MARION

I knelt down beside him and entreated him to forgive me.

MARION
THE STORY OF AN ARTIST’S MODEL

BY
Herself and the Author of “Me”
Illustrations by
HENRY HUTT

New York
W. J. Watt & Company
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1916, by
W. J. WATT & COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
PRINTERS AND BOOKBINDERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

MARION
THE STORY OF AN ARTIST’S MODEL

I

“IN dat familee dere are eleven cheeldren, and more—they come! See dat leetle one? She is très jolie! Oui, très jolie, n’est-ce pas? De father he come from Eengland about ten year ago. He was joost young man, mebbe twenty-seven or twenty-eight year ol’, and he have one leetle foreign wife and six leetle cheeldren. They were all so cold. They were not use to dis climate of Canada. My wife and I, we keep de leetle ’otel at Hochelaga, and my wife she take all dose leetle ones and she warm dem before the beeg hall stove, and she make for dem the good French pea-soup.”

Mama had sent me to the corner grocer to buy some things. Monsieur Thebeau, the grocer, was talking, and to a stranger. I felt ashamed and humiliated to hear our family thus discussed. Why should we always be pointed out in this way and made to feel conspicuous and freaky? It was horrid that the size of our family and my mother’s nationality should be told to everyone by that corner grocer. I glared haughtily at Monsieur Thebeau, but he went garrulously on, regardless of my discomfiture.

“De eldest—a boy, monsieur—he was joost nine year old, and my wife she call him, ‘Le petit père.’ His mother she send him out to walk wiz all hees leetle sisters, and she say to him: ‘Charles, you are one beeg boy, almost one man, and you must take care you leetle sisters; so, when de wind she blow too hard, you will walk you on de side of dat wind, and put yourself between it and your sisters.’ ‘Yes, mama,’ il dit. And we, my wife and I, we look out de window, and me? I am laugh, and my wife, she cry—she have lost her only bebby, monsieur—to see dat leetle boy walk him in front of his leetle sisters, open hees coat, comme ça, monsieur, and spread it wiz hees hands, to make one shield to keep de wind from his sisters.”

The man to whom Monsieur Thebeau had been speaking, had turned around, and was regarding me curiously. I felt abashed and angry under his compelling glance. Then he smiled, and nodding his head, he said:

“You are right. She is pretty—quite remarkably pretty!”

I forgot everything else. With my little light head and heart awhirl, I picked up my packages and ran out of the store. It was the first time I had been called pretty, and I was just twelve years old. I felt exhilarated and utterly charmed.

When I reached home, I deposited the groceries on a table in the kitchen and ran up to my room. Standing on a chair, I was able to see my face in the oval mirror that topped a very high and scratched old chiffonier. I gazed long and eagerly at the face I had often heard Monsieur Thebeau say was “très jolie,” which French words I now learned must mean: “Pretty—quite remarkably pretty!” as had said that Englishman in the store.

Was I really pretty then? Surely the face reflected there was too fat and too red. My! my cheeks were as red as apples. I pushed back the offending fat with my two hands, and I opened my eyes wide and blinked them at myself in the glass. Oh! if only my hair were gold! I twisted and turned about, and then I made grimaces at my own face.

Suddenly I was thrilled with a great idea—one that for the moment routed my previous ambition to some day be an artist, as was my father. I would be an actress! If I were pretty, and both that Frenchman and Englishman had said so, why should I not be famous?

I slipped into mama’s room, found a long skirt, and put it on me; also a feather which I stuck in my hair. Then, fearing detection, I ran out on tiptoe to the barn. There, marching up and down, I recited poems. I was pausing, to bow elaborately to the admiring audience, which, in my imagination, was cheering me with wild applause, when I heard mama’s voice calling to me shrilly:

“Marion! Marion! Where in the world is that girl?”

“Coming, mama.”

I divested myself hastily of skirt and feather, and left the barn on a run for the house. Here mama thrust our latest baby upon me, with instructions to keep him quiet while she got dinner. I took that baby in my arms, but I was still in that charmed world of dreams, and in my hand I clasped a French novel, which I had filched from my brother Charles’ room. Charles at this time was twenty years of age, and engaged to be married to a girl we did not like.

I tried to read, but that baby would not keep still a minute. He wriggled about in my lap and reached a grimy hand after my book. Irritated and impatient, I shook him, jumped him up and down, and then, as he still persisted, I pinched him upon the leg. He simply yelled. Mama’s voice screamed at me above the baby’s:

“If you can’t take better care of that baby, and keep him quiet, you shall not be allowed to paint with your father this afternoon, but shall sit right here and sew,” a punishment that made me put down the book, and amuse the baby by letting him pull my hair, which seemed to make him supremely happy, to judge from his chuckles and shouts of delight.

After dinner, which we had at noon, I received the cherished permission, and ran along to papa’s room. Dear papa, whose gentle, sensitive hands are now at rest! I can see him sitting at his easel, with his blue eyes fixed absently upon the canvas before him. Papa, with the heart and soul of a great artist, “painting, painting,” as he would say, with a grim smile, “pot-boilers to feed my hungry children.”

I pulled out my paints and table, and began to work. From time to time I spoke to papa.

“Say, papa, what do I use for these pink roses?”

“Try rose madder, white and emerald green—a little naples yellow,” answered papa patiently.

“Papa, what shall I use for the leaves?”

“Oh, try making your greens with blues and yellows.”

From time to time I bothered him. By and by, I tired of the work, and getting up with a clatter, I went over and watched him. He was painting cool green waves dashing over jagged rocks, from a little sketch he had taken down at Lachine last summer.

“Tell me, papa,” I said after a moment, “if I keep on learning, do you think I will ever be able to earn my living as an artist?”

“Who? What—you? Oh!” Absently papa blew the smoke about his head, gazed at me, but did not seem to see me. He seemed to be talking rather to himself, not bitterly, but just sadly:

“Better be a dressmaker or a plumber or a butcher or a policeman. There is no money in art!”

II

NEXT to our garden, separated only by a wooden fence, through which we children used to peep, was the opulent and well-kept garden of Monsieur Prefontaine, who was a very important man, once Mayor of Hochelaga, the French quarter of Montreal, in which we lived. Madame Prefontaine, moreover, was an object of unfailing interest and absorbing wonder to us children. She was an enormously fat woman, and had once taken a trip to New York City, to look for a wayward sister. There she had been offered a job as a fat woman for a big circus. Madame Prefontaine used to say to the neighbors, who always listened to her with great respect:

“Mon dieu! That New York—it is one beeg hell! Never do I feel so hot as in dat terrible city! I feel de grease it run all out of me! Mebbe, eef I stay at dat New York, I may be one beeg meelionaire—oui! But, non! Me? I prefer my leetle home, so cool and quiet in Hochelaga than be meelionaire in dat New York, dat is like purgatory.”

We had an old straggly garden. Everything about it looked “seedy” and uncared for and wild, for we could not afford a gardener. My sisters and I found small consolation in papa’s stout assertion that it looked picturesque, with its gnarled old apple trees and shrubs in their natural wild state. I was sensitive about that garden. It was awfully poor-looking in comparison with our neighbors’ nicely kept places. It was just like our family, I sometimes treacherously thought—unkempt and wild and “heathenish.” A neighbor once called us that. I stuck out my tongue at her when she said it. Being just next to the fine garden of Monsieur Prefontaine, it appeared the more ragged and beggarly, that garden of ours.

Mama would send us children to pick the maggots off the currant bushes and the bugs off the potato plants and, to encourage us, she would give us one cent for every pint of bugs or maggots we showed her. I hated the bugs and maggots, but it was fascinating to dig up the potatoes. To see the vegetables actually under the earth seemed almost like a miracle, and I would pretend the gnomes and fairies put them there, and hid inside the potatoes. I once told this to my little brothers and sisters, and Nora, who was just a little tot, wouldn’t eat a potato again for weeks, for fear she might bite on a fairy. Most of all, I loved to pick strawberries, and it was a matter of real grief and humiliation to me that our own strawberries were so dried-up looking and small, as compared with the big, luscious berries I knew were in the garden of Monsieur Prefontaine.

On that day, I had been picking strawberries for some time, and the sun was hot and my basket only half full. I kept thinking of the berries in the garden adjoining, and the more I thought of them, the more I wished I had some of them.

It was very quiet in our garden. Not a sound was anywhere, except the breezes, making all kinds of mysterious whispers among the leaves. For some time, my eye had become fixed, fascinated, upon a loose board, with a hole in it near the ground. I looked and looked at that hole, and I thought to myself: “It is just about big enough for me to crawl through.” Hardly had that thought occurred to me, when down on hands and knees I dropped, and into the garden of the great Monsieur Prefontaine I crawled.

The strawberry beds were right by the fence. Greedily I fell upon them. Oh, the exquisite joy of eating forbidden fruit! The fearful thrills that even as I ate ran up and down my spine, as I glanced about me on all sides. There was even a wicked feeling of fierce joy in acknowledging to myself that I was a thief.

“Thou shalt not steal!” I repeated the commandment that I had broken even while my mouth was full, and then, all of a sudden, I heard a voice, one that had inspired me always with feelings of respect and awe and fear.

“How you get in here?”

Monsieur Prefontaine was towering sternly above me. He was a big man, bearded, and with a face of preternatural importance and sternness.

I got up. My legs were shaky, and the world was whirling about me. I thought of the jail, where thieves were taken, and a great terror seized me. Monsieur Prefontaine had been the Mayor of Hochelaga. He could have me put in prison for all the rest of my life. We would all be disgraced.

“Well? Well? How you get in here?” demanded Monsieur Prefontaine.

“M’sieu, I—I-crawled in!” I stammered, indicating the hole in the fence.

“Bien! Crawl out, madame!”

“Madame” to me, who was but twelve years old!

“Crawl out!” commanded Monsieur, pointing to the hole, and feeling like a worm, ignominiously, under the awful eye of that ex-mayor of Hochelaga, on hands and knees and stomach, I crawled out.

Once on our side, I felt not the shame of being a thief so much as the degradation of crawling out with that man looking.

Feeling like a desperate criminal, I swaggered up to the house, swinging my half-filled basket of strawberries. As I came up the path, Ellen, a sister just two years older than I, put her head out of an upper window and called down to me:

“Marion, there’s a beggar boy coming in at the gate. Give him some of that stale bread mama left on the kitchen table to make a pudding with.”

The boy was about thirteen, and he was a very dirty boy, with hardly any clothes on him. As I looked at him, I was thrilled with a most beautiful inspiration. I could regenerate myself by doing an act of lovely charity.

“Wait a minute, boy.”

Disregarding the stale bread, I cut a big slice of fresh, sweet-smelling bread that Sung Sung, our one very old Chinese servant, had made that day. Heaping it thick with brown sugar, I handed it to the boy.

“There, beggar boy,” I said generously, “you can eat it all.”

He took it with both hands, greedily, and now as I looked at him another, a fiendish, impulse seized me. Big boys had often hit me, and although I had always fought back as valiantly and savagely as my puny fists would let me, I had always been worsted, and had been made to realize the weakness of my sex and age. Now as I looked at that beggar boy, I realized that here was my chance to hit a big boy. He was smiling at me gratefully across that slice of sugared bread, and I leaned over and suddenly pinched him hard on each of his cheeks. His eyes bulged with amazement, and I still remember his expression of surprise and pained fear. I made a horrible grimace at him and then ran out of the room.

III

THERE was a long, bleak period, when we knew acutely the meaning of what papa wearily termed “Hard Times.” Even in “Good Times” there are few people who buy paintings, and no one wants them in Hard Times.

Then descended upon Montreal a veritable plague. A terrible epidemic of smallpox broke out in the city. The French and not the English Canadians were the ones chiefly afflicted, and my father set this down to the fact that the French Canadians resisted vaccination. In fact, there were anti-vaccination riots all over the French quarter, where we lived.

And now my father, in this desperate crisis, proved the truth of the old adage that “Blood will tell.” Ours was the only house on our block, or for that matter the surrounding blocks, where the hideous, yellow sign, “PICOTTE” (smallpox), was not conspicuously nailed upon the front door, and this despite the fact that we were a large family of children. Papa hung sheets all over the house, completely saturated with disinfectants. Every one of us children was vaccinated, and we were not allowed to leave the premises. Papa himself went upon all the messages, even doing the marketing.

He was not “absent-minded” in those days, nor in the grueling days of dire poverty that followed the plague. Child as I was, I vividly recall the terrors of that period, going to bed hungry, my mother crying in the night and my father walking up and down, up and down. Sometimes it seemed to me as if papa walked up and down all night long.

My brother Charles, who had been for some time our main support, had married (the girl we did not like) and although he had fervently promised to continue to contribute to the family’s support, his wife took precious care that the contribution should be of the smallest, and she kept my brother, as much as she could, from coming to see us.

A day came when, with my mother and it seemed all of my brothers and sisters, I stood on a wharf waving to papa on a great ship. There he stood, by the railing, looking so young and good. Papa was going to England to try to induce grandpa—that grandfather we had never seen—to help us. We clung about mama’s skirts, poor little mama, who was half distraught and we all kept waving to papa, with our hats and hands and handkerchiefs and calling out:

“Good-bye, papa! Come back! Come back soon!” until the boat was only a dim, shadowy outline.

The dreadful thought came to me that perhaps we would never see papa again! Suppose his people, who were rich and grand, should induce our father never to return to us!

I had kept back my tears. Mama had told us that none of us must let papa see us cry, as it might “unman” him, and she herself had heroically set the example of restraining her grief until after his departure. Now, however, the strain was loosened. I fancied I read in my brothers’ and sisters’ faces—we were all imaginative and sensitive and excitable—my own fears. Simultaneously we all began to cry.

Never will I forget that return home, all of us children crying and sobbing, and mama now weeping as unconcealedly as any of us, and the French people stopping us on the way to console or commiserate with us; but although they repeated over and over:

“Pauvre petites enfants! Pauvre petite mère!” I saw their significant glances, and I knew that in their minds was the same treacherous thought of my father.

But papa did return! He could have stayed in England, and, as my sister Ada extravagantly put it, “lived in the lap of luxury,” but he came back to his noisy, ragged little “heathens,” and the “painting, painting of pot-boilers to feed my hungry children.”

IV

“MONSIEUR DE ST. VIDAL is ringing the doorbell,” called Ellen, “why don’t you open the door, Marion? I believe he has a birthday present for you in his hand.”

It was my sixteenth birthday, and Monsieur de St. Vidal was my first beau! He was a relative of our neighbors, the Prefontaines, and I liked him pretty well. I think I chiefly liked to be taken about in his stylish little dogcart. I felt sure all the other girls envied me.

“You go, Ellen, while I change my dress.”

