Woman Without Love?/Chapter 7
Chapter VII
It was early August when Louella Leota arrived in Chicago for the Columbian Exposition. She was a vision of loveliness, dressed in white. She was twenty years old, beautifully formed, with a wasp-like waist and tiny white straw hat. She had a gracious smile and eyes of irresistible dark splendor.
With difficulty she located a room in a rather disreputable house not far from the fair grounds, about seven miles south of the main business section of the city. As usual she paid an exorbitant rate for it. But she did not argue. Louella always liked rooms in a house kept by a near-sighted landlady. In the event of certain emergencies arising she would not be molested. She was a student of human nature. She could read faces. She made no mistake in her boarding places.
The World's Fair grounds were frequently referred to as "The White City" and she had the idea that possibly she might be able to make it slightly red.
That afternoon she set out to explore the six hundred acre fair grounds which spread for more than a mile along the Lake. It was hard to credit the fact that that City of Beauty had only a short time before been a stretch of wild flat, almost treeless ground, much of it swampy. The transformation had been a Herculean task but landscape gardeners had attacked it nobly. Not even the famed Genii of Aladdin could have performed the task more magically. Wide Avenues were created and set with stately trees. The Court of Honor was two thousand feet in length and seven hundred feet wide. In its centre was a basin of water emptying into a canal that flowed between Machinery Hall and the Agricultural Building. Louella was entranced by everything.
She had never beheld a panorama so magnificent. Here was Fairyland. Every moment she expected a tiny figure to fly down and perch upon her shoulder.
At last she grew tired and stopped at a tea-room for some buttered toast and coffee. It was good to sit down and rest awhile. The kaleidoscope of beauty was fatiguing.
She could not help smiling, as she mused, "Six hundred acres? This place covers six hundred acres! My God, a girl would have to possess rare talent to parade this beat satisfactorily."
Abruptly her reveries were shattered in a startling manner. For, seated at the next table to her was her brother, Templeton Blaine! The brother she had not seen for years!
He was with a man large and stout, a man nearing middleage, a prosperous-looking man.
Templeton, too, appeared prosperous. He was wearing a Prince-Albert coat, a high silk hat was on the chair beside him, and a cane. Templeton must have been extremely successful. His bearing, his attire proclaimed it.
Louella arose and walked over to her brother's side.
"I wonder," she asked softly, "if you could direct me to the Electricity Building?"
Something familiar in the voice made him glance up quickly.
"Mary!" he cried jubilantly. "Fancy meeting you here!"
He jumped to his feet and kissed her.
"It isn't so odd," said she, "for I've been told they expect thirty million people to visit the Exposition. It is natural then to meet some one you know. I'm here on a vacation," she hastened to add, before he had a chance to question her. "I work in a department store in Peoria."
"Well I'm here on a sort of vacation too," he told her. "I had business to attend to in Chicago so naturally I decided to devote a few days to the Fair." He turned to his companion. "Mary," he said, "I want you to meet my friend, Yekial Meigs, whom I have known for several years. He is a prosperous farmer who lives about five miles outside of Fort Wayne, Indiana." He did not think it necessary to add that Meigs had sought him out for advice on purchasing some railroad securities.
Yekial Meigs rose ponderously to his feet.
"Pleased to meet you," he murmured.
He looked her over from head to foot appraisingly. Meigs had been a widower for ten years. He lived alone on his farm, doing his own cooking because he was too miserly to hire help even though he could well afford it. He had much money invested in various enterprises. That was how he had first come in contact with Templeton Blaine.
Nevertheless Yekial Meigs worked like a wage-slave for long hours on his farm. He was chained to his plow. He was mean, niggardly, grasping. But he was well-educated and when the spirit moved him he could talk interestingly. But he was a man of moods and for the most part taciturn, as tight with his words as he was with his money.
Louella was conscious of the thoughts that were going through his mind as he gazed at her but she did not resent them. She wanted to be desired of men. That was the way to continue prosperous herself.
"This is like old home week," declared Templeton. "I never hoped to have such pleasure in Chicago. You've grown prettier every day since I last saw you, Mary. Are you married yet?"
"Yes," she admitted. It was a lie but it was the easiest way to explain away many things. "That is I was married but my husband is dead. You know I eloped. Well, my poor husband only lived a few months."
"Why didn't you go home?"
"I hated to go back home in disgrace," she explained. "I couldn't bear to have everyone pointing at me, shaking their heads like mourners and feeling sorry for me behind my back."
"It isn't a disgrace to a woman because her husband dies," said Templeton shrewdly.
She saw her mistake immediately. "I mean that folks would feel sorry for me," she repeated lamely.
But Templeton was much too clever a business man to be taken in by such a weak story.
"The rat didn't marry you," he said curtly.
"How do you know?" she gasped.
"Because you are all fussed up about it," he said. "You show no real sorrow and you act as guilty as though you had just swindled a bank. But don't worry, little sister, I've knocked around a good bit and I know life. You're good enough for any man, even though your first lover deceived you. There aren't many men who are not clever deceptionists and without a doubt you'll be as worthy as any man who marries you."
"That is if I ever get married," she said thoughtfully. "I'm not very keen about men."
The statement was an absolute lie, but this time she succeeded in deceiving the astute Templeton.
