I were you, I'd learn type-writing. You can clip off ten words on the machine to one you can write by hand, and it's dead easy to get a job as a type-writer. Gee! I don't see how you expect to get anything by writing! That's out of date now, girl. Say, where do you come from, anyhow?" ”

“ We arrive at a stage of philosophic despair when we calmly recognize our limitations; but long before we know them, what wild dreams are those that thrill, enthrall, and torment us! Well, the dreams at least were well worth while.
I was now part of a vast, moving world of work, and, strangely enough, I was, in a way, contented. It takes very little to make the average normal girl contented. ”

“ It must be remembered that in Canada we do not encounter the problem of race. One color there is as good as another. Certainly people of Indian extraction are well thought of and esteemed, and my own mother was a foreigner. What should I, a girl who had never before been outside Quebec, and whose experience had been within the narrow confines of home and a small circle, know of race prejudice? ”

“ Hamilton buy clothes for her. She said once he started to do that, he would expect to pay for everything for me, and then, said Lolly, the first thing I knew, people would be saying that he was "keeping" me. She said that I could take dinners, flowers, even jewels from a man,—though in "high society" girls couldn't even do that; but working-girls were more free,—and I could go to the theater and to other places with him; but it was a fatal step when a man began to pay for a girl's room and clothes. ”

“ Chicago's popular writer at the zenith of her fame was not to me a particularly attractive object.
Then there was a celebrated Western author who was a giant in size and a giant in heart. I secretly adored him both as a writer and as a man. He wore his straight hair rather long, and though his face was becoming florid and full, he had a fine, almost Indian-like, profile. He was tremendously popular in Chicago, and Mrs. Martin, my employer, flattered and courted him despite his careless and rather grimy clothes and utterly unmanicured nails. ”

“ He saw that I was depressed, and began to talk teasingly:
"Do you know," he said—we were now at the steps of my boarding-house—"that you are a very fickle little person?"
"I? Why I'm foolishly faithful," I declared.
"I say you are fickle," he asserted with mock seriousness. "Now I know one chap that you used to think the world and all about, but whom you have completely forgotten. ”

“ Now, there really was a fine streak in me, for I did want pretty things (what young girl does not?) , I hated my work, and I loved this man, and wanted above all things on earth to please him.
Lolly said, to jerk one's mind from too much [Pg 245] brooding over one man, one should think of another, I discovered another method of distraction. Pretty clothes are a balm even to a broken heart, and although I was clever, I was also eternally feminine. My things had arrived from the shop, and they were so lovely,—so much lovelier than I had thought,—that I was enchanted. ”

“ If he loved me, would he not want to marry me? Other men, like Bob and Dick, did.
"Roger, tell me this," I said. "Suppose I went to school and then to college, would I be like—other girls—I mean society girls—girls in your class?"
"You're better than they are now. You are in a class all by yourself, Nora." ”