I was anxious to appear at my best before St. Vidal. It was very exciting, this having a beau. I would have enjoyed it much more, however, but for the interfering inquisitiveness of my sisters, Ada and Ellen, who never failed to ask me each time I had been out with him, whether he had “proposed” yet or not.

Ellen was running up the stairs, and now she burst into our room excitedly, with a package in her hand.

“Look, Marion! Here’s your present. He wouldn’t stop—just left it, and he said, with such a Frenchy bow—whew! I don’t like the French!—‘Pour Mamselle Marion, avec mes compliments!’” and Ellen mimicked St. Vidal’s best French manner and voice.

I opened the package. Oh, such a lovely box of paints—a perfect treasure!

“Just exactly what I wanted!” I cried excitedly, looking at the little tubes, all shiny and clean, and the new brushes and palette.

Ada was sitting reading by the window, and now she looked up and said:

“Oh, did that French wine merchant give that to Marion?”

She cast a disparaging glance at the box, and then, addressing Ellen, she continued:

“Marion is disgustingly old for sixteen, but, of course, if he gives her presents” (he had never given me anything but candy before) “he will propose to her, I suppose. Mama married at sixteen, and I suppose some people—” Ada gave me another look that was anything but approving—“are in a hurry to get married. I shall never marry till I am twenty-five!” Ada was twenty.

This time, Ellen, who was eighteen, got the condemning look. Ellen was engaged to be married to an American editor, who wrote to her every day in the week and sometimes telegraphed. They were awfully in love with each other. Ellen said now:

“Oh, he’ll propose all right. Wallace came around a whole lot, you know, before he actually popped.”

“Well, maybe so,” said Ada, “but I think we ought to know that French wine merchant’s intentions pretty soon. I’ll ask him if you like,” she volunteered.

“No, no, don’t you dare!” I protested.

“Well,” said Ada, “if he doesn’t propose to you soon, you ought to stop going out with him. It’s bad form.”

I wished my sisters wouldn’t interfere in my affairs. They nagged me everlastingly about St. Vidal, and it made me conscious when I was with him. They acted like self-appointed monitors. The minute I would get in, they would begin:

“Well, did he propose?” and I would feel ashamed to be obliged to admit, each time, that he had not. Ada had even made some suggestions of how I might “bring him to the point.” She said men had to be led along like sheep. Ellen, however, had warmly vetoed those suggestions, declaring stoutly that Wallace, her sweetheart, had needed no prodding. In fact, he had most eloquently and urgently pleaded his own suit, without Ellen “putting out a finger” to help him, so she said.

That evening St. Vidal called and took me to the rink, and I enjoyed myself hugely. He was a graceful skater, and so was I, and I felt sure that everyone’s eye was upon us. I was very proud of my “beau,” and I secretly wished that he was blond. I did prefer the English type. However, conscious of what was expected of me by my sisters, I smiled my sweetest on St. Vidal, and by the time we started for home, I realized, with a thrill of anticipation, that he was in an especially tender mood. He helped me along the street carefully and gallantly.

It was a clear, frosty night, and the snow was piled up as high as our heads on each side of the sidewalks. Suddenly St. Vidal stopped, and drawing my hand through his arm, he began, with his walking stick, to write upon the snow:

“Madame Marion de St. Vida—”

Before he got to the “l,” I was seized with panic. I jerked my hand from his arm, took to my heels and ran all the way home.

Now it had come—that proposal, and I did not want it. It filled me with embarrassment and fright. When I got home, I burst into Ada’s room, and gasped:

“It’s done! He did propose! B-but I said—I said—” I hadn’t said anything at all.

“Well?” demanded Ada.

“Why, I’m not going to, that’s all,” I said.

Ada returned to the plaiting of her hair. Then she said sceptically:

“Hm, that’s very queer. Are you sure he proposed, because I heard he was all the time engaged to a girl in Côte des Neiges.”

“Oh, Ada,” I cried, “do you suppose he’s a bigamist? I think I’m fortunate to have escaped from his snare!”

The next day Madame Prefontaine told mama that St. Vidal had said he couldn’t imagine what in the world I had run away suddenly from him like that for, and he said:

“Maybe she had a stomach ache.”

V

“ELLEN, don’t you wish something would happen?”

Ellen and I were walking up and down the street near the English church.

“Life is so very dull and monotonous,” I went on. “My! I would be glad if something real bad happened—some sort of tragedy. Even that is better than this deadness.”

Ellen looked at me, and seemed to hesitate.

“Yes, it’s awful to be so poor as we are,” she answered, “but what I would like is not so much money as fame, and, of course, love. That usually goes with fame.”

Ellen’s fiancé was going to be famous some day. He was in New York, and had written a wonderful play. As soon as it was accepted, he and Ellen were to be married.

“Well, I tell you what I’d like above everything else on earth,” said I sweepingly. “I would love to be a great actress, and break everybody’s heart. It must be perfectly thrilling to be notorious, and we certainly are miserable girls!”

We were chewing away with great relish the contents of a bag of candy.

“Anyhow,” said Ellen, “you seem to be enjoying that candy,” and we both giggled.

Two men were coming out of the side door of the church. Attracted by our laughter, they came over directly to us. One of them we knew well. He was Jimmy McAlpin, the son of a fine old Scotch, very rich, lady, who had always taken an especial interest in our family. Jimmy, though he took up the collection in church, had been, so I heard the neighbors whisper to mama, once very dissipated. He had known us since we were little girls, and always teased us a lot. He would come up behind me on the street and pull my long plait of hair, saying:

“Oh, pull the string, gentlemen and ladies, and the figure moves!”

Now he came smilingly up to us, followed by his friend, a big, stout man, with a military carriage and gray mustache. I recognized him, too, though we did not know him. He was a very rich and important citizen of our Montreal. Of him also I had heard bad things. People said he was “fast.” That was a word they always whispered in Montreal, and shook their heads over, but whenever I heard it, its very mystery and badness somehow thrilled me. Ada said there was a depraved and low streak in me, and I guiltily admitted to myself that she was right.

“What are you girls laughing about?” asked Jimmy, a question that merely brought forth a fresh accession of giggles.

Colonel Stevens was staring at me, and he had thrust into his right eye a shining monocle. I thought him very grand and distinguished-looking, much superior to St. Vidal. Anyway we were tired of the French, having them on all sides of us, and, as I have said, I admired the blond type of men. Colonel Stevens was not exactly blond, for his hair was gray (he was bald on top, though his hat covered that), but he was typically British, and somehow the Englishmen always appeared to me much superior to our little French Canucks, as we called them.

Said the Colonel, pulling at his mustache:

“A laughing young girl in a pink cotton frock is the sweetest thing on earth.”

I had on a pink cotton frock, and I was laughing. I thought of what I had heard Madame Prefontaine say to mama—in a whisper:

“He is one dangerous man—dat Colonel Steven, and any woman seen wiz him will lose her reputation.”

“Will I lose mine?” I asked myself. I must say my heart beat, fascinated with the idea.

Looking at me he added: “May I send you some roses just the color of your cheeks?”

Something now was really happening, and I was excited and delighted.

“Can’t we take the ladies—” I nudged Ellen—“some place for a little refreshment,” said the Colonel.

“No,” said Ellen, “mama expects us home.”

“Too bad,” murmured the Colonel, very much disappointed, “but how about some other night? To-morrow, shall we say?” Looking at me, he added: “May I send you some roses, just the color of your cheeks?”

I nodded from behind Ellen’s back.

“Come on,” said Ellen brusquely, “we’d better be getting home. You know you’ve got the dishes to do, Marion.”

She drew me along. I couldn’t resist looking back, and there was that fascinating Colonel, standing stock-still in the street, still pulling at his mustache, and staring after me. He smiled all over, when I turned, and blew me an odd little kiss, like a kind of salute, only from his lips.

That night, when Ellen and I were getting ready for bed, I said:

“Isn’t the Colonel thrillingly handsome though?”

“Ugh! I should say not,” said Ellen. “Besides he’s a married man, and a flirt.”

“Well, I guess he doesn’t love his old wife,” said I.

“If she is old,” said Ellen, “so is he—maybe older. Disgusting.”

All next day I waited for that box of roses, and late in the afternoon, sure enough, it came, and with it a note:

“Dear Miss Marion:

Will you and your charming sister take a little drive with me and a friend this evening? If so, meet us at eight o’clock, corner of St. James and St. Denis streets. My friend has seen your sister in Judge Laflamme’s office” (Ellen worked there) “and he is very anxious to know her. As for me, I am thinking only of when I shall see my lovely rose again. I am counting the hours!

Devotedly,
Fred Stevens.”

The letter was written on the stationery of the fashionable St. James Club. Now I was positive that Colonel Stevens had fallen in love with me. I thought of his suffering because he could not marry me. In many of the French novels I had read men ran away from their wives, and, I thought: “Maybe the Colonel will want me to elope with him, and if I won’t, perhaps, he will kill himself,” and I began to feel very sorry to think of such a fine-looking soldierly man as Colonel Stevens killing himself just because of me.

When I showed Ellen the letter, after she got home from work, to my surprise and delight, she said:

“All right, let’s go. A little ride will refresh us, and I’ve had a hard week of it, but better not let mama know where we’re going. We’ll slip out after supper, when she’s getting the babies to sleep.”

Reaching the corner of St. James and St. Denis Streets that evening, we saw a beautiful closed carriage, with a coat of arms on the door, and a coachman in livery jumped down and opened the door for us. We stepped in. With the Colonel was a middle-aged man, with a dry, yellowish face and a very black—it looked dyed—mustache.

“Mr. Mercier,” said the Colonel, introducing us.

“Oh,” exclaimed Ellen, “are you the Premier?”

“Non, non, non,” laughed Mr. Mercier, and turning about in the seat, he began to look at Ellen and to smile at her, until the ends of his waxed mustache seemed to jump up and scratch his nose. Colonel Stevens had put his arm just at the back of me, and as it slipped down from the carriage seat to my waist, I sat forward on the edge of the seat. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him to take his arm down, and still I didn’t want him to put it around me. Suddenly Ellen said:

“Marion, let’s get out of this carriage. That beast there put his arm around me, and he pinched me, too.” She indicated Mercier.

She was standing up in the carriage, clutching at the strap, and she began to tap upon the window, to attract the attention of the coachman. Mr. Mercier was cursing softly in French.

“Petite folle!” he said, “I am not meaning to hurt you—joost a little loving. Dat is all.”

“You ugly old man,” said Ellen, “do you think I want you to love me? Let me get out!”

“Oh, now, Miss Ellen,” said the Colonel, “that is too rude. Mr. Mercier is a gentleman. See how sweet and loving your little sister is.”

“No, no,” I cried, “I am not sweet and loving. He had no business to touch my sister.”

Mr. Mercier turned to the Colonel.

“For these children did you ask me to waste my time?” and putting his head out of the carriage, he simply roared:

“Rue Saint Denis! Sacré!”

They set us down at the corner of our street. When we got in a friend of papa’s was singing to mama and Ada in the parlor:

“In the gloaming, oh, my darling,
When the lights are dim and low.”

He was one of many Englishmen, younger sons of aristocrats, who, not much good in England, were often sent to Canada. They liked to hang around papa, whose family most of them knew. This young man was a thin, harmless sort of fellow, soft-spoken and rather silly, Ellen and I thought; but he could play and sing in a pretty, sentimental way and mama and Ada would listen by the hour to him. He liked Ada, but Ada pretended she had only an indifferent interest in him. His father was the Earl of Albemarle, and Ellen and I used to make Ada furious by calling her “Countess,” and bowing mockingly before her.

Walking on tiptoe, Ellen and I slipped by the parlor door, and up to our own room. That night, after we were in bed, I said to Ellen:

“You know, I think Colonel Stevens is in love with me. Maybe he will want me to elope with him. Would you if you were me?”

“Don’t be silly. Go to sleep,” was Ellen’s cross response. She regretted very much taking that ride, and she said she only did it because she got so tired at the office all day, and thought a little ride would be nice. She had no idea, she said, that those “two old fools” would act like that.

I was not going to let Ellen go to sleep so easily, however.

“Listen to this,” I said, poking her to keep her awake. “This is Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Ellen, and they call her the Poet of Passion.” Ellen groaned, but she had to listen:

“Just for one kiss that thy lips had given
Just for one hour of bliss with thee,
I would gladly barter my hopes of heaven,
And forfeit the joys of eternity;
For I know in the way that sins are reckoned
That this is a sin of the deepest dye,
But I also know if an angel beckoned,
Looking down from his home on high,
And you adown by the gates Infernal
Should lift to me your loving smile,
I would turn my back on the things Eternal,
Just to lie on your breast awhile.”

“Ugh!” said Ellen, “I would scorn to lie on Colonel Stevens’ old fat breast.”

VI

WALLACE, Ellen’s sweetheart, had not sold his play, but he expected to any day. He was, however, impatient to be married—they had now been engaged over a year—and he wrote Ellen that he could not wait, anyway more than two or three months longer. Meanwhile Ellen secured a better position.

The new position was at a much greater distance from our house, and as she had to be at the office early, she decided to take a room farther down town. Papa at first did not want her to leave home, but Ellen pointed out that Hochelaga was too far away from her office, and then she added, to my delight, that she’d take me along with her. I could make her trousseau and cook for us both, and it wouldn’t cost any more for two than for one.

Mama thought we were old enough to take care of ourselves. “For,” said she, “when I was Ellen’s age I was married and had two children. Besides,” she added, “we are crowded for room, in the house, and it will only be for a month or two.”

So Ellen secured a little room down town. I thought the house was very grand, for there was thick carpet on all the floors and plush furniture in the parlor.

We were unpacking our trunk, soon after we arrived, when there was a knock at our door, and in came Mrs. Cohen, our landlady and a big fat man. Mrs. Cohen pointed at us with a pudgy finger:

“There they are!” she explained. “Ain’t they smart? Look at that one,” pointing to Ellen, “she is smart like a lawyer, and the sister,” pointing to me, “she is come to work and sew like she was the wife, see.”

She turned about then and yelled at the top of her voice:

“Sarah! Sarah! Where is that lazy Sarah? Come! Directly!”

A young, thin girl with a clear skin and enormous black eyes came slowly up the stairs and into the room.

“See, Sarah,” cried Mrs. Cohen, “there is two girls that is more smart than you. That one, she is just the same age as you, and she makes good money, yes. She makes twelve dollar a week. You cannot do that. Oh, no!”

Sarah looked at us sullenly, and to our greeting: “How do you do?” she returned: “How’s yourself?” Then turning savagely on her father and stepmother, she snarled:

“And if I can’t make money, whose fault is it? I have to work more hard than a servant even, with all those children of yours!”

