When Eleanor stepped out on Randolph one sunny afternoon with her first week’s pay envelope in her hand she felt pretty happy. She had such a sharp little smile on her thin lips that a couple of people turned to look at her as she walked along ducking her head into the gusty wind to keep her hat from being blown off. She turned down Michigan Avenue towards the Auditorium looking at the bright shop windows and the verypale blue sky and the piles of dovegray fluffy clouds over the lake and the white blobs of steam from the locomotives. She went into the deep amberlit lobby of the Auditorium Annex, sat down all by herself at a wicker table in the corner of the lounge and sat there a long while all by herself drinking a cup of tea and eating buttered toast, ordering the waiter about with a crisp little refined monied voice.
Then she went to Moody House, packed her things and moved to the Eleanor Club, where she got a room for seven-fifty with board. But the room wasn’t much better and everything still had the gray smell of a charitable institution, so the next week she moved again to a small residential hotel on the North Side where she got room and board for fifteen a week. As that only left her a balance of three-fifty — it had turned out that the job only paid twenty, which actually only meant eighteen-fifty when insurance was taken off — she had to go to see her father again. She so impressed him with her rise in the world and the chances of a raise that he promised her five a week, although he was only making twenty himself and was planning to marry again, to a Mrs. O’Toole, a widow with five children who kept a boardinghouse out Elsdon way.
Eleanor refused to go to see her future stepmother, and made her father promise to send her the money in a moneyorder each week, as he couldn’t expect her to go all the way out to Elsdon to get it. When she left him she kissed him on the forehead and made him feel quite happy. All the time she was telling herself that this was the very last time.
Then she went back to the Hotel Ivanhoe and went up to her room and lay on her back on the comfortable brass bed looking round at her little room with its white woodwork and its pale yellow wallpaper with darker satiny stripes and the lace curtains in the window and the heavy hangings. There was a crack in the plaster of the ceiling and the carpet was worn, but the hotel was very refined, she could see that, full of old couples living on small incomes and the help were very elderly and polite and she felt at home for the first time in her life.
When Eveline Hutchins came back from Europe the next Spring wearing a broad hat with a plume on it, full of talk of the Salon des Tuileries and the Rue de la Paix and museums and art exhibitions and the opera, she found Eleanor a changed girl. She looked older than she was, dressed quietly and fashionably, had a new bitter sharp way of talking. She was thoroughly established in the interior decorating department at Marshall Field’s and expected a raise any day, but she wouldn’t talk about it. She had given up going to classes or haunting the Art Institute and spent a great deal of time with an old maiden lady who also lived at the Ivanhoe who was reputed to be very rich and very stingy, a Miss Eliza Perkins.
The first Sunday she was back Eleanor had Eveline to tea at the hotel and they sat in the stuffy lounge talking in refined whispers with the old lady. Eveline asked about Eric and Maurice, and Eleanor supposed that they were all right, but hadn’t seen them much since Eric had lost his job at Marshall Field’s. He wasn’t turning out so well as she had hoped, she said. He and Maurice had taken to drinking a great deal and going round with questionable companions, and Eleanor rarely got a chance to see them. She had dinner every evening with Miss Perkins and Miss Perkins thought a great deal of her and bought her clothes and took her with her driving in the park and sometimes to the theater when there was something really worth while on, Minnie Maddern Fiske or Guy Bates Post in an interesting play. Miss Perkins was the daughter of a wealthy saloon keeper and had been played false in her youth by a young lawyer whom she had trusted to invest some money for her and whom she had fallen in love with. He had run away with another girl and a number of cash certificates. Just how much she had left Eleanor hadn’t been able to find out, but as she always took the best seats at the theater and liked going to dinner at expensive hotels and restaurants and hired a carriage by the half day whenever she wanted one, she gathered that she must still be well off.
After they had left Miss Perkins to go to the Hutchinses for supper, Eveline said: “Well, I declare — I don’t see what you see in that… that little old maid… And here I was just bursting to tell you a million things and to ask you a million questions… I think it was mean of you.”
“I’m very devoted to her, Eveline. I thought you’d be interested in meeting any dear friend of mine.”
“Oh, of course I am, dear, but, gracious, I can’t make you out.” “Well, you won’t have to see her again, though I could tell by her manner that she thought you were lovely.”
Walking from the Elevated station to the Hutchinses it was more like old times again. Eleanor told about the hard feelings that were growing between Mr. Spotmann and Mrs. Potter and how they both wanted her to be on their side, and made Eveline laugh, and Eveline confessed that on the Kroonland coming back she had fallen very much in love with a man from Salt Lake City, such a relief after all those foreigners, and Eleanor teased her about it and said he was probably a Mormon and Eveline laughed and said, No, he was a judge, and admitted that he was married already. “You see,” said Eleanor, “of course he’s a Mormon.” But Eveline said that she knew he wasn’t and that if he’d divorce his wife she’d marry him in a minute. Then Eleanor said she didn’t believe in divorce and if they hadn’t gotten to the door they would have started quarrelling.
That winter she didn’t see much of Eveline. Eveline had many beaux and went out a great deal to parties and Eleanor used to read about her on the society page Sunday mornings. She was very busy and often too tired at night even to go to the theater with Miss Perkins. The row between Mrs. Potter and Mr. Spotmann had come to a head and the management had moved Mrs. Potter to another department and she had let herself plunk into an old Spanish chair and had broken down and cried right in front of the customers and Eleanor had had to take her to the dressing room and borrow smelling salts for her and help her do up her peroxide hair into the big pompadour again and consoled her by saying that she would probably like it much better over in the other building anyway. After that Mr. Spotmann was very goodnatured for several months. He occasionally took Eleanor out to lunch with him and they had a little joke that they laughed about together about Mrs. Potter’s pompadour wobbling when she’d cried in front of the customers. He sent Eleanor out on many little errands to wealthy homes, and the customers liked her because she was so refined and sympathetic and the other employees in the department hated her and nicknamed her “teacher’s pet.” Mr. Spotmann even said that he’d try to get her a percentage on commissions and talked often about giving her that raise to twenty-five a week.