Part 41 (2/2)
Ah, well, I must play my own hand. She shall regret this night's work, if I marry rank or money.
It is so strange how every one prospers except poor, baffled, loveless me, who have the greatest gift of all. I wonder if it is really Nature's law that the very beautiful must suffer; if this is her way of equalizing the lot of the poor and plain and lowly; her law of compensation to make the splendid creatures walk lonely and in sorrow all their days while plain ones coo and are happy. Was Uncle Tim right about the little brown partridges?
If I were superst.i.tious or easily disheartened, I should say--but I am neither! I shall succeed. I will take my place by right of beauty or die fighting! If I see Lord Strathay again, he shall marry me within a week.
They shall call it ”one of those romantic weddings.”
I can't live here alone. I have nothing to fall back upon; nothing but a father who doesn't answer my letters, and Judge Baker who lectures me in polysyllables, and John Burke--poor old John; what a good fellow he is!-- who simply loves me; and Mrs. Van Dam, who was my friend as long as she hoped to rise by my beauty to higher place, but who has headaches now; and Mrs. Marmaduke--
I don't understand her desertion.
Ah--yes, there is another, my constant companion now.
He is an old man, thin and sallow. He lies p.r.o.ne on the floor, staring at me with dead, sightless eyes. He whispers from muted lips ”Delilah!” and the sound of it is in my ears day and night; day and night!
My G.o.d! It will drive me mad!
CHAPTER VII.
LETTERS AND SCIENCE.
May 29.
I've revised my opinion of the newspapers. The Star has done me a good turn, a great service.
I had tried to borrow money of Cadge, for the third time, and she told me she had none--which was true, or she would have let me have it. Then she said:--
”Why don't you sell a story to some paper--either something very scientific, or else, 'Who's the Handsomest Man in New York?' or--”
”I think I ought to get something from them, after all the stuff they've printed; but how? To whom do I go?”
”n.o.body! Heavens!” cried Cadge. ”Want to create an earthquake on Park Row?
You're a disturber of traffic. Let me manage. I know the ropes and it helps me at the office to bring in hot features. They might give you fifty for it, too.”
And I actually did get $50 for digging out of the text books an essay on Rats as Disseminators of Bubonic Plague; they only used a little of it, but the pictures and the signature and the nonsense about me as a scientist were the real thing, Cadge said.
The money, the money, the money was the real thing to me! It has given me a breathing spell--. that and the hundred for signing a patent medicine testimonial; but I had to sacrifice more than half I got from both sources to pacify greedy creditors. And a month between remittances, and so little when they come! Father _can't_ refuse to mortgage; why doesn't he write to me?
The day I took the article to Cadge I had a long talk with her and with Pros. Reid, who spends at the eyrie every hour he can spare. One must have some society or go crazy, though perhaps they aren't exactly what I'd choose if my kingdom had opened to me.
Pros. has shrewd eyes that inspire confidence--gray eyes with the tired night work look in them. He talks amazing slang at times, at others not at all; and I wish every one might be as kind and thoughtful.
I could think of nothing all the evening but my bills, and at last I was moved to ask him abruptly:--
”What can a girl do to get money, Pros.?”
”'Pends on the girl.”
”This girl; a somewhat educated person; and grasping. One who wants much money and wants it right now.”
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