“Sarah, Sarah! be more careful of your speech!” cried her mother. “Did not the God above give to you those six little brothers? You should thank Him for His kindness.”

She started down the stairs, followed by her husband. Sarah, however, stayed in the room, and now she smiled at us in a friendly way.

“Say, Miss— What’s your names?”

“Ellen and Marion.”

“Well, say, my stepmother is the limit. Gosh! I wish we were not Jews. Nobody likes us.”

“You ought not to say that,” said Ellen, severely, “the Jews were God’s chosen people, remember.”

“Gosh!” said Sarah, “I wish He didn’t choose me.”

That evening, Sarah thrust her face in at our door, and called in a loud whisper:

“Say, girls, do youse want to see two old fools? Come on then.”

She led us, all tiptoeing, into a room next to one occupied by a little English old maid named Miss Dick, who gave music lessons for twenty-five cents a lesson, and who always spoke in a sort of hissing whisper, so that a little spit came from her lips. Mrs. Cohen called it the “watering can.”

“Kneel down there,” said Sarah, pointing to a crack in the wall. I peeped through, and this is what I saw: Seated in the armchair was a funny little old man—I think he was German—with a dried, wrinkled face. Perched on the arm of the chair was Miss Dick. They were billing and cooing like turtle doves, and she was saying:

“Am I your little Dicky-birdie?” and he was looking proud and pleased.

Ellen and I burst into fits of laughter, but Sarah pulled us away, and we covered our mouths and stifled back the laughter. When we got to our room, Sarah told us that the old man, Schneider, had come to her father and mother and asked them to find him a wife. Her mother agreed to do so for the payment of ten dollars. She had spoken to Miss Dick, and the latter had also agreed to pay ten dollars.

About a week after we had been there, Miss Dick and Mr. Schneider were married. They had packed up all Miss Dick’s things and were going down the stairs with bags in their hands, when Mrs. Cohen ran out into the hall.

“Now please, like a lady and gentleman, pay me the ten dollars each as we made the bargain, for I make you acquainted to get married.”

“Ten dollars!” screamed Miss Dick.

“Yes, you make the bargain with me.”

“I made no such bargain,” cried the bride shrilly. “We met and loved at first sight.” Turning to Schneider, who was twirling his thumbs, she said: “Protect me, dearie.”

He said:

“I say nutting. I say nutting.”

“Will you pay that debt?” demanded Mrs. Cohen and then, as Miss Dick did not answer, she pointed dramatically to my sister Ellen, who was standing with me laughing at the head of the stairs. “You see that lady. She is just the same as a lawyer, and she say you should pay. Pay for your man like a lady, that smart lady up there say you should.”

“Oh, oh! you old Shylock!” screamed Miss Dick hissingly. Mrs. Cohen was obliged to wipe her face and, backing away, she cried:

“Don’t you Shylock me with your watering can.”

Ellen and I were doubled up with laughter, and Mrs. Cohen seized hold of a broom, and literally swept bride and groom from the house, shouting at them all sorts of epithets and curses.

VII

WE had been at Cohen’s less than a month, when Wallace wrote he could wait no longer.

He had not sold his play, but he had a very good position now as associate editor of a big magazine, and he said he was making ample money to support a wife. So he was coming for his little Ellen at once. We were terribly excited, particularly as Wallace followed up the letter with a telegram to expect him next day, and sure enough the next day he arrived.

He did not want any “fussy” wedding. Only papa and I were to be present. Wallace did not even want us, but Ellen insisted. She looked sweet in her little dress (I had made it), and although I knew Wallace was good and a genius and adored my sister, I felt broken-hearted at the thought of losing her, and it was all I could do to keep from crying at the ceremony.

As the train pulled out, I felt so utterly desolate that I stretched out my arms to it and cried out aloud:

“Ellen, Ellen, please don’t go. Take me, too.”

I never realized till then how much I loved my sister. Dear little Ellen, with her love of all that was best in life, her sense of humor, her large, generous heart, and her absolute purity. If only she had stayed by my side I am sure her influence would have kept me from all the mistakes and troubles that followed in my life, if only by her disgust and contempt of all that was dishonorable and unclean. But Wallace had taken our Ellen, and I had lost my best friend, my sister and my chum.

That night I cried myself to sleep. I thought of all the days Ellen and I played together. Even as little girls mama had given us our special house tasks together. We would peel potatoes and shell peas or sew together, and as we worked we would tell each other stories, which we invented as we went along. Our stories were long and continuous, and full of the most extravagant and unheard of adventures and impossible riches, heavenly beauty and bravery that was wildly reckless.

There was one story Ellen continued for weeks. She called it: “The Princess who used Diamonds as Pebbles and made bonfires out of one-hundred-dollar bills.” I made up one called: “The Queen who Tamed Lions and Tigers with a Smile,” and more of that kind.

Mama would send Ellen and me upon messages sometimes quite a distance from our house, for we had English friends living at the other side of the town. The French quarter was cheaper to live in and that was why we lived in Hochelaga. Ellen and I used to walk sometimes three miles each way to Mrs. McAlpin’s house on Sherbrooke Street. To vary the long walk we would hop along in turn, holding one another’s legs by the foot, or we would walk backward, counting the cracks in the sidewalks that we stepped over. One day a young man stood still in the street to watch us curiously. Ellen was holding one of my feet and I was hopping along on the other. He came up to us and said:

“Say, sissy, did you hurt your foot?”

“No,” I returned, “we’re just playing Lame Duck.”

It was strange now, as I lay awake, crying over the going of my sister, that all the queer little funny incidents of our childhood together came thronging to my mind. I vividly remembered a day when mama was sick and the doctor said she could have chicken broth. Well, there was no one home to kill the chicken, for that was the time papa went to England. Ellen and I volunteered to kill one, for Sung Sung, our old servant, believed it would be unlucky to kill one with the master away—one of his everlasting superstitions. Ellen and I caught the chicken. Then I held it down on the block of wood, while Ellen was to chop the head off. Ellen raised the hatchet, but when it descended she lowered it very gently, and began to cut the head off slowly. Terrified, I let go. Ellen was trembling, and the chicken ran from us with its head bleeding and half off.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est? Qu’est-ce que c’est? De little girl, she is afraid. See me, I am not scared of nutting.”

It was the French grocer boy. He took that unfortunate chicken, and placing its bleeding head between the door and jamb, he slammed the door quickly, and the head was broken. I never did like that boy, now I hated him. Ellen looked very serious and white. When we were plucking the feathers off later, she said:

“Marion, do you know we are as guilty as Emile and if it were a human being, we could be held as accomplices.”

“No, no, Ellen,” I insisted. “I did not kill it. I am not guilty. I wouldn’t be a murderer like Emile for anything in the world.”

“You’re just as bad,” said Ellen severely, “perhaps worse, because to-night you’ll probably eat part of your victim.”

I shuddered at the thought, and I did not eat any chicken that night.

When I was packing my things, preparatory to leaving Mrs. Cohen’s next morning, for I was to return home, now that Ellen was married, Mrs. Cohen came in with a large piece of cake in her hand. She was very sorry for me because I had lost my sister.

“There,” she said, “that will make you feel better. Taste it. It is good.” I could not eat their cake, because she used goose grease instead of butter, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings and I pretended to take a bite. When she was not looking I stuffed it into the wastepaper basket.

“Now never mind about your sister no more,” she said kindly. “The sun will shine in your window some day.”

I was still sniffing and crying, and I said:

“It looks as if it were going to rain to-day.”

“Vell then,” she said, “it vill not be dry.”

VIII

I WAS at an age—nearly eighteen now—when girls want and need chums and confidantes. I was bubbling over with impulses that needed an outlet, and only foolish young things like myself were capable of understanding me. With Ellen gone, I sought and found girl friends I believed to be congenial.

My sister Ada, because of her superiority in age and character to me, would not condescend to chum with me. Nevertheless, she heartily disapproved of my choice in friends, and constantly reiterated that my tastes were low. Life was a serious matter to Ada, who had enormous ambitions, and had already been promised a position on our chief newspaper, to which she had contributed poems and stories. To Ada, I was a frivolous, silly young thing, who needed constantly to be squelched, and she undertook to do the squelching, unsparingly, herself.

“Since we are obliged,” said Ada, “to live in a neighborhood with people who are not our equals, I think it a good plan to keep to ourselves. That’s the only way to be exclusive. Now, that Gertie Martin” (Gertie was my latest friend) “is a noisy American girl. She talks through her nose, and is always criticizing the Canadians and comparing them with the Yankees. As for that Lu Fraser” (another of my friends) “she can’t even speak the Queen’s English properly, and her uncle keeps a saloon.”

Though I stoutly defended my friends, Ada’s nagging had an unconscious effect upon me, and for a time I saw very little of the girls.

Then one evening, Gertie met me on the street, and told me that, through her influence, Mr. Davis (also an American) had decided to ask me to take a part in “Ten Nights in a Bar Room,” which was to be given at a “Pop” by the Montreal Amateur Theatrical Club, of which he was the head. I was so excited and happy about this that I seized hold of Gertie and danced with her on the sidewalk, much to the disgust of my brother Charles, who was passing with his new wife.

Mr. Davis taught elocution and dramatic art, and he was a man of tremendous importance in my eyes. He was always getting up concerts and entertainments, and no amateur affair in Montreal seemed right without his efficient aid. The series of “Pops” he was now giving were patronized by all the best people of the city and he had an imposing list of patrons and patronesses. Moreover the plays were to be produced in a real theatre, not merely a hall, and so they had somewhat the character of professional performances.

To my supreme joy, I was given the part of the drunkard’s wife, and there were two glorious weeks in which we rehearsed and Mr. Davis trained us. He said one day that I was the “best actress” of them all, and he added that although he charged twenty-five dollars a month to his regular pupils he would teach me for ten, and if I couldn’t afford that, for five, and if there was no five to be had, then for nothing. I declared fervently that I would repay him some day, and he laughed, and said: “I’ll remind you when that ‘some day’ comes.”

Well, the night arrived, and I was simply delirious with joy. I learned how to “make up,” and I actually experienced stage fright when I first went on, but I soon forgot myself.

When I was crawling on the floor across the stage, trying to get something to my drunken husband, a voice from the audience called out:

“Oh, Mar-ri-on! Oh, Ma-ri-on! You’re on the bum! You’re on the bum!”

It was my little brother Randle, who, with several small boys had got free seats away up in front, by telling the ticket man that his sister was playing the star part. I vowed mentally to box his ears good and hard when I got home.

When the show was over, Mr. Davis came to the dressing room, and said, right before all the girls:

“Marion, come to my studio next week, and we’ll start those lessons, and when we put on the next ‘Pop,’ which I believe will be ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ we will find a good part for you.”

“Oh, Mr. Davis,” I cried, “are you going to make an actress of me?”

“We’ll see! We’ll see!” he said, smiling. “It will depend on yourself, and if you are willing to study.”

“I’ll sit up all night long and study,” I assured him.

“The worst thing you could do,” he answered. “We want to save these peaches,” and he pinched my cheek.

Mr. Davis did lots of things that in other men would have been offensive. He always treated the girls as if they were children. People in Montreal thought him “sissified,” but I am glad there are some men more like the gentler sex.

So I began to take lessons in elocution, and dramatic art. Oh! but I was a happy girl in those days. It is true, Mr. Davis was very strict, and he would make me go over lines again and again before he was satisfied, but when I got them finally right and to suit him, he would rub his hands, blow his nose and say:

“Fine! Fine! There’s the real stuff in you.”

And what with Nora crying with sympathy and excitement.

He once said that I was the only pupil he had who had an atom of promise in her. He declared Montreal peculiarly lacking in talent of that sort, though he said he had searched all over the place for even a “spark of fire.” I, at least, loved the work, was deadly in earnest and, finally, so he said, I was pretty, and that was something.

We studied “Camille,” “The Marble Heart” and “Romeo and Juliet.” All of my spare time at home, I spent memorizing and rehearsing. I would get a younger sister, Nora, who was absorbedly interested, to act as a dummy. I would make her be Armand or Armand’s father.

“Now, Nora,” I would say, “when I come to the word ‘Her,’ you must say: ‘Camille! Camille’!”

Then I would begin, addressing Nora as Armand:

“You are not speaking to a cherished daughter of society, but a woman of the world, friendless and fearless. Loved by those whose vanity she gratifies, despised by those who ought to pity her—her—Her—”

I would look at Nora and repeat: “Her—!” and Nora would wake up from her trance of admiration of me and say:

“Camel! Camel!”

“No, no!” I would yell, “That is—” (pointing to the right—Mr. Davis called that “Dramatic action”) “your way! This way—” (pointing to the left) “is mine!”

Then throwing myself on the dining-room sofa, I would sob and moan and cough (Camille had consumption, you may recall), and what with Nora crying with sympathy and excitement, and the baby generally waking up, there would be an awful noise in our house.

I remember papa coming half-way down the stairs one day and calling out:

“What in the devil is the matter with that Marion? Has she taken leave of her senses?”

Mama answered from the kitchen:

“No, papa, she’s learning elocution and dramatic art from Mr. Davis; but I’m sure she’s not suited to be an actress, for she lisps and her nose is too short. But do make her stop, or the neighbors will think we are quarreling.”

“Stop this minute!” ordered papa, “and don’t let me hear any more such nonsense.”

I betook myself to the barn.

IX

THE snow was crisp and the air as cold as ice. We were playing the last performance of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” We had been playing it for two weeks, and I had been given two different parts, Marie Claire, in which, to my joy, I wore a gold wig and a lace tea-gown—which I made from an old pair of lace curtains and a lavender silk dress mama had had when they were rich and she dressed for dinner—and Cassy. I did love that part where Cassy says:

“Simon Legree, you are afraid of me, and you have reason to be, for I have got the devil in me!”

I used to hiss those words at him and glare until the audience clapped me for that. Ada saw me play Cassy one night, and she went home and told mama that I had “sworn like a common woman before all the people on the stage” and that I ought not to be allowed to disgrace the family. But little I cared for Ada in those days. I was learning to be an actress!

On this last night, in fact, I experienced all the sensations of a successful star. Someone had passed up to me, over the footlights if you please, a real bouquet of flowers, and with these clasped to my breast, I had retired smiling and bowing from the stage.

To add to my bliss, Patty Chase, the girl who played Topsy, came running in to say that a gentleman friend of hers was “crazy” to meet me. He was the one who had sent me the flowers. He wanted to know if I wouldn’t take supper with him and a friend and Patty that night.

