Rose of Dutcher's Coolly Part 25

Rose was astonished at Mary, generally so self-contained. She talked as if she had volumes to tell and but short minutes to tell them in. Her cheeks glowed and her eyes grew deep and dark.

"He's here reading law, but he don't need to work. He's got a share in a big mine out there somewhere, which he discovered himself. He just thought he'd try civilization awhile, he said, and so he came to Chicago. He kind o' pokes around the law school (it's in our building--that's where I saw him first, in the elevator), just as an excuse. He hates the law; he told me so. He comes in to see me sometimes. Of course I leave the door open." She smiled. "But it don't make any difference to him. He's just the same here as he is anywhere--I mean he knows how to treat a woman. The school-ma'am said she thought it was terrible to have a man come into your room--the same room you sleep in--but I told her it depended on the man. That settled her, for Owen--I mean Mr. Taylor--don't like her."

Rose listened in silence to this torrent of words from Mary. Her mind was naturally fictive, and she divined the immense world suggested by the girl's incoherent sentences. The mysterious had come to her friend--the "one man of all the world," apparently--a striking personality, quite suited to Mary, with her practical ways and love of fun. It confirmed her in her conviction that a girl must adventure into the city to win a place and a husband.

She rose and put her arms about her friend's neck:

"I'm so glad, Mary."

"O goodness! don't congratulate me. He's never said a word--and maybe he won't. I can't understand him--anyway it's great fun."

A slow step crossed the hall, and a rap at the door nearly took away Mary's breath; for a moment she could not reply, then Mr. Taylor's voice was heard.

"I beg your pardon." He was turning away when Mary sprang up and opened the door.

"O Mr. Taylor, is it you?"

"Yes--I didn't know but you and your friend would like to go out somewhere?"

"Would you, Rose?"

"Not tonight, thank you. But you go. Don't keep in on my account."

Mary struggled a moment, then she smiled with tender archness.

"Very well, thank you, Mr. Taylor. I'll be ready soon." After he had gone she said:

"Perhaps he'll propose!"

Rose glowed sympathetically. "I hope he will."

The next day Rose went down town alone. The wind had veered to the south, the dust blew, and the whole terrifying panorama of life in the streets seemed some way blurred together, and forms of men and animals were like figures in tapestry. The grind and clang and clatter and hiss and howl of the traffic was all about her.

She came upon the river just as the bridge was being opened. Down toward the lake, which had to her all the wonder and expanse of the sea, boats lay thickly, steamers from deep water, long, narrow and black. Excursion boats, gleaming white, and trimmed with s.h.i.+ning bra.s.s, lay beside the wharves, and low-lying tugs, st.u.r.dy, rowdyish little things, pa.s.sed by, floating like ducks and pulling like bull-dogs, guiding great two-masted sailing boats and long, low, grimy steamers, with high decks at the ends. The river ran below, gray-green, covered with floating refuse.

Mountainous buildings stood on either side of the waterway.

The draw, as it began to move, made a noise precisely like an old fas.h.i.+oned thres.h.i.+ng machine--a rising howl, which went to her heart like a familiar voice. Her eyes for a moment released hold upon the scene before her, and took a slant far over the town to the coule farm, and the days when the thres.h.i.+ng machine howled and rattled in the yard came back, and she was rus.h.i.+ng to get dinner ready for the crew.

When the bridge returned to its place she walked slowly across, studying each vista. To the west, other bridges, swarming with people, arched the stream--on each side was equal mystery. These wonderful great boats and their grim brave sailors she had read about, but had never seen. They came from far up the great tumultuous lake, and they were going to anchor somewhere in that wild tangle of masts and chimneys and towering big buildings to the west. They looked as if they might go to the ends of the earth. At the stern of an outgoing boat four sailors were pulling at a rope, the leader singing a wild, thrilling song in time to the action.

So it was--the wonderful and the terrifying appealed to her mind first.

In all the city she saw the huge and the fierce. She perceived only contrasts. She saw the ragged newsboy and the towering policeman. She saw the rag-pickers, the street vermin, with a shudder of pity and horror, and she saw also the gorgeous show windows of the great stores.

She saw the beautiful new gowns and hats, and she saw also the curious dress of swart Italian girls scavenging with baskets on their arms.

