Now my life assumed a new phase. No man like Bennet can come into a woman's life and not make a deep impression. I have said that Dick was my "shadow." Bennet was something better than that. He was my protector, my guide, and my teacher. He did not, as Dick had done, begin immediately to make love to me, but he came persistently to see me. Always he brought some book with him, and now for the first time in my life the real world of poetry began to open its doors for me. I a poet! Oh, me!
Hamilton had filled my bookshelves with novels, chiefly by French authors. They were of absorbing interest to me, and they taught me things just as if I had traveled; but Bennet read to me poetry—Keats, Shelley, Byron, Browning, Tennyson, Heine, Milton, and others. For hours I sat listening to the jeweled words. No, I could not write poetry,—I never shall,—but I had the hungry heart of the poet within me. I know it; else I could not so vividly, so ardently have loved the poetry of others.
I cannot think of my acquaintance with Bennet without there running immediately to my mind, like the refrain of an old song, some of those exquisite poems he read to me—read so slowly, so clearly, so subtly, that every word pierced my consciousness and understanding. Else how could a girl like me have gasped with sheer delight over the "Ode to a Grecian Urn"? What was there in a poem like that to appeal to a girl of my history?
When we did not stay in and read, Bennet would take me to some good theater or concert, and I went several times with him to Hull House. There twice a week he taught a class in English poetry. The girls in his class were chiefly foreigners,—Russian Jewesses, Polish and German girls,—and for the most part they worked in factories and stores; but they were all intelligent and eager to learn. They made me ashamed of my own indolence. I used to fancy that most of his pupils were secretly in love with Bennet. They would look at his inspired young face as if they greatly admired him, and I felt a sense of flattering pride in the thought that he liked only me. Oh, I couldn't help seeing that, though he had not then told me so.
Sometimes he took me over to his rooms. They were two very curious, low-roofed rooms down in the tenement-house district, completely lined with books. Here Butler, with his pipe in his loose mouth, used to entertain me with long talks on Socialism, and once he read me some of Kipling's poems. That was my first acquaintance with Kipling. It was an unforgettable experience. In these rooms, too, Bennet read me "Undine," some of Barrie's stories, and Omar Khayyam.
Those were clean, inspiring days. They almost compensated for everything else that was sad and ugly in my life. For sad and ugly things were happening to me every day, and I had had no word, no single sign, from Mr. Hamilton. I tried to shut him from my mind. I tried hard to do that, especially as I knew that Robert Bennet was beginning to care for me too well. Through the day, it was easy enough. I could do it, too, when Bennet read to me from the poets; but, ah, at night, that was when he slipped back insidiously upon me! Sometimes I felt that if I did not see him soon, I should go mad just from longing and desire to see his dear face and hear the sound of his cruel voice.
I got a position about two weeks after I met Bennet. It was in a steel firm; I stayed there only two days. There were two other stenographers, and the second day I was there, the president of the firm decided to move me from the outer to his private office, to do his work. Both of the girls looked at each other so significantly when my desk was carried in that I asked them if anything was the matter. One of them shrugged her shoulders, and the other said:
"You'll find out for yourself."
Within ten minutes after I entered that inner office I did. I was taking dictation at a little slat on the desk of the president when he laid a photograph upon my book, and then, while I sat dumfounded, trying to look anywhere save at what was before me, he laid more photographs, one after the other, on top of that first one, which was the vilest thing I have ever seen in my life.
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. I seized those photographs, and slammed them into the face of that leering old satyr.