My! I felt like a regular professional actress. To think an unknown man had admired me from the front, and was actually seeking my acquaintance! I hesitated, however, because Patty was not the sort of girl I was accustomed to go out with. I liked Patty pretty well myself, but my brother Charles had one day come to the house especially to tell papa some things about her—he had seen me walking with Patty on the street—and papa had forbidden me to go out with her again. As I hesitated, she said:

“It isn’t as if they are strangers, you know. One of them, Harry Bond, is my own fellow. You know who his folks are, and but for them we’d have been married long ago. Well, Harry’s friend, the one who wants to meet you, is a swell, too, and he hasn’t been out from England long. Harry says his folks are big nobs over there, and

Someone had passed up to me over the footlights, if you please, a real bouquet of flowers.

he is studying law here. His folks send him a remittance and I guess it’s a pretty big one, for he’s living at the Windsor, and I guess he can treat us fine. So come along. You’ll not get such a chance again.”

“Patty,” I said, “I’m afraid I dare not. Mama hates me to be out late, and, see, it’s eleven already.”

“Why, the night’s just beginning,” cried Patty.

There was a rap at the door, and Patty exclaimed:

“Here they are now!”

All the girls in the room were watching me—enviously, I thought—and one of them made a catty remark about Patty, who had gone out in the hall, and was whispering to the men. I decided not to go, but when I came out of the room there they were all waiting for me and Patty exclaimed:

“Here she is,” and, dragging me along by the hand, she introduced me to the men.

I found myself looking up into the face of a tall young man of about twenty-three. He had light curly hair and blue eyes. His features were fine and clear-cut, and, to my girlish eyes, he appeared extraordinarily handsome and distinguished, far more so even than Colonel Stevens, who had, up till then, been my ideal of manly perfection. Everything he wore had an elegance about it from his evening suit and the rich fur-lined overcoat to his opera hat and gold-topped cane. I felt flattered and overwhelmingly impressed to think that such a fine personage should have singled me out for especial attention. What is more, he was looking at me with frank and undisguised admiration. Instead of letting go my hand, which he had taken when Patty introduced us, he held it while he asked me if he couldn’t have the pleasure of taking me out to supper. As I hesitated, blushing and awfully thrilled by the hand pressing mine, Patty said:

“She’s scared. Her mother won’t let her stay out late at night. She’s never been out to supper before.”

Then she and Harry Bond burst out laughing, as if that were a good joke on me, but Mr. Bertie (his name was the Honorable Reginald Bertie—pronounced Bartie) did not laugh. On the contrary, he looked very sympathetic, and pressed my hand the closer. I thought to myself:

“My! I must have looked lovely as Marie St. Claire. Wait till he sees me as Camille.”

“I’m not afraid,” I contradicted Patty, “but mama will be worried. She sits up for me.”

This was not strictly true, but it sounded better than to say that Ada was the one who always sat up for anyone in the house who went out at night. She even used to sit up for my brother Charles before he was married, and I could just imagine the cross-questioning she would put me through when I got in late. Irritated as I used to be in those days at what I called Ada’s interference in my affairs, I know now that she always had my best good at heart. Poor little delicate Ada! with her passionate devotion and loyalty to the family and her fierce, antagonistic attitude to all outside intrusion. She was morbidly sensitive.

Mr. Bertie quieted my fears by dispatching a messenger boy to our house with a note saying that I had gone with a party of friends to see the Ice Palace.

Even with Ada in the back of my mind, I was now, as Patty would say, “out for a good time,” and when Mr. Bertie carefully tucked the fur robes of the sleigh about me, I felt warm, excited and recklessly happy.

We drove over to the Square, where the Ice Palace was erected. The Windsor Hotel was filled with American guests who were on the balconies watching the torchlight procession marching around the mountain. My brother Charles was one of the snow-shoers, and the men were all dressed in white and striped blanket overcoats with pointed capuchons (cowls) on their backs or heads, and moccasins on their feet.

It was a beautiful sight, that procession, and looked like a snake of light, winding about old Mount Royal, and when the fireworks burst all about the monumental Ice Palace, inside of which people were dancing and singing, really it seemed to me like a scene in fairyland. I felt a sense of pride in our Montreal, and looking up at Mr. Bertie, to note the effect of so much beauty upon him, I found him watching me instead.

The English, when they first come out to Canada, always assume an air of patronage toward the “Colonials,” as they call us, just as if, while interested, they are also highly amused by our crudeness. Now Mr. Bertie said:

“We’ve seen enough of this Ice Palace’s hard, cold beauty. Suppose we go somewhere and get something warm inside us. Gad, I’m dry.”

Harry told the driver to take us to a place whose name I could not catch, and presently we drew up before a brilliantly lighted restaurant. Harry Bond jumped out, and Patty after him. I was about to follow when I felt a detaining hand upon my arm, and Bertie called out to Bond:

“I’ve changed my mind, Bond. I’ll be hanged if I care to take Miss Ascough into that place.”

Bond was angry, and demanded to know why Bertie had told him to order supper for four. He said he had called the place up from the theatre. I thought that queer. How could they

I found him watching me.

have known I would go, since I had not decided till the last minute?

“Never mind,” said Bertie. “I’ll fix it up with you later. Go on in without us. It’s all right.”

Harry and Patty laughed, and, arm-in-arm, they went into the restaurant. All the time Bertie had kept a hand on my arm. I was too surprised and disappointed to utter a word, and after he had again tucked the rug about me, he said gently:

“I wouldn’t take a sweet little girl like you into such a place, and that Patty isn’t a fit person for you to associate with.”

I said:

“You must think I’m awfully good.”

I was disappointed and hungry.

“Yes, I do think so,” he said gravely.

“Well, I’m not,” I declared. “Besides, I’m going to be an actress, and actresses can do lots of things other people get shocked about. Mr. Davis says they are privileged to be unconventional.”

“You, an actress!” he exclaimed. He said the word as if it were something disgraceful, like Ada might have said it.

“Yes,” I returned. “I’ll die if I can’t be one.”

“Whatever put such an idea in your head. You’re just a refined, innocent, sweet, adorable little girl, far too sweet and pure and lovely to live such a dirty life.”

He was leaning over me in the sleigh, and holding my hand under the fur robe. I thought to myself: “Neither St. Vidal nor Colonel Stevens would make love as thrillingly as he can, and he’s certainly the handsomest person I’ve ever seen.”

I felt his arm going about my waist, and his young face come close to mine. I knew he was going to kiss me, and I had never been kissed before. I became agitated and frightened. I twisted around and pulled away from him so that despite his efforts to reach my lips his mouth grazed, instead, my ear. Much as I really liked it, I said with as much hauteur as I could command:

“Sir, you have no right to do that. How dare you?”

He drew back, and replied coldly:

“I beg your pardon, I’m sure. I did not mean to offend you.”

He hadn’t offended me at all, and I was debating how on earth I was to let him know he hadn’t, and at the same time keep him at the “proper distance” as Ada would say, when we stopped in front of our house. He helped me out, and lifting his hat loftily, was bidding me good-bye when I said shyly:

“M-Mr. Bertie, you—you d-didn’t offend me.”

Instantly he moved up to me and eagerly seized my hand. His face looked radiant, and I did think him the most beautiful man I had ever seen. With a boyish chuckle, he said:

“I’m coming to see you to-morrow night. May I?”

I nodded, and then I said:

“You mustn’t mind our house. We’re awfully poor people.” I wanted to prepare him. He laughed boyishly at that and said:

“Good heavens, that’s nothing. So are most of my folks—poor as church mice. As far as that goes, I’m jolly poor myself. Haven’t a red cent except what the governor sends out to me. I’m going to see you anyway, and not your house.”

He looked back at the driver whose head was all muffled up under his fur collar. Then he said:

“Will you give me that kiss now?”

I returned faintly:

“I c-can’t. I think Ada’s watching from the window.”

He looked up quickly.

“Who’s Ada?”

“My sister. She watches me like a hawk.”

“Don’t blame her,” he said softly, and then all of a sudden he asked:

“Do you believe in love at first sight?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Do you?”

“Well, I didn’t—till to-night, but, by George, I do—now!”

X

I AM not likely to forget that first call of Reginald Bertie upon me. I had thought about nothing else, and, in fact, had been preparing all day.

I fixed over my best dress and curled my hair. I cleaned all of the lower floor of our house, and dusted the parlor and polished up the few bits of furniture, and tried to cover up the worn chairs and horsehair sofa.

Every one of the children had promised to “be good,” and I had bribed them all to keep out of sight.

Nevertheless, when the front doorbell rang that evening, to my horror, I heard the wild, noisy scampering of my two little brothers down the stairs, racing to see which should be the first to open the door; and trotting out from the dining-room right into the hall came Kathleen, aged three, and Violet, four and a half. They had been eating bread and molasses and had smeared it all over their faces and clothes, and they stood staring solemnly at Mr. Bertie as though they had never seen a man before. On the landing above, looking over the banister, and whispering and giggling, were Daisy, Lottie and Nellie.

Oh, how ashamed I felt that he should see all those dirty, noisy children. He stood there by the door, staring about him, with a look of amazement and amusement on his face; and, as he paused, the baby crawled in on hands and knees. She had a meat bone in her hand, and she squatted right down at his feet, and while staring up at him, wide-eyed, she went right on loudly sucking on that awful bone.

My face was burning, and I felt that I never could live down our family. Suddenly he burst out laughing. It was a boyish, infectious laugh, which was quickly caught up and mocked and echoed by those fiendish little brothers of mine.

“Are there any more?” he demanded gaily. “My word! They are like little steps and stairs.”

I said:

“How do you do, Mr. Bertie?”

He gave me a quizzical glance, and said in a low voice:

“What’s the matter with calling me ‘Reggie?’”

Nora had run down the stairs and now, to my intense relief, I could hear her coaxing the children to come away, and she would tell them a story. Nora was a wonderful story-teller, and the children would listen to her by the hour. So would all the neighbors’ children. I had told her that if she kept the children out of sight I would give her a piece of ribbon on which she had set her heart. So she was keeping her word, and presently I had the satisfaction of watching her go off with the baby on one arm, Kathleen and Violet holding to her other hand and skirt, and the boys in the rear.

Mr. Bertie, or “Reggie,” as he said I was to call him, followed me into the “parlor.” It was a room we seldom used in winter on account of the cold, but I had coaxed dear papa to help me clean out the fireplace—the only way it was heated—our Canadian houses did not have furnaces in those days—and the boys had brought me in some wood from the shed. So, at least, we had a cheerful fire crackling away in the grate, and although our furniture was old, it did not look so bad. Besides he didn’t seem to notice anything except me, for as soon as we got inside he seized my hands and said:

“Give you my word, I’ve been thinking about you ever since last night.”

Then he pulled me up toward him, and said:

“I’m going to get that kiss to-night.”

Just then in came mama and Ada, and feeling awfully embarrassed and confused, I had to introduce him. Mama only stayed a moment, but Ada settled down with her crochet work by the lamp. She never worked in the parlor on other nights, but she sat there all of that evening, with her eye on Mr. Bertie and occasionally saying something brief and sarcastic. Mama said, as she was going out:

“I’ll send papa right down to see Mr. Bertie. He looks so much like papa’s brother who died in India. Besides, papa always likes to meet anyone from home.”

Papa came in later, and he and Mr. Bertie found much to talk about. They had lived in the same places in England, and even found they knew some mutual friends and relatives. Papa’s sisters were all famous sportswomen and hunters. One was the amateur tennis champion, and, of course, Mr. Bertie had heard of her.

Then papa inquired what he was doing in Montreal, and Bertie said he was studying law, and hoped to pass his finals in about eight months.

Then, he added that as soon as he could get together a fair practice, he expected to marry and settle down in Montreal. When he said that, he looked directly at me, and I blushed foolishly, and Ada coughed significantly and sceptically.

I really didn’t get a chance to talk to him all evening, and even when he was going I could hardly say good-bye to him for mama came back with Daisy and Nellie, the two girls next to me, and what with Ada and papa there besides and everybody wishing him good-bye and mama inviting him to call again, I found myself almost in the background. He smiled, however, at me over mama’s head, and he said, while shaking hands with her:

“I’ll be delighted. May I come—er—to-morrow night?”

I saw Ada glance at mama, and I knew what was in their minds. Were they to be forced to go through this all again? The dressing up, the suppressing of the children, the using of the unused parlor, the burning of our fuel in the fireplace, etc. Papa, however, said warmly:

“By all means. I’ve some pretty good sketches of Macclesfield I’d like to show you.”

“That will be charming,” said my caller and, with a smile and bow that included us all, he was gone.

I did not get that kiss after all, and I may as well confess I was disappointed.

XI

THE winter was passing into spring and Reggie had been a regular visitor at our house every night. The family had become used, or as Ada put it “resigned,” to him. Though she regarded him with suspicion and thought papa ought to ask his “intentions,” she knew that I was deeply in love with him. She had wrung this admission from me and she expressed herself as being sorry for me.

Because of Reggie’s dislike for everything connected with the stage, I had stopped my elocution lessons and I was making some money at my painting. We had had a fine carnival that winter, and I did a lot of work for an art store, painting snow scenes and sports on diminutive toboggans, as souvenirs of Canada. These American visitors bought and I had, for a time, all the work I could do. This work and, of course, Reggie’s strenuous objections kept my mind from my former infatuation.

Then, one night, he took me to see Julia Marlowe in “Romeo and Juliet.” All my old passion and desire to act swept over me, and I nearly wept to think of having to give it up. When we were going home, I told Reggie how I felt, and this is what he said:

“Marion, which would you prefer to be, an actress or my wife?”

We had come to a standstill in the street. Everything was quiet and still, and the balmy sweetness of the Spring night seemed to enwrap even this ugly quarter of the city in a certain charm and beauty. I felt a sweet thrilling sense of deep tenderness and yearning toward Reggie, and also a feeling of gratitude and humility. It seemed to me that he was stooping down from a very great height to poor, insignificant me. More than ever he seemed a wonderful and beautiful hero in my young eyes.

“Well, dear?” he prompted, and I answered with a soft question:

“Reggie, do you really love me?”

“My word, darling,” was his reply. “I fell in love with you that first night.”

“But perhaps that was because I—I looked so nice as Marie Claire,” I suggested tremulously. I wanted to be, oh, so sure of Reggie.

“You little goose,” he laughed. “It was because you were you. Give me that kiss now. It’s been a long time coming.”

I had known him three months, but not till that night had we had an opportunity for “that kiss,” and it was sweet, and I the very happiest girl in the world.

“Now we must hurry home,” said Reggie, “as I want to speak to your father, as that’s the proper thing to do, you know.”

“Let’s not tell papa yet,” I said. “I hate the proper thing, Reggie. Why do you always want to be ‘proper.’”

Reggie looked at me, surprised.

“Why, dear girl, it’s the proper thing to be—er—proper, don’t you know.”