Yekial Meigs sat listening. He drew his tongue over his dry lips. The man who eloped with Mary Blaine may have been a rat, but what a sweet parcel had been his in the person of the lovely girl. Meigs admitted to himself that he would have enjoyed unwrapping that parcel.
For awhile they discussed desultory subjects. There was much that Mary wanted to know. She was quite talkative but she did not acquaint her brother with the fact that she had changed her name to Louella Leota. Templeton would know immediately why she had made the change. There was no necessity to advertise the fact that she was one of the profession that needs very little advertising.
Yekial Meigs sat staring at her. He gloated over her fresh young beauty. Her clear creamy skin. Her lovely eyes. Her wasp-like waist and curving hips. He'd have given much to win this girl for a few wonderful nights.
Mary Blaine finished her toast and coffee. Yekial Meigs begged her to order something more substantial, but she naively told him he could buy her a regular dinner later. That was the way she informed him that she intended to remain with him and her brother.
As they left the tea-room Templeton suggested that they visit the reproductions of the little ships Pinta, Nina and Santa Maria presented to the Fair by the Queen of Spain in commemoration of the voyages of Columbus. They were anchored near the Agricultural Building and open to visitors.
Mary liked them. She liked all the ancient vessels.
But best of all she liked the model of the Viking which was an exact copy of the legendary battle-vessel of the Norsemen, the Gokstad-find. In one of the most marvelous of sailing feats the egg-shell craft had been piloted across the Atlantic by the intrepid Captain Anderson who thereby won the plaudits of the entire world. It was a duplication of the voyage of Leif Ericson who made it in 1001. The vessel looked very tiny indeed beside the model of the battleship Illinois. Here in bulk was romance, an immortal page from history.
Templeton Blaine was forced to leave Chicago that night. Important business affairs called him back to New York where he now resided. Yekial Meigs was glad his friend was departing. That would leave him alone with the girl.
"I'll take good care of her," he assured Templeton, as they bade him good-bye at the railroad terminal in the Fair Grounds directly in the rear of the Administration Building. Templeton gave her his address and she promised to write to him, a promise which she kept at rare intervals during the following years.
When Templeton's train had left, Yekial Meigs smiled to himself. Now he would make a direct play to win the body of Mary Blaine. If he had to marry her to succeed in his wishes he would. In any event passion had seldom so mastered him. He was crazy over this slender girl. It is hardly necessary to write that Mary deliberately saw to it that he should fall under her spell. She was a good bit of a sorceress. She knew that Yekial had money and she was for sale. True, he was big and rather coarse, his face was not handsome and his whole appearance was uncouth. But Mary was not finicky. She could overlook a lot in a man if he were wealthy.
After supper that evening, he hired a carriage and they went for a leisurely drive along the roadway, beside the lake. They had left the Fair Grounds with its color and glamour. Now all was peace.
"It is almost like being home," said he. He was driving the carriage himself.
Mary sighed. The word home always made her feel lonesome. It brought back vividly to her mind all that she had lost. Since leaving her father's farm she had had less privacy than a gold fish. Now as she sat with Yekial Meigs, she felt in a somber mood.
"In my shack," he said, "there is a fireplace so tremendous that a dozen people could sit in front of it in comfort. Gosh! but it's good to sit beside it on winter evenings, looking over the papers while a pine log splutters and a strange wind moans and wails about the eaves. I was born in Indiana and perhaps that is why the place has so much appeal for me. If there is anything more restful than a harvest moon gleaming down over a little farm I don't know what it is."
Mary sighed softly.
"You almost make me want to weep," she whispered.
He placed his great arm about her shoulder and drew her slight form to him. Before she knew what was happening his coarse lips were pressed against hers. She made no effort to repulse him. She was pleased. She had brought him to her feet and she was glad. There was a certain rugged strength about him which she found not distasteful, an animal attraction. Again and again he kissed her. She was almost breathless. It was seldom that she was so stirred.
"Mary," he whispered, "would you like to go home with me?" He was careful not to offer marriage although he was prepared to enter into such an arrangement as a final resource if need be. But marriage had lost all appeal for him. He didn't want to be legally responsible for a woman after he had grown tired of her. One did not keep a dog after it had ceased to attract one as a pet.
Mary was cognizant of the fact that he was not buffering marriage. It did not trouble her particularly. She would prefer to belong to all men rather than to one. And even though she chose to be true to one man for awhile, marriage was too definite a period to freedom to attract her. That night Yekial Meigs begged to be taken up to her room. But she refused. She knew that if he once possessed her, she might cease to be as alluring to him. Passion appeased is passion on the wane.
That night she was a sentimentalist. She longed for a place that she could really call home. She could not withstand the allure of that open fire. Even though it was August and far from cool, the thought of that open fire made her homesick.
In the morning she met Yekial Meigs at the railroad station. They were going to Fort Wayne. Once more she was setting off on a honeymoon with a man to whom she intended to be true. She would be his wife as faithfully as though they were married. She looked forward to taking charge of a house, to doing the cooking and sewing. Perhaps it appealed to her because she had never tried it. She was succumbing to the glamour of a home which strangely enough was possessed of very little glamour.
Yekial Meigs could not have been more attentive to her. He who had always been saving with his money, spent to excess. He bought her a fine leather pocketbook, three of the latest novels and a large box of candy.
For no reason at all, Mary thought of Hattie Holt.
"It must be carnival time," she said wistfully.
Templeton Blaine, back in New York, never knew that his sister went home with Yekial Meigs.