Their faces were old and grimy, their voices sounded like the chattered colloquies of monkeys in the circus.

It all seemed a battlefield. There was no hint of repose or home in it all. People were just staying here like herself, trying to get work, trying to make a living, trying to make a name. They had left their homes as she had, and though she conceived of them as having a foot-hold she could not imagine them having reached security. The home-life of the city had not revealed itself to her.

She made her way about the first few blocks below Water street, looking for Dr. Herrick's address. It was ten o'clock, and the streets were in a frenzy of exchange. The sidewalks were brooks, the streets rivers of life which curled into doors and swirled around mountainous buildings.

It was almost pathetic to see how helpless she seemed in the midst of these alien sounds. It took away from her the calm, almost scornful, self-reliance which characterized her in familiar surroundings. Her senses were as acute as a hare's and sluiced in upon her a bewildering flood of sights and sounds. She did not appear childish, but she seemed slow and stupid, which of course she was not. She thought and thought till she grew sick with thought. She struggled to digest all that came to her, but it was like trampling sand; she apparently gained nothing by her toil.

The streets led away into thunderous tunnels, beyond which some other strange h.e.l.l of sound and stir imaginatively lay. The brutal voices of drivers of cabs and drays a.s.saulted her. The clang of gongs drew her attention, now here, now there, and her anxiety to understand each sound and to appear calm added to her confusion.

She heard crashes and yells that were of murder and sudden death. It was the crash of a falling bundle of sheet iron, but she knew not that. She looked around thinking to see some savage battle scene.

She saw women with painted faces and bleached hair whom she took to be those mysterious and appalling women who sell themselves to men. They were in fact simple-minded shop girls or vulgar little housewives with sad lack of taste.

Every street she crossed, she studied, looking both up and down it, in the effort to see some end of its mystery. They all vanished in lurid, desolate distance, save toward the lake. Out there she knew, the water lay serene and blue.

This walk was to her like entrance into war. It thrilled and engaged her at every turn. She was in the center of human life. To win here was to win all she cared to have.

It was a relief to pa.s.s into the rotunda of the splendid building in which Dr. Herrick's office was. Outside the war sounded, and around her men hastened. She entered the elevator as one in a dream. The man hustled her through the door without ceremony and clanged the door as if it were a prison gate. They soared to the ninth floor like a balloon suddenly liberated, and the attendant fairly pushed her out.

"Here's your floor--Herrick, to the left."

Rose was humiliated and indignant, but submitted. The hallway along which she moved was marble and specklessly clean. On each side doors of gla.s.s with letters in black told of the occupations of the tenants.

She came at length to the half-open door of Dr. Herrick's office and timidly entered. A young girl came forward courteously.

"Would you like to see the Doctor?" she asked in a soft voice.

"Yes, please. I have a letter to her from Dr. Thatcher of Madison."

"O! well, I will take it right in. Be seated, please."

This seemed good treatment, and the soft voice of the girl was very grateful after the hoa.r.s.e war-cries of the street. Rose looked around the little room with growing composure and delight. It was such a dainty little waiting room, and argued something attractive in Dr. Herrick.

"Come right in," the girl said on returning. "The Doctor is attending to her mail, but she will see you for a few moments."

Rose entered the second and larger room, and faced a small graceful woman, of keen, alert gaze. She appeared to be about thirty-five years of age. She shook hands briskly, but not warmly.

Her hand was small and firm and her tone quick and decisive.

"How-d'-you-do! Sit down! I had a note from Dr. Thatcher the other day saying I might expect you."

Rose took a chair while the Doctor studied her, sitting meanwhile with small graceful head leaning on one palm, her elbow on the corner of her desk. No woman's eyes ever searched Rose like those of this little woman, and she rebelled against it inwardly, as Dr. Herrick curtly asked:

"Well, now, what can I do for you? Dr. Thatcher thought I could do something for you."

Rose was too dazed to reply. This small, resolute, brusque woman was a world's wonder to her. She looked down and stammered.

"I don't know--I--thought maybe you could help me to find out what I could do."

The Doctor studied her for an instant longer. She saw a large, apparently inexperienced girl, a little sullen and a little embarra.s.sed--probably stupid.

"Don't you know what you want to do?"

"No--that is, I want to write," confessed Rose.