There was something so stolidly English about Reggie and his reply. It made me laugh, and I slipped my hand through his arm and we went happily down the street. Just for fun—I always liked to shock Reggie, he took everything so seriously—I said:

“Don’t be too cocksure I’ll marry you. I still would love to be an actress.”

“My word, Marion,” said he. “Whatever put such a notion in your head? I wish you’d forget all about the rotten stage. Actresses are an immoral lot.”

“Can’t one be immoral without being an actress?” I asked meekly.

“We won’t discuss that,” said Reggie, a bit testily. “Let’s drop the dirty subject.”

When he was going that night, and after he had kissed me good-bye several times in the dark hall, he said—but as if speaking to himself:

“Gad! but the governor’s going to be purple over this.”

The “governor” was his father.

XII

“The summer days are coming
The blossoms deck the bough,
The bees are gaily humming
And the birds are singing now.”

I was singing and thumping on our old cracked piano. Ada said:

“For heaven’s sakes, Marion, stop that noise, and listen to this advertisement.”

I had been looking in the papers for some time in the hope of getting some permanent work to do. I was not making much money at my fancy painting, and papa’s business was very bad. Ada was working on the “Star,” and was helping the family considerably. She was the most unselfish of girls, and used to bring everything she earned to mama. She fretted all the time about the family and especially mama, to whom she was devoted. Poor little soul, it did seem as if she carried the whole weight of our troubles on her little shoulders.

I had been engaged to Reggie now a year. He had failed in his law examinations, and that meant another year of waiting, for, as he said, it would be impossible to marry until he passed. He had decided to go to England this summer, to see if the “governor” wouldn’t “cough up” some more cash, and he said he would then tell his family about our engagement. He had not told them that yet. He had expected to after passing his examinations, but having failed in these, he had to put it off, he explained to me.

Ada used to say of Reggie that he was a “monument of selfishness and egotism,” and that he spent more on himself for his clothes and expensive rooms and other luxuries than papa did on our whole family. She repeatedly declared that he was quite able to support a wife, and that his only reason for putting off our marriage was because he hated to give up any of the luxuries to which he was accustomed. In fact, Ada had taken a dislike to my Reggie, and she even declared that St. Vidal against whom she had been merely prejudiced because he was a French wine-merchant, would have been more desirable.

Anyway, Ada insisted that it was about time for me to do something toward the support of our family. Here I was nineteen years old and scarcely earning enough to pay for my own board and clothes.

“Read that.”

She handed me the “Star,” and pointed to the advertisement:

WANTED: A young lady who has talent to work for an artist. Apply to Count von Hatzfeldt, Château de Ramezay, rue Notre Dame.

“Why,” I exclaimed, “that must be the old seigniory near the Notre Dame Cathedral.”

“Of course, it is,” said Ada. “I was reading in the papers that they are going to make it into a museum of historical and antique things. It used to be the home of the first Canadian governors, and there are big cannons down in the cellars that they used. If I were you, I’d go right over there now and get that work. There won’t be many applicants, for only a few girls can paint.”

I was as eager as Ada, and immediately set out for the Château de Ramezay.

It was a long ride, for we only had horse-cars in those days, and the Château was on the other end of the city. I liked the ride, however, and looked out of the window all of the way. We passed through the most interesting and historical part of our city, and when we came to the dismal, mottled, old stone jail, I could not help shuddering as I looked up at it, and recalled what my brother Charles used to tell me about it when I was a little girl. He said it was mottled because the house had small-pox. If we did this or that, we would be thrown into that small-pox jail and given black bread and mice to eat, and when we came out we would be horribly pock-marked. He said all the anti-vaccination rioters had been locked up in there, and they were pitted with marks.

As my car went by it, I could see the poor prisoners looking out of the barred windows and a great feeling of fear and pity for the sorrows of the world swept over me, so that my eyes became blinded with tears. A covered van was going in at the gate. A woman next to me said:

“There’s the Black Maria. Look! There’s a young girl in it!”

My heart went out to that young girl, and I wondered vaguely what she could have done that would make them shut her up in that loathsome “pock-marked” jail.

When we reached the French hospital, “Hôtel Bon Dieu,” the conductor told me to get off, as the Château was on the opposite side, a little farther up the hill.

I went up the steps of the Château and banged on the great iron knocker. No one answered. So I pushed the huge heavy door open—it was not locked—and went in. The place seemed entirely deserted and empty, and so old and musty, even the stairs seeming crooked and shaky. I wandered about until finally I came to a door on the second floor, with a card nailed on it, bearing the name: “Count von Hatzfeldt.”

I knocked, and the funniest little old man opened the door, and stood blinking at me.

“Count von Hatzfeldt?” I inquired.

Ceremoniously he bowed, and holding the door open, ushered me in. He had transformed that great room into a wonderful studio. It was at least five times the size of the average New York studio, considered extra large. From the beams in the ceiling hung a huge swing, and all about the walls and from the ceilings hung skins and things he had brought from Iceland, where he had lived for over six months with the Esquimaux, and he had ever so many paintings of the people.

I was intently interested and I wished my father could see the place. Count von Hatzfeldt showed me the work he was doing for the directors of the Château de Ramezay Society, who were intending to make a museum of the place. He was restoring the old portraits of the different Canadian governors and men of historical fame in Canada.

“I will want you to work on this Heraldry,” he said, and indicated a long table scattered with water-color paper, water colors, and sketches of coats of arms. “I will sketch in the coat of arms, and you will do the painting, young lady. We use this gold and silver and bronze a great deal. This, I suppose, you know, is called ‘painting en gauche.’”

I assured him I could do it. Papa had often painted in that medium, and had taught me. I told the Count that once a well-known artist of Boston called on papa to help him paint some fine lines on a big illustration. He said his eyes were bothering him, so he could not finish the work. It just happened that at that time papa’s eyes were also troubling him, but as he did not want to lose the work, he had said:

“I’ll send my little girl to you. She can do it better than I.”

“And Count von Hatzfeldt,” I said proudly, “I did do it, and the artist praised me when I finished the work, and he told papa he ought to send me to Boston to study at the art schools there.”

At that time I was only thirteen. The Boston artist gave me ten dollars. I gave eight of it to mama. With the other two, I bought fifty cents’ worth of candy, which I divided among all of us, mama included. With the dollar-fifty left, I bought Ellen a birthday present of a brooch with a diamond as big as a pea in it that cost twenty-five cents. Then Ellen and I went to St. Helen’s Island, and there we ate peanuts, drank spruce beer (a French-Canadian drink), had two swings and three merry-go-rounds, and what with the ten cents each for the ferry there was nothing left to pay our carfare home. So we walked, and mama was angry with us for being so late. She slapped Ellen for “talking back,” and I always got mad if Ellen got hurt, so I “talked back” worse and then I got slapped, too, and we both had to go to bed without supper.

I didn’t tell all this to the Count; only the first part about doing the work, etc. He said—he talked with a queer sort of accent, like a German, though I believe he was Scandinavian:

“Ya, ya! Vell, I will try you then. Come you to vork to-morrow and if you do vell, you shall have five dollar a veek. For that you vill vork on the coat of arms two hours a day, and if I find you can help me mit the portraits—it maybe you can lay in the bag-grounds, also the clothes—if so, I vill pay you some little more. Ya, ya!”

He rubbed his hands and smiled at me. He looked so much like a funny little hobgoblin that I felt like laughing at him, but there was also something very serious and almost angry in his expression.

“Now,” said he, “the pusiness talk it is all done. Ya, ya!”

He said “Ya, ya!” constantly when he was thinking.

“I have met your good papa,” he went on, “and I like him much. He is a man of great gift, but—”

He threw out his hands expressively.

“Poor papa,” I thought. “I suppose he let the Count see how unbusiness-like and absent-minded he is.”

After a moment the Count said:

“His—your papa’s face—it is a typical northern one—such as we see plenty in Scandinavia— Ya, ya!”

“Papa is half-Irish and half-English,” I explained.

He nodded.

“Ya, ya, it is so. Nevertheless his face is northern. It is typical, while you—” He regarded me smilingly. “Gott! You look like one little Indian girl that I meet when I live in the North. Her father, the people told me, was one big rich railway man of Canada, but he did not know that pretty little Indian girl, she was his daughter. Ya, ya!”

He rubbed his hands, and nodded his head musingly, as he studied me. Then:

“Come, I will show you the place here.”

Pulling aside a curtain covering a large window (the Count shut out all the light except the north light), he showed me the great panorama of the city below us. We looked across the St. Lawrence River, and in the street directly below was the old Bonsecour market. I could see the carts of the “habitants” (farmers) loaded with vegetables, fruit and fresh maple syrup, some of it of the consistency of jelly. Never have I tasted such maple syrup since I left Canada. In the midst stood the old Bonsecour Church.

“Good people,” it seemed to say, benevolently, “I am watching over you all!”

“It is,” said the Count, “the most picturesque place in Montreal. Some day I will paint it, and then it shall be famous. Ya, ya! At present it is convenient to get the good things to eat. I take me five or ten cents in my hand, and those good habitants they give me so much food I cannot use it all. You vill take lunch with me, Ya, ya! and we will have the visitors here in the Château de Ramezal. Ya, ya!”

He had kept on tap two barrels of wine, which he bought from the Oke monks. He said they made a finer wine than any produced in this country or the United States. They made it from an old French recipe and sold it for a mere song. These monks, he told me, also made cheese and butter, and the cheese, he said, was better than the best imported. I used to see these monks on the street, and even in the coldest days in winter they wore only sandals on their feet, and their bare heads were shaved bald on top. They owned an island down the St. Lawrence, and depended on its products for their existence.

XIII

TO my surprise, Reggie was not at all pleased when I told him of the work I had secured. I had been so delighted, and papa thought it an excellent thing for me. He said the Count was a genius and I would learn a great deal from him. Reggie, however, looked glum and sulky and said in his prim English way:

“You are engaged to be married to me, and I don’t want my wife to be a working girl.”

“But, Reggie,” I exclaimed, “I have been working at home, doing all kinds of painting for different people and helping papa.”

“That’s different,” he said sulkily. “A girl can work at home without losing her dignity, but when she goes out—well, she’s just a working girl, that’s all. Nice girls at home don’t do it. My word! My people would take a fit if they thought I married a working girl. I’ve been trying to break it to them gradually about our engagement. I told them I knew very well a girl who was the granddaughter of Squire Ascough of Macclesfield, but I haven’t had the nerve yet to tell them—to—er—”

I knew what he meant. He hadn’t told them about us here, how poor we were, of our large family, and how we all had to work.

“I don’t care a snap about your old people,” I broke in heatedly, “and you don’t have to marry me, Reggie Bertie. You can go back to England and marry the girl they want you to over there. (He had told me about her.) And, anyway, I’m sick and tired of your old English prejudices and notions, and you can go right now—the sooner the better. I hate you.”

The words had rushed out of me headlong. I was furious at Reggie and his people. He was always talking about them, and I had been hurt and irritated by his failure to tell them about me. If he were ashamed of me and my people I wanted nothing to do with him, and now his objecting to my working made me indignant and angry.

Reggie, as I spoke, had turned deathly white. He got up as if to go, and slowly picked up his hat. I began to cry, and he stood there hesitating before me.

“Marion, do you mean that?” he asked huskily.

I said weakly:

“N-no, b-but I sha’n’t give up the work. I gave up acting for you, but I won’t my painting. I’ve got to work!”

Reggie drew me down to the sofa beside him.

“Now, old girl, listen to me. I’ll not stop your working for this Count, but I want you to know that it’s because I love you. I want my wife to be able to hold her head up with the best in the land, and none of our family—none of our women folk—have ever worked. As far as that goes, jolly few of the men have. I never heard of such a thing in our family.”

“But there’s no disgrace in working. Poor people have to do it,” I protested. “Only snobs and fools are ashamed of it. Look at those Sinclair girls. They were all too proud to work, and their brother had to support them for years, and all the time he was in love with Ivy Lee and kept her waiting and waiting, and then she fell in love with that doctor and ran away and married him, and when Will Sinclair heard about it, he went into his room and shot himself dead. And it was all because of those big, strong, lazy sisters and vain, proud old mother, who were always talking about their noble family. All of us girls have got to work. Do you think we want poor old papa to kill himself working for us big, healthy young animals just because we happen to be girls instead of boys?”

Reggie said stubbornly:

“Nevertheless, it’s not done by nice people, Marion. It’s not proper, you know.”

I pushed him away from me.

“Oh, you make me sick,” I said.

You can go back to England and marry the girl they want you to, over there.

“My brother-in-law, Wallace Burrows, would call that sort of talk rank snobbery. In the States women think nothing of working. They are proud to do it, women of the best families.”

Reggie made a motion of complete distaste. The word “States” was always to Reggie like a red rag to a bull.

“My dear Marion, are you going to hold up the narsty Yankees as an example to me? My word, old girl! And as for that brother-in-law of yours, I say, he’s hardly a gentleman, is he? Didn’t you say the fellow was a—er—journalist or something like that?”

I jumped to my feet.

“He’s a better kind of gentleman than you are!” I cried. “He’s a genius, and—and—and— How dare you say anything about him! We all love him and are proud of him.”

I felt my breath coming and going and my fist doubling up. I wanted to pummel Reggie just then.

“Come, come, old girl,” he said. “Don’t let’s have a narsty scene. My word, I wouldn’t quarrel with you for worlds. Now, look here, darling, you shall do as you like, and even if the governor cuts me off, I’ll not give up my sweetheart.”

He looked very sweet when he said that, and I melted in an instant. All of my bitterness and anger vanished. Reggie’s promise to stand by me in spite of his people appealed to me as romantic and fine.

“Oh, Reggie, if they do cut you off, will you work for me with your hands?” I cried excitedly.

“My word, darling, how could I?” he exclaimed. “I’m blessed if I could earn a tuppence with them. Besides, I could hardly do work that was unbecoming a gentleman, now could I, darling?”

I sighed.

“I suppose not, Reggie, but do you know, I believe I’d love you lots more if you were a poor beggar. You’re so much richer than I am now, and somehow—somehow—you seem sort of selfish, and as if you could never understand how things are with us. You seem—always—as if you were looking down on us. Ada says you think we aren’t as good as you are.”

“Oh, I say, Marion, that’s not fair. I’ve always said your father was a gentleman. Come, come!” he added peevishly, “don’t let’s argue, there’s a good girl. It’s so jolly uncomfortable, and just think, I sharn’t be with you much longer, now.”

He was to sail for England the following week. I was wearing his ring, a lovely solitaire. In spite of all his prejudices and his selfishness, Reggie had lots of lovable traits, and he was so handsome. Then, too, he was really very much in love with me, and was unhappy about leaving me.

