Just before that, the girl had her first experience in "loving up." "Loving up" was a term new to her used by the hospital nurses. The friend, abovementioned, had asked her to join her in a party, three men and three girls, to take a ride in a big limousine. One man had the car, the other two were brothers, one of the girls was an ex-patient of hers. She dressed up "our girl" in some attractive clothes of her sister's, and rouged her, and "our girl" seemed to be very stunning and captivated the heart of her ex-patient's brother. It was a new experience to her, to be made physical love to, with long-drawnout kisses and a very new thing to have a man put her hand on his "sex" and to find it a hard big thing! and to have him try to put his hand up her clothes!
And it frightened her then, and later when he tried to get her again.
The girl took a course in a religious university and met a young British Presbyterian Minister of Scotch-Irish descent, that year. Said young man seemed rather sophisticated to her, and she was distant to him, didn't quite like the daring look in his eye. They talked a lot however; afterwards when he seemed to know so much more about the course (a radical current events course) he was invited to tea one day to finish a long talk in which he tried to find out all he could about her. He asked her to a dinner and dance afterwards, which was new and strange to "our girl." Since it happened that there was a surprise party on at home (at the training school-a beautiful place architecturally to live in by the way) she could not go, and surreptitiously slipped out to tell him at the corner she could not. However, she asked him later to go with her to a Tammany Hall ball, as a sociological experiment. He was marvelously dressed up in a skirted coat, smart cane, etc.-very handsome and gay and full of pep. She had gone to a movie with him once, and after it, walked in the park with him where he lightly jumped over a bench and did other physical strength stunts to her surprise. They ran a race together, and when he outstripped her, he ran backwards, and then caught her swiftly and turned her around, and lifted her (a big girl) high up in the air and carried her! All much to her surprise, and thrilling, too; he being, of course, a good man of high ideals, being a practicing Minister as well as a student!
They danced at the ball, and he was very, very passionate, to her surprise.
During a wait on the balcony between dances, he said sophisticated little things, and then a glance of their eyes suddenly met, said "I love you" to each other- strangely disturbing to the girl! They went home soon after-he said,
"It's getting too warm."
Then they stopped at a Chinese restaurant to get her some Chinese candy; but domineeringly he went to a table and said to her, "Sit there; come over here beside me." They had food; he ate ravenously. He flirted, and she was new at flirting. She toyed with sugar and said nonentities. He looked all around the place to see he was unobserved (she wore a large hat) and kissed her on the cheek, and to her very susceptible self, it seemed very insufficient.
Then they left to go home. Just outside of the door, upstairs on the landing, he caught her and kissed her most thoroughly, and she felt his sex getting close, close to hers (and he a Minister!) and herself being hugged as only a strong man could hug. To her amazement, he did not say: "Will you marry me?"
When they reached the street (a Chinaman coming up had made them part at last) she said, "What made you do that?" He said, (to her disappointment) "Oh, I am very passionate." They took a last bus, sat on the top-the only ones-and he finally took her on his lap and tried (as you say) to put a naughty hand up her dress, and she seemed a willing victim, and so he stopped. And he said, "We must not see so much of each other since we fall so hard for each other."
Again-to a man that ended the matter. To a girl it seemed to mean the beginning of a deeper friendship. You don't seem to understand what that may leave in a girl's mind of sorrow and disappointment.
Suddenly another married man, a Jew, met her, offered to teach her how to write, made love to her, tried to make her his mistress, never did succeed in getting her to go away with him. The unsophisticated girl went with him to his office in the building of the… School. He told her later he had asked her only in order to make love to her.
Our girl was almost killed with mere loneliness. One day on going into town she wore her new suit (quite attention-attracting), missed the train and took the trolley, having only a ten dollar bill (her month's wages) in her pocket.
Her seat-partner paid her fare and started to talk to her about the loneliness of a traveling man, district manager, etc., etc., of a shooting stall in Canada, etc. Finally he asked her to have dinner with him that evening. The lonely girl did. He talked liberally, of trial marriage, etc. Our lonely girl was susceptible to comradeship but not to trial marriage. He asked her to get another girl for another man. She got a girl and the girl's own man-friend- one she rarely saw; the four went to a new thing-a night restaurant roof garden where she saw astonishing things-little girls (very young) displaying their sex from the rear suddenly. It disturbed her; she pitied them, having studied children and loved them; they were such young girls and so ignorant looking. However, her newfound friend was a hospitable, bigtalking passionate person. He rushed her along on the street, he tore along to her friend's apartment, the friend gave the key, and persuaded the girl to let his sex touch hers. That one performance may have given her gonorrhea! He asked to come out next day. He tried to get her to come to the hotel but she did not.
During the week some man-friend of his called her up saying the man had left her telephone number and address and had asked him to call her up. This humiliated the girl and she hung up the receiver, and was very, very miserable.
The following Saturday she went to the station to take a train into a college club meeting (she hadn't money enough to join the college club, but this was a group meeting). On the way before she reached the station, a beautiful car stopped and the beautifully gotten up uniformed chauffeur said respectfully:
"Can't I give you a lift?" Parched in life at the awful estate place, she who had never taken a "lift" accepted, sat beside the person and was amused at his respectful awed talking to her, calling her "ma'am" telling of his travels over the world in the car for his young and wealthy master. The master sounded interesting. He said how lonely it was to ride around without a companion. He seemed to be having to do that for some reason or other. It was hot summer time and the breeze in hiding was grateful to "our girl." He said he would be glad to put his own car at her service any time she wished. He asked her if she would go to a beautiful place she had heard of but never seen. She wasn't sure so he asked her please to call him up. The next day she did and couldn't get him. The "house" evidently answered and said he was a servant and in the stable. However in the p. m. at the end of the lane leading to the beautiful estate where our girl languished, was a tin-canny car and the chauffeur; and with a text book on botany under her arm, our girl got in.
It was a beautiful ride, a beautiful place; the chauffeur was respectful! There was no one else who wanted our girl's companionship. On the way back he stopped the car on a woody place, laid out a newspaper and asked her to sit down. He put his initials on a tree, a place he used to visit as a boy, he said. He did not put the date so the girl offered to put on the date. As she had her arms raised, he suddenly kissed her! To her it seemed to say that he was lonely, and that was a weak spot in her. Enlarging the thing from him and her to a world more or less of lonely human beings (and she had been suffering the pangs of solitariness in the midst of people) she felt sorry-felt pity. He carried her (as said, she was not a slight thing) across a foot-path, and (there is no beauty to be described) used her for his pleasure like an animal, used her regardless of her pain. She was down-and-out with lack of hope (and yet a strange undirect insatiable ambition to be something was always in her); she went "home" (to the old maid-the only home she had); he wrote her an illiterate note meant to be kindly.