In September we were all engaged to be living pictures by a man who was putting them on in vaudeville houses. The subjects represented were strictly proper ones, such as “Youth,” “Psyche,” “The Angelus,” “Rock of Ages,” etc. We received fifteen dollars a week. As we lived cheaply and men were always taking us out to dinner, our expenses were really small, and although Lil urged me to get some new clothes, I paid off my debt to Lu Frazer.
I suppose I ought to have been contented, but the work seemed stupid to me. I tired of the everlasting talk of chorus girls. They all seemed to have but one interest, and that was the stage. Mind you not acting, but the stage and all the cheap shop talk that goes with it. What is more, I was weary of Lil and her girl friends and their men friends. They sat up at the little flat so late that it was almost impossible to sleep; and there was too much drink and crazy laughter. It worked upon my nerves and I began to long for the atmosphere of the studios once more. I thought that posing for the artists was, after all, preferable to this cheap “acting.” So when an offer came to me of twenty-five dollars a week as a show girl in a popular “musical show,” I refused it, although Lil and the other girls exclaimed enviously over my “luck.” They seemed to think that I was out of my senses and shrieked at me:
“What on earth do you want then?” And I replied wearily:
“I don’t know myself. I guess I just want to be let alone.”
How those girls did exclaim at that! Apparently, to them, I thought myself better than they were; but indeed this was not the case. I just realized that our interests were different. What seemed exciting and fine to them, seemed to me just stupid, and the miserable lot of little Willie boys who were always hovering about us with their everlasting cigarettes and silly short coats and foolish hats disgusted me. The artists for whom I had worked in Boston were men.
Thus I decided to leave Lil. Anyway there was some talk of their all going out with a road show and they expected to give up the flat soon.
XLI
I HAD had a furious letter from Reggie the day after I arrived in New York, and we had been quarreling by letter ever since. He accused me of deliberately leaving Boston when I knew that he was coming and he said: “It was a low-down trick and I shall never forgive you.” In his anger he also wrote that perhaps the reason for my leaving was that I knew that he would find out the kind of life I had been living there. He wrote:
“I met a few of your ‘friends’—a low-down bartender and a store clerk (Poor Billy Boyd’s room-mate, I suppose) and let me compliment you on your choice of associates. Your tastes certainly have not changed.”
I did not answer that first letter; but he wrote me another, apologizing, and at the same time insinuating things. To that second letter I did reply, hotly. And so it went on between us.