The day before he went, he took me in his arms and said, jealously:

“Marion, if you ever deceive me, I will kill you and myself, too. I know I ought to trust you, but you’re so devilishly pretty, and I can’t help being jealous of every one who looks at you. What’s more, you aren’t a bit like the girls at home. You say and do really shocking things, and sometimes, do you know, I’m really alarmed about you. I feel as if you might do something while I’m away that wouldn’t be just right, you know.”

I put my hand on my heart and solemnly I swore never, never to deceive Reggie, and to be utterly true and faithful to him forever. Somehow, as I spoke, I felt as if I were pacifying a spoiled child.

XIV

ALL of that summer I worked for the old Count. Besides the Heraldry work, I assisted him with the restoration of the old oil portraits, some of which we had to copy completely. The Count had not much patience with the work the Society set him to do, and he let me do most of the copying, while he worked on other painting more congenial to him.

He was making a large painting of Andromeda, the figure of a nude woman tied to the rocks, and in the clouds was seen Perseus coming to deliver her. He had a very pretty girl named Lil Markey to pose for this.

My father was a landscape and marine painter, and never used models, and the first time I saw Lil I was repulsed and horrified. She came tripping into the studio without a stitch on her, and she even danced about and seemed to be amused by my shocked face. I inwardly despised her. Little did I dream that the time would come when I, too, would earn my living in that way.

I got much interested when I saw the Count painting from life. He tied Lil to an easel with soft rags, so as not to hurt her hands, and later he painted the rocks from a sketch, behind her, where the old easel was. While Lil rested, she would swing (still naked) in the big swing, and jump about and sing. In all my experiences later as an artist’s model in America, I never saw a model who behaved as Lil did. The Count would give her cigarettes and she would tell stories that were not nice, and I had to pretend I didn’t hear or couldn’t understand them.

Lil was not exactly a bad girl, but sort of reckless and lacking entirely in modesty. She did have some decent homely traits, however. She would wrap a piece of drapery about her and say:

“You folks go on painting, and I’ll be the cook.”

Then she would disappear into the kitchen and come back presently with a delicious lunch which she had cooked all herself. I was afraid the Count was falling in love with her, for he used to look at her lovingly and sometimes he called her “Countess.” Lil would make faces at him behind his back, and whisper to me: “Golly, he looks like a dying duck.”

Twice a week, the Count had pupils, rich young women mostly, who learned to paint just as they did to play the piano and to dance. The Count would make fun of them to Lil and me. They would take a canvas and copy one of the Count’s pictures, he doing most of the work. Then he would practically repaint it. The pupil, so the Count said, would then have it framed and when it was hung on the wall the proud parents would point to the work and admiring friends would say:

“What talent your daughter has!”

The Count, between chuckles and excited “Ya, ya’s,” would illustrate derisively the whole scene to Lil and me.

He tried to form a Bohemian club to meet at the studio in the Château, and we sent out many invitations for an opening party. When the evening came there was a large gathering of society folk, and we had the place full. Every one went looking at the Count’s things and exclaiming about them, and they asked what he termed the “most foolish questions” about art.

Among them was a violinist, Karl Walter, whose exquisite music made me want to cry. He had a beautiful face, and I could not take my eyes from it all evening. When the party was over, he offered to see me home. The rest of the company were all departing in their carriages, and I thought rather drearily of that ride home on the horse-car. It seemed very short, however, with Mr. Walter. When we came to our door, he took my hand and said:

He would tell stories that were not nice and I had to pretend I couldn’t hear or didn’t understand them.

“Mademoiselle, I am going away for six months. When I return, I would like to know you better. Your sympathetic face was the only one I was playing to. The rest were all cattle.”

He never came back to our Montreal, and I heard that he died soon after leaving us.

The morning after the party, the old Count was very irritable and cross, and when I asked him if he had enjoyed himself, he exclaimed disgustedly:

“Stupid! Stupid! Those Canadians, do not know the meaning of the word ‘Bohemian.’ It was a ‘pink tea.’ Ugh!”

I suggested that next time we should invite Patty Chase and Lu Fraser, and girls like that, but the Count shook his head with a hopeless gesture.

“That is the other extreme,” he said. “No, no, you, my little friend, are the only one worthy to belong to such a club as I had hoped to start. It is impossible in this so stupid Canada.”

XV

RAT-A-TAT-TAT, on the big iron knocker. I called:

“Come in,” and Mrs. Wheatley, an English woman, accompanied by her daughter, Alice, a pretty girl of fifteen, entered. She came directly over to me, with her hand held out graciously.

“How do you do, Marion? I have been hearing about the Count, and I want you to introduce us.”

I did so, of course, and she went on to tell the Count that she wanted her daughter’s portrait painted.

“Just the head and shoulders, Count, and Miss Marion is here—her father and I are old friends—I shall not consider it necessary to come to the sittings. Marion will, I am sure, chaperon my little girl,” and she smiled at me sweetly.

The Count was much pleased, and I could see his eyes sparkling as he looked at Alice. She was lovely, in coloring like a rose leaf, and her hair was a beautiful reddish gold. Her mother was a woman of about forty-five, rather plump, who affected babyish hats and fluffy dresses and tried to look younger than she was. After the Count had named a price she thought reasonable, she said Alice would come the next day. The Count was very gallant and polite to her and she seemed much impressed by his fine manners and I suppose, title.

“I have such a lovely old-gold frame, Count,” she said, “and I thought Alice’s hair would just match it and look lovely in it.”

The Count threw up his hands and laughed when the door closed upon her, but he anticipated with pleasure painting the pretty Alice.

The following day Alice came alone, and soon we had her seated on the model’s platform. She was a gentle, shy little thing, rather dull, yet so sweet and innocent that she made a most appealing picture. The Count soon discovered that her neck was as lovely as her face. In her innocence, Alice let him slip the drapery lower and lower until her girlish bosoms were partly revealed. The Count was charmed with her as a model. He made two pictures of her, one for himself, with her neck and breasts uncovered, and the other for her mother, muffled up with drapery to the neck.

A few weeks later, after the pictures were finished, I was crossing the street, when Mrs. Wheatley came rushing up to me excitedly:

“Miss Ascough! I am furious with you for allowing that wicked old Count to paint my Alice’s portrait as I am told he did. Every one is talking about the picture in his studio. It is disgraceful! An outrage!”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Wheatley,” I tried to reassure her, “it is not disgraceful, but beautiful, and the Count says that all beauty is good and pure and that is art, Mrs. Wheatley. Indeed, indeed, it is.”

“Art! H’mph! The idea. Art! Do you think I want my Alice shown like those brazen hussies in the art galleries? I am surprised at you, Marion Ascough, and I advise you, for the sake of your family, to be more careful of your reputation. I am going right over to that studio now and I will put my parasol through that disgraceful canvas.”

Fairly snorting with indignation and desire for vengeance, this British matron betook herself in the direction of the Château. Fortunately I was younger, and more fleet-footed than she, and I ran all of the way, and burst into the studio:

“Count Hatzfeldt! Count Hatzfeldt! Hurry up and hide Alice’s picture. Mrs. Wheatley is coming to poke a hole in it.”

Just as we were speaking, there came an impatient rap upon the door and the Count shoved his arms into the sleeves of his old velvet smoking-jacket, and himself flung the door open. Before Mrs. Wheatley, who was out of breath, could say a word, he exclaimed:

“How do you do it, madame? Heavens, it is vonderful, vonderful! How do you do it? Please have the goodness to tell me how you do it?”

“Do what?” she demanded, surprised and taken aback by the Count’s evident admiration and cordiality.

“Why, madame, I thought you were your daughter. You look so young, so sweet, so fresh! Ah, madame, how I should love to paint you as the Spring! It is a treat for a poor artist to see so much freshness and peauty. Gott in Himmel! How do you do it?”

An astounding change had swept all over Mrs. Wheatley. She was simpering like a girl, and her eyes were flashing the most coquettish glances at the Count.

“Now, Count, you flatter me,” she said, “but really I never do anything to make myself look younger. I simply take care of myself and lead a simple life. That is my only secret.”

“Impossible,” said the Count unbelievingly, and then his glance fell down to her feet and he exclaimed excitedly:

“What I have been looking for so many years! It is impossible to find a model with the perfect feets. Madame, you are vonderful!”

Her face was wreathed with smiles, and she stuck out her foot, the instep coyly arched, as she said:

“Yes, it’s true my feet are shapely and small. I only take threes, though I could easily wear twos or twos and a half.” Then with a very gracious bend of her head and a smile she added winningly: “I believe it might be perfectly proper to allow you to use my foot as a model, especially as Marion is here.” She beamed on me sweetly.

I removed her shoe and stocking, and the Count carefully covered over a stool with a soft piece of velvet, upon which he set her precious foot. Enthusiastically he went to work drawing that foot. She playfully demanded that he must never tell anyone that her foot was the model for the sketch, though all the time I knew she wanted him to do just that.

When he was through and we had all loudly exclaimed over the beauty of the drawing, she said:

“And now, Count Hatzfeldt, may I see the copy of my daughter’s picture?”

The Count had covered it over before opening the door.

“Certainly, madame.”

He drew the cover from the painting.

“Here it is. Miss Alice did sit for the face. The lower part—it was posed by a professional model. It is the custom, madame.”

“As I see,” said Mrs. Wheatley, examining the

Enthusiastically he went to work drawing that foot.

picture through her lorgnon. “Those professional models have no shame, have they, Count?”

“None, none whatever, madame,” sighed the Count, shaking his head expressively.

XVI

I HAD received, of course, a great many letters from Reggie, and I wrote to him every day. He expected to return in the fall, and he wrote that he was counting the days. He said very little in his letters about his people, though he must have known I was anxiously awaiting word as to how they had taken the news of our engagement.

Toward the end of summer, his letters came less frequently, and, to my great misery, two weeks passed away when I had not word from him at all. I was feeling blue and heartsick and, but for my work at the Château, I think I would have done something desperate. I was really tremendously in love with Reggie and I worried and fretted over his long absence and silence.

Then one day, in late September, a messenger boy came with a letter for me. It was from Reggie. He had returned from his trip, and was back in Montreal. Instead of being happy to receive his letter, I was filled with resentment and indignation. He should have come himself and, in spite of what he wrote, I felt I could not excuse him. This was his letter:

“Darling Girlie:

I am counting the hours when I will be with you. I tried to get up to see you last night, but it was impossible. Lord Eaton’s son, young Albert, was on the steamer coming over, and they are friends of the governor’s and I simply had to be with them. You see, darling, it means a good deal to me in the future, to be in touch with these people. His brother-in-law, whom I met last night, is head cockalorum in the House of Parliament, and as I have often told you, my ambition is to get into politics. It’s the surest road to fame for a Barrister.

Now I hope my foolish little girl will understand and believe me when I say that I am thinking for you as much as for myself.

I am hungry for a kiss, and I feel I cannot wait till tonight.

Your own,
Reggie.”

For the first time in my life I experienced the pangs of jealousy and yet I was jealous of something tangible. It was lurking in my thought, and all sorts of suspicions and fears came into my hot head.

When Reggie came that evening I did not open the door as usual. I heard him say eagerly, when the children let him in:

“Where’s Marion?”

I was peeping over the banister, and I deliberately went back into the bedroom and counted five hundred before I went down to see him.

He was walking excitedly up and down and as I came in he sprang to meet me, his arms outstretched; but I drew back coldly. Oh, how bitter I felt, and vindictive, too!

“How do you do, Mr. Bertie,” I said.

“Mr. Bertie! Marion, what does this mean?”

He stared at me incredulously, and then I saw a look of amazement and suspicion come into his face, which had grown suddenly red as with rage.

“Good God!” he cried. “Do you mean you don’t care for me any more? Then you must be in love with someone else.”

“Reggie,” I sneered, “don’t try to cover up your own falseness by accusing me. You pretend to love me, and yet after all these months when you get back, you do not come to me, but go to see other women (I was guessing) and men.”

I ended with a sob of rage, for I could see in Reggie’s face that my surmises were correct. He, however, exclaimed:

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” And before I could move, he had seized me impulsively in his arms and was kissing me again and again. I never could resist Reggie once he got his arms about me. I always became just as weak as a kitten and I think I would have believed anything he told me then. I just melted to him, as it were. He knew it well, the power of his strong arms about me, and whenever he wanted his way about anything with me he would pick me right up and hold me till I gave in. After a moment, with me still in his arms, he said:

“It’s true I was with men and women, but that was not my fault. There’s such a thing as duty. I had no pleasure in their society. I was longing for you all the time, but I had to stay with them because they are influential people, and I want to use them to help me—us, Marion.”

“Who were those women?” I demanded.

“Only some friends of my family’s. They had a box at the theatre, and there was young Eaton, of course, and his sister and a cousin. They bored me to death, give you my word they did, darling. Come, come now, be good to your tired old Reggie.”

I was glad to make up with him and, oh! infinitely happy to have him back. The great oceans of water that had been between us seemed to have melted away. Nevertheless, he had planted a feeling in me that I could not entirely rid myself of, a feeling of distrust. Like a weed, it was to grow in my heart to terrible proportions.

XVII

THE days that followed were happy ones for me. Reggie was with me constantly, and I even got off several afternoons from the studio and spent the time with him.

One day we made a little trip up the St. Lawrence, Reggie rowing all the way from the wharf at Montreal to Boucherville. We started at noon and arrived at six. There we tied up our boat and went to look for a place for dinner. We found a little French hotel and Reggie said to the proprietor:

“We want as good a dinner as you can give us. We’ve rowed all the way from Montreal and are famished.”

“Bien! You sall have ze turkey which is nearly cook,” said the hotel keeper. “M’sieu he row so far. It is too much. Only Beeg John, ze Indian, row so far. He go anny deestance. Also he go in his canoe down those Rapids of Lachine. Vous connais dat man—Beeg John?”

Yes, we knew about him. Every one in Montreal did.

We waited on the porch while he prepared our dinner. The last rays of the setting sun were dropping down in the wood, and away in the distance the reflections upon the St. Lawrence were turning into dim purple the brilliant orange of a little while ago. Never have I seen a more beautiful sunset than that over our own St. Lawrence. I said wistfully:

“Reggie, the sunset makes me think of this poem:

“The sunset gates were opened wide,
Far off in the crimson west,
As through them passed the weary day
In rugged clouds to rest.”

Before I could finish the last line, Reggie bent over and kissed me right on the mouth.

“Funny little girl,” he said. “Suppose instead of quoting poetry you speak to me, and instead of looking at sunsets, you look at me.”

“Reggie, don’t you like poetry then?”

“It’s all right enough, I suppose, but I’d rather have straight English words. What’s the sense of muddling one’s language? Silly, I call it,” he said.

I felt disappointed. Our family had always loved poetry. Mama used to read Tennyson’s “Idyls of the King,” and we knew all of the characters, and even played them as children. Moreover, papa and Ada and Charles and even Nora could all write poetry. Ada made up poems about every little incident in our lives. When papa went to England, mama would make us little children all kneel down in a row and repeat a prayer to God that she had made up to send him back soon. Ada wrote a lovely poem about God hearing us. She also wrote a poem about our Panama hen who died. She said the wicked cock hen, a hen we had that could crow like a cock, had killed her. How we laughed over that poem. I was sorry Reggie thought it was nonsense, and I wished he would not laugh or sneer at all the things we did and liked.

“Dinner is ready pour m’sieu et madame!”

Gracious! That man thought I was Reggie’s wife. I colored to my ears, and I was glad Reggie did not understand French.

He had set the table for two and there was a big sixteen pound turkey on it, smelling so good and looking brown and delicious. I am sure our Canadian turkeys are better than any I have ever tasted anywhere else. They certainly are not “cold-storage birds.”

They charged Reggie for that whole sixteen-pound turkey. He thought it a great joke, but I wanted to take the rest home. The tide being against us, we left the rowboat at the hotel with instructions to return it, and we took the train back to Montreal.

Coming home on the train, the conductor proved to be a young man who had gone to school with me and he came up with his hand held out:

“Hallo, Marion!”

“Hallo, Jacques.”

I turned to Reggie to introduce him, but Reggie was staring out of the window and his chin stuck out as if it were in a bad temper. When Jacques had passed along, I said crossly to Reggie:

“You needn’t be so rude to my friends, Reggie Bertie.”

“Friends!” he sneered. “My word, Marion, you seem to have a passion for low company.”

I said:

“Jacques is a nice, honest fellow.”

“No doubt,” said Reggie loftily. “I’ll give him a tip next time he passes.”

“Oh, how can you be so despicably mean?” I cried.

He turned around in his seat abruptly:

“What in the world has come over you, Marion! You have changed since I came back.”

I felt the injustice of this and shut my lips tight. I did not want to quarrel with Reggie, but I was burning with indignation and I was hurt through and through by his attitude.

In silence we left the train and in silence went to my home. At the door Reggie said:

“We had a pleasant day. Why do you always spoil things so? Good-night.”

I could not speak. I had done nothing and he made me feel as if I had committed a crime. The tears ran down my face and I tried to open the door. Reggie’s arms came around me from behind, and, tilting back my face, he kissed me.

“There, there, old girl,” he said, “I’ll forgive you this time, but don’t let it happen again.”

XVIII

I HAD finished the work for the Château de Ramezay, but the Count said I could stay on there, and that he would try to help me get outside work. He did get me quite a few orders for work of a kind he himself would not do.

One woman gave me an order to paint pink roses on a green plush piano cover. She said her room was all in green and pink. When I had finished the cover, she ordered a picture “of the same colors.” She wished me to copy a scene of meadows and sheep. So I painted the sunset pink, the meadows green and the sheep pink. She was delighted and said it was a perfect match to her carpets.

The Count nearly exploded with delight about it. My orders seemed to give him exquisite joy and he sometimes said, to see me at work compensated for much and made life worth while. He used to hover about me, rubbing his hands and chuckling to himself and muttering: “Ya, ya!”

I did a lot of decorating of boxes for a manufacturer and painted dozens of sofa pillows. Also I put “real hand-painted” roses on a woman’s ball dress, and she told me it was the envy of every one at the big dance at which she wore it.

I did not love these orders, but I made a bit of money, and I needed clothes badly. It was impossible to go around with Reggie in my thin and shabby things. Moreover, an especially cold winter had set in and I did want a new overcoat badly. I hated to have to wear my old blanket overcoat. It looked so dreadfully Canadian, and many a time I have seen Reggie look at it askance, though, to do him justice, he never made any comment about my clothes. In a poor, large family like ours, there was little enough left for clothes.

About the middle of winter, the Count began to have bad spells of melancholia. He would frighten me by saying:

“Some day ven you come in the morning, you vill find me dead. I am so plue, I vish I vas dead.”

I tried to laugh at him and cheer him up, but every morning as I came through those ghostly old halls, I would think of the Count’s words and I would be afraid to open the door.

One day, about five in the afternoon, when I was getting ready to go, the Count who was sitting near the fire all hunched up, said:

“Please stay mit me a little longer. Come sit by me a little vile. Your radiant youth vill varm me up.”

I had an engagement with Reggie and was in a hurry to get away. So I said:

“I can’t, Count. I’ve got to run along.”

He stood up suddenly and clicked his heels together.

“Miss Ascough,” he said, “I think after this, you better vork some other place. You have smiles for all the stupid Canadian poys, but you vould not give to me the leastest.”

“Why, Count,” I said, astonished, “don’t be foolish. I’m in a hurry to-night, that’s all. I’ve an engagement.”

“Very vell, Miss Ascough? Hurry you out. It is pest you come not pack again.”

“Oh, very well!” I said. “Good-bye.” I ran down the stairs, feeling much provoked with the foolish old fellow.

Poor old Count! How I wish I had been kinder and more grateful to him; but in my egotistical youth I was incapable of hearing or understanding his pathetic call for sympathy and companionship. I was flying along through life, as we do in youth. I was, indeed, as I had said, “in a hurry.”

He died a few years later in our Montreal, a stranger among strangers, who saw only in the really beauty-loving soul of the artist the grotesque and queer. I wished then that I could have been with him in the end, but I myself was in a strange land, and I was experiencing some of the same appalling loneliness that had so oppressed and crushed my old friend.

XIX

WHEN I told Reggie I was not going to the Château any more, he was very thoughtful for some time. Then he said:

“Why don’t you take a studio up town? You can’t do anything in this God-forsaken Hochelaga.”

“Why, Reggie,” I said, “you talk as if a studio were to be had for nothing. Where can I find the money to pay the rent?”

“Look here,” said he, “I’m sure to pass my finals this spring, and I’m awfully busy. It takes a deuce of a time to get down here. Now if you had a studio of your own it would be perfectly proper for me to see you there, and then, besides, don’t you see, darling, I would have you all to myself? Here we are never alone hardly, unless I take you out.”

“I couldn’t afford to pay for such a place,” I said, sighing, for I would have loved to have a studio of my own.

“Tell you what you do,” said Reggie. “You let me pay for the room. You needn’t get an expensive place, you know—just a little studio. Then you tell your governor that you get the room free for teaching or painting for the landlady, or something like that. What do you say, darling?”

“I thought you said you despised a lie?” was my answer. “You said you would never forgive me if I deceived you or told you a lie.”

“But that was to me, darling. That’s different. It’s not lying exactly—just using a bit of diplomacy, don’t you see?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do it, Reggie. I ought to stay at home. They really need my help, now Ellen and Charles are both married, and Nellie engaged and may marry any time.”

Nellie was the girl next to me. She was engaged to a Frenchman who was urging her to marry right away.

“You see,” I went on, “there’s only Ada helping. The other girls are too young to work yet, though Nora is leaving home next week.”

“Nora! That kid! What on earth is she going to do?”

“Oh, Nora’s not so young. She’s nearly seventeen. You forget we’ve been engaged some time now, and all the children are growing up.”

I said this sulkily. Secretly I resented Reggie’s constantly putting off our marriage day.

“But what is she going to do?”

“Oh, she’s going out to the West Indies. She’s got a position on some paper out there.”

“Whee!” Reggie drew a long whistle. “West Indies! I’ll be jiggered if your parents aren’t the easiest ever. Your mother is the last woman in the world to bring up a family of daughters, and I’m blessed if I ever came across any father like yours. Why, do you know when I asked him for his consent to our engagement, he never asked me a single question about myself, but began to talk about his school days in France, and how he walked when he was a boy from Boulogne to Calais. When I pushed him for an answer, he said absently, ‘Yes, yes, I suppose it’s all right, if she wants you,’ and the next moment asked me if I had read Darwin.”

Reggie laughed heartily at the memory, and then he said:

“Yet I’m fond of your governor, Marion. He is a gentleman.”

“Dear papa,” I said, “wouldn’t hurt a fly, but anybody could cheat him, and that is why I hate to deceive him.”

“Well, don’t lie to him then if you feel that way. Just say you are going to take a studio up town and I bet you anything he’ll never bother his head where you go or how you pay the rent. As for your mother, if you told her the studio was free, she would think that just the usual thing and that you were doing the landlord an honor in using it.”

Again Reggie burst out laughing, but I would not laugh with him, so he stopped and said:

“Your mother’s awfully proud of you, darling, and I don’t blame her. She told me one day that you were the most beautiful baby in England, where she said you were born. She said she used to take you out to show you off, as you were her show child. Your mother is a joke, there’s no mistake about that. And to think you are afraid to leave them to go up town! Come, come darling, don’t be a little goose. Think how cozy it will be for us both!”

It would be “cozy.” I realized that, and then the thought of having a studio all to myself appealed to me. Reggie and I were engaged, and why should I not let him do a little thing like that to help me. Reggie had never been a very generous lover. The presents he made me were few and far between, and often I had secretly compared his affluent appearance with my own shabby self. After all, I could get a room for a fairly nominal price, and perhaps if I got plenty of work, I would soon be able to pay for it myself. So I agreed to look for a place, much to Reggie’s delight.

As Reggie had predicted, papa and mama were not particularly interested when I told them I was going to open a studio up town, and even when I added that I might not be able to come home every night, but would sleep sometimes on a lounge in the studio mama merely said:

“Well, you must be sure to be home for Sunday dinners anyway.”

Ada, however, looked up sharply and said:

“How much will it cost you?”

I stammered and said I did not know, but that I would get a cheap place. Ada then said:

“Well, you ought to try and sell papa’s paintings there, too. Nobody wants to come to Hochelaga to look at them.”

I replied eagerly that I would show papa’s work, and I added that I was going to try and start a class in painting, too.

“If you make any money,” said Ada, “you ought to help the family, as I have been doing for some time now, and you are much stronger than I am, and almost as old.”

Ada had been delicate from a child, and already I was taller and larger than she. She made up in spirit what she lacked in stature. She was almost fanatically loyal to mama and the family. She devoted herself to them and tried to imbue in all of us the same spirit of pride.

XX

LU FRAZER went with me to look for a room. Lu was an Irish-Canadian girl with whom I had gone to school. She worked as a stenographer for an insurance firm, and was very popular with all the girls. There was something about her that made nearly all the girls go to her and consult her about this or that, and tell her all about their love affairs.

I think the attraction lay in Lu’s absolute interest in others. She never talked about her own feelings or affairs, but was always willing to listen to the outpourings of others. When you told her anything she was full of sympathetic murmurs, or screams of joy, or expressions of indignation if the story you told her called for that.

I had formed the habit of going to Lu about all my worries and anxieties over Reggie, and I always found a willing listener and staunch champion. The girls called her the Irish Jew, as she kept a bank account and whenever the girls were short of money they would borrow from Lu, who would charge them interest. Reggie heartily disliked her without any just reason. He said:

“She belongs to a class that should by right be scrubbing floors; only she got some schooling, so she is ticking the typewriter instead.”

Nevertheless, I liked Lu, and in spite of Reggie kept her as my friend, though she knew that he hated her. When I told her about Reggie’s offer to pay for the studio, she said:

“Um! Then take as fine a one as you can get, Marion. Soak him good and hard. I hear he pays a great big price for his own rooms at the Windsor.”

I explained to her that I only wanted as cheap a place as I could get, and that as soon as I made enough money, I intended to pay for it myself.

We looked through the advertisements in the papers, made a list and then went forth to look for that “studio.”

On Victoria Street, we found a nice big front parlor which seemed to be just what I wanted. The landlady offered it to me for ten dollars a month, and when I said that that would do nicely she asked if I were alone, and when I said I was, she said:

“I hope you work out all day.”

I told her I worked in my room, and that I would make a studio out of it. Whereupon she said:

“I prefer ladies who go out to work. I had one lady here before, and I had to put her out. She stayed in bed till eleven and I found cigarette ashes in her room. Then she had some gentlemen callers, and they actually shut the door. As this is a respectable house, I went into the back parlor and watched her through a crack in the folding doors. Then I goes back and raps on the door, and I says: ‘Young person’—I wouldn’t call the likes of her a lady—I says: ‘Young person, I want my room. I’m a lone widow woman and I have to consider my reputation, and the carryings on in that room is what I won’t have in my house.’ So out she goes. I am a lady, even if I do keep a rooming-house.”

I looked at Lu, and Lu said:

“We’ll call again.”

“Oh,” said the woman, “if you decide to take this room I’ll make a reduction, and I don’t mind gentlemen callers if you leave the door open.”

I felt a sort of disgust come over me and, telling her I did not want the room, I made for the door, hurrying Lu along.

“Oh, I see,” she shouted after us, “you want to shut the door!”

After looking about, we found a back parlor in a French-Canadian house on University Street. The landlady was very polite, and I paid her eight dollars in advance.

The following day I moved all my things into the “studio,” as it now, in fact, began to look like, what with all my paintings about and some of papa’s, an easel, palette and painting materials. I covered up the ugly couch with some draperies the Count sent over for me. Poor old fellow, he had sent word to me the very next day to come back, saying he missed his little pupil very much, but at Reggie’s advice I wrote him that I had taken a studio of my own. He then sent me a lot of draperies and other things, and wrote that he would come to see me very soon.

I had a sign painted on black japanned tin, with the following inscription:

MISS MARION ASCOUGH
ARTIST
Orders taken for all kinds of work.

I got the landlady to put it in the front window.

There were a lot of crayon family portraits on my walls, and they looked very bad. I covered them over with draperies, and when Madame Lavalle, my landlady, came in she exclaimed:

“Why you dat? Am I and my family so hugly then?”

I assured her that I covered them to protect

If you decide to take this room, I’ll make a reduction, and I don’t mind gentlemen callers if you leave the door open.

them from the turpentine that I used in my oil paints. She came to me later and said:

“Mamselle, I am tell my husband you say the turpentine it may be will spoil the portraits of my familee. He’s telling me dat will not spoil it. But if mamselle will not be offend, I the pictures will put in my own parlor, and if some time mamselle she have company, and wish her room to look more elegant, I will give ze permission to hang them on her walls again.”

The studio was all settled, and I stood to survey my work, a delightful feeling of proprietorship coming over me. I breathed a sigh of blessed relief to think I was now free of all home influence, and had a real place all of my own.

“Here is some gentlemens to see mamselle,” called Madame Lavalle, and there standing in the doorway, smiling at me with a merry twinkle in his eye, was Colonel Stevens. I had not seen him since that night, nearly four years ago, when Ellen and I went to ride with him in Mr. Mercier’s carriage. With him now was a tall man with a very red face and nose. He wore a monocle in his eye, and he was staring at me through it.

I was very untidy as I had been busy settling up, and my hair was all mussed up and my hands dirty. I had on my painting apron, and that was smudged over, too. I felt ashamed of my appearance, but Colonel Stevens said:

“Isn’t she cute?”

Then he introduced us. His friend’s name was Davidson.

“We were on our way to the Club,” said the Colonel, “and as we passed your place I saw your sign, and ‘By Gad,’ I said, ‘I believe that is my little friend, Marion.’ Now Mr. Davidson is very much interested in art.” He gave a little wink at Mr. Davidson, and then went on, “and I think he wants to buy some of your paintings.”

“Oh, sit down,” I urged. Customers at once! I was excited and happy. I pushed out a big armchair near the fire and Colonel Stevens sat down, and seemed very much at home. Mr. Davidson followed me to where I had a number of little paintings on a shelf. I began to show them to him, pointing out the places, but he scarcely looked at them. Stretching out his hand, he picked up two and said:

“I’ll take these. How much am I to give you?”

“Oh, five—” I began.

“Charge him the full price, Marion,” put in the Colonel. “He’s a rich dog.”

“I get five dollars for two of that size,” I said.

“Well, we’ll turn it to ten for each,” smiled Mr. Davidson.

“Oh, that’s too much!” I exclaimed.

“Charge him the full price, Marion,” put in the Colonel. “He’s a rich dog.”

“Tut, tut!” said Colonel Stevens, laughing. “They are worth more. She really is a very clever little girl, eh, Davidson?”

I felt uncomfortable and to cover my confusion I started to wrap the paintings.

“No, no, don’t bother,” said Mr. Davidson, “leave them here for the present. I’ll call another time for them. We have to go now.”

When Mr. Davidson shook hands with me he pressed my hand so that I could hardly pull it away, and just as they were passing out, who should come up the stairs but Reggie! When he saw Colonel Stevens and Mr. Davidson, his face turned perfectly livid, and he glared at them. The minute the door had closed upon them, he turned on me:

“What were those men doing here?” he demanded harshly.

My face got hot, and I felt guilty, though of what, I did not know.

“Well? Why don’t you answer me? What was that notorious libertine, Stevens, and that beast, Davidson, doing here?” he shouted, and then as still I did not answer him, he yelled: “Why don’t you answer me instead of standing there and staring at me, looking your guilt? God in heaven! have I been a fool about you? Have you been false to me then?”

“No, Reggie, indeed, I haven’t,” I said. “I didn’t tell you about Ellen and I going out with him because—because—”

I thought he must have heard of that ride!

“Going out with him! When? Where?”

Suddenly he saw the money in my hand, and the sight of it seemed to drive him wild.

“What are you doing with that money? Where did you get it from?”

I was holding the two ten-dollar bills all the time in my hand.

“Are you crazy, Reggie?” I cried. “How can you be so silly? This is the money Mr. Davidson paid me for these paintings.”

“Well, then, what are you doing here if he bought them?” demanded Reggie.

“He left them here. He said he’d call some other time for them.”

“Marion, are you a fool, or just a deceitful actress? Can’t you see he does not want your paintings? He gave you that money for expected favors and, damn it! I believe you know it too.”

I went over to Reggie, and somehow felt older than he. A great pity for him filled my heart. I put my arms around his neck, and although he tried to push me from him, I stuck to him and then suddenly, to my surprise, Reggie began to cry. He had worked himself up to such a state of excitement that he was almost hysterical. I gathered his head to my breast, and cried with him.

In a little while, we were sitting in the big armchair and I told Reggie all about the visit, and also about that ride of long ago—before I had even met him—that Ellen and I had taken with Colonel Stevens and Mr. Mercier. I think he was ashamed of himself, but was too stubborn to admit it. Before he left, he made a parcel of those two paintings, and sent them over, with a bill receipted by me, to the St. James Club.

XXI

IT was snowing hard. The snow was coming down in great big flakes. I had built a big fire in my grate and had turned off all the gas lights. The flames from the grate threw their glare upon the walls. I was waiting for Reggie, and I was wondering where I was going to get some money to pay for clothes I badly needed now, but out of the little I had been earning I had been obliged to send most of it home. It seemed to me as if every time Ada came to see me, it was as a sort of collector. Help was needed at home, and Ada was going to see that we all did our share.

I had had my studio now some time and I had made very little money. Reggie had paid the rent each month, but I had never taken any other help from Reggie. He seemed to have so much money to spend, and yet he was always saying he was too poor to marry though he had passed his examinations and was a full partner in the big law firm. He said he wanted to build up a good practice before we married.

I heard his footsteps in the hall and the door opened.

“Hallo, hallo! Sitting all alone in the dark, darling?”

Reggie came happily into the studio. He was in evening dress with his rich fur-lined coat thrown open. He sat down on the arm of my chair.

“I’m awfully disappointed, darling,” he said. “I had been looking forward to spending the evening here by the fire with you, but I’m obliged to go with my partners and a party of friends to a dinner they are giving, and I expect to meet that member of Parliament I told you about. If I can break away early, I’ll come back here and say good-night to the sweetest girl in the world. So don’t go home to-night, as we can have a few moments together anyway.”

I was left once more alone. I sat there staring into the fire. Why did Reggie never take me to these dinners? There were always women there. Why was I not introduced to his friends? Why did he leave me more and more alone like this? He was jealous of every man who spoke to me, and yet he left me alone and went to dinners and parties where he did not think I was good enough to go.

Some one was rapping on the door, and I called:

“Come!”

It was Lu Frazer.

“Why, Marion Ascough, what are you sitting alone in the dark for? Where is the fair one of the golden locks?”

Lu was shaking the snow from her clothes, but she stopped suddenly when she saw my face.

“What are you crying about?”

“I’m not crying. I’m just yawning.”

Lu put her hands on my shoulders.

“What’s his nibs been saying to you now?” she asked.

I shook my head. Somehow I didn’t feel like confiding even in Lu this night.

“Look here, Marion,” she said, “I met an old admirer of yours as I came here to-night, and he asked me to try and get you to go with him and a friend to a little supper. He said you knew his friend—that he’d bought some pictures from you. His name’s Davidson. Folks do say that his father was the Prince of Wales and that he got fresh with one of the Davidson girls that time when he was in Canada and their father entertained him, and they pass this Davidson off as a younger son of the family. I told Colonel Stevens I’d do what I could. Now, I saw that Bertie getting into a sleigh all rigged up in evening clothes and with that Mrs. Marbridge and her sister. Folks are saying he’s paying attention to the latter lady. I said to myself, when I saw him: ‘What’s sass for the goose is sass for the gander.’ Marion, you’re a fool to sit moping here, while he is enjoying himself with other women.”

I jumped to my feet.

“I’ll go with you, Lu—anywhere. I’m crazy to go with you. Let’s hurry up.”

“All right, get dressed while I ’phone the Colonel. He said he’d be waiting at the St. James Club for an answer for the next half-hour.”

I have a very dim remembrance of that evening. We were in some restaurant, and the drink was cold and yet it burned my throat like fire. I had never tasted any liquor before, except the light wine that the Count sometimes sparingly gave me. I heard some one saying—I think it was Mr. Davidson:

“She’s a hell of a girl to take out for a good time.”

I said I felt ill, and Lu took me out to get the air. She said she would be back soon. But once out there, I conceived a passionate desire to return to my room and I ran away in the street from Lu.

As I opened my door a feeling of calamity seemed to come over me. It must have been nearly twelve o’clock, and I had never been out so late before, not even with Reggie.

As I came in, Reggie, who had been sitting by the table, stood up. He stared at me for a long time without saying a word. Then:

“You’ve been out with men!” he said.

“Yes,” I returned defiantly, “I have.”

“And you’ve been drinking!”

“Yes,” I said. “So have you.”

He flung me from him, and then all of a sudden he threw himself down in the chair by the table and, putting his head upon his arms, he shook with sobs. All of my anger melted away and I knelt down beside him and entreated him to forgive me. I told him just where I had been and with whom, and I said that it was all because I was tired, tired of waiting so long for him. I said:

“Reggie, no man has a right to bind a girl to a long engagement like this. Either marry me, or set me free. I am wasting my life for you.”

He said if we were to be married now, his whole future would be ruined; that he expected to be nominated to a high political position, and to marry at this stage of his career would be sheer madness.

I promised to wait for Reggie one more year; but I was very unhappy, and all the rest of that winter I could not refrain from constantly referring to our expected marriage, though I knew it irritated him for me to refer to it.

XXII

MY younger sister, Nellie, had married her Frenchman. The family began to look upon me as they did on Ada, as an old maid! And I was only twenty-one.

Reggie had been much wrapped up in certain elections and I had seen him only for a few minutes each day, when one night he came over to the studio. He looked very handsome and reckless. I think he had been drinking, for there was a strange look about his eyes, and when he took me in his arms I thought he was never going to let me go. Whenever Reggie was especially kind to me, I always thought it a good time to broach the subject of our marriage. So now I said:

“Reggie, don’t you think it would be lovely if we could arrange to be married in June? I hate to think of another summer alone.”

It was a clear, sweet night in April, and my windows were all open. There was the fragrance of growing green in the air, and it seemed as warm as an early summer day. I felt happy, and oh, so drawn to my handsome Reggie as he held me close in his arms. He put his warm face right down on mine, and he said:

“Darling girl, if we were to marry, you cannot imagine the mess it would make of my career. My father would never forgive me. Don’t you see my whole future might be ruined? Be my wife in every way but the silly ceremony. If you loved me, you would make this sacrifice for me.”

Something snapped in my head! I pushed him from me with my hands doubled into fists. For the first time I saw Reginald Bertie clearly! My sister was right. He was a monument of selfishness and egotism. He was worse. He was a beast who had taken from me all my best years, and now—now he made a proposition to me that was vile!—me, the girl he had asked to be his wife! What had I done, then, that he should have changed like this to me? I was guilty of no fault, save that of poverty. I knew that had I been possessed of those things that Reggie prized so much, never would he have insulted me like this.

I felt him approaching me with his arms held out, but I backed away from him and suddenly I found myself hysterically speaking those lines from Camille. I was pointing to the door:

“That’s your way!” I screamed at him. “Go!”

If you loved me you would make this sacrifice for me.

“Marion—darling—forgive me—I didn’t mean that.”

But I wouldn’t listen to him, and when at last he was out of my room, I locked and bolted the door upon him.

XXIII

I DID not sleep all of that night, and when the morning dawned I had made up my mind what to do.

I packed up all my things and then I went out to see Lu Frazer. I told her I was going to leave Montreal—that I wanted to go to the States—to Boston, where that artist had told papa I ought to study. I felt sure I would get work there, and could study besides. I borrowed twenty-five dollars from Lu, and promised to pay her back thirty-five within three months.

When I got back to my studio I found this letter from Reggie:

“Darling:

I know you will forgive your heartbroken Reggie, who was not himself last night. All shall be as it was between us, and I swear to you that never again will I say anything to my little girl that will hurt her feelings.

Your repentant,
Reggie.”

I crushed his letter up in my hand. I felt that my love for him was dead. I never wanted to see him again. He had sacrificed me for the sake of his selfish ambitions.

My train was to leave at eight, and Lu was going to be there to see me off. I sat down and wrote the following letter to Reggie before leaving the house:

“Dear Reggie:

I am leaving for Boston tonight. I have loved you very dearly, and I feel bad at leaving you without saying good-bye, but I will not live any longer in that studio that you pay for, and I could not stand home any more.

I can earn my living better in Boston, and when you are ready I will come back to you, but I cannot trust myself to say good-bye.

Your loving,
Marion.”

Then I went down to Hochelaga and said good-bye to them all at home. Papa hunted up the address of Mr. Sands, that artist for whom I had done that work when a little girl of thirteen. Papa felt sure he would help me get something. Mama and papa seemed to have a vague idea that I had some definite place I could go to, and they did not ask any questions. We girls often felt older than our parents. Anyway, more worldly, and they had the greatest trust in our ability to take care of ourselves.

Ada thought it a good thing for me to go. She said I would get better pay for my work in Boston, and that I must be sure to send something home each week, just as Nora was doing.

I felt a lump in my throat when I left the old house. There was still a bit of snow in the garden, though it was April, where I had played as a child. I put my head out of the cab window to take a last look at the familiar places, which I told myself, with a sob, I might never see again.

Lu was at the station. She had my ticket, and the balance of the twenty-five dollars in an envelope which she slipped into my hand. The train was nearly due to go. My foot was on the step when I heard Reggie’s voice calling my name. He came running down the platform:

“Marion! You shall not go. You’re carrying this too far, darling.”

“Yes, yes, I’m going,” I said to Reggie. “You’re not going to stop me any longer.”

“But, Marion, I didn’t mean what I said.”

I stared up at him directly.

“Reggie, if I stay, will we be married—right away?”

“Why—Marion, look here, old girl, you can wait a little longer, can’t you?”

I laughed up at him harshly.

“No!” I cried harshly, “I can’t. And I hope God will never let me see your face again.”

I ran up the steps of the train and started inside. I did not look out.

XXIV

NEVER shall I forget that journey in the train, I had not thought to get a sleeper, so I sat up all night long. I had the whole seat to myself. The conductor turned the next seat over toward me, and by putting up my feet, I was fairly comfortable.

I shut my eyes and tried to go to sleep, but the thoughts that came thronging through my head were too many. I wept for my lost sweetheart, and yet I vowed never to go back to him. His future should not be spoiled by me.

Oh, as I thought of how many times Reggie had said that, a feeling of helpless rage against him took possession of me. I saw him in all his ambitious, selfish, narrow snobbery and pride. Even his love for me was a part of his peculiar fastidiousness. He wanted me for himself because I was prettier than most girls, just as he wanted all luxurious things, but he never stopped to think of my comfort or happiness.

Somehow, as the train slipped farther and farther away from Montreal, Reggie’s influence over me seemed to be vanishing, and presently, as I gazed out into the night, he passed away from my mind altogether.

We were passing through dark meadows, and they looked gloomy and mysterious under that starlit sky. I thought of how papa had taught us all so much about the stars, and how he said one of our ancestors had been a great astronomer. Ada knew all of the planets and suns by name and could pick them out, but to me they were always little points of mystery. I remembered as a little girl I used to look up at them and say to one particular star:

“Star bright, star light
First star I see to-night,
Wish I may—wish I might
Get the wish I wish to-night.”

Then I would say quickly:

“Give me a doll’s carriage.”

Ada had told me if I did that for seven nights, the fairies would give me whatever I asked for, and each night I asked for that doll’s carriage. I watched to see it come and I would say to Ada:

“What’s the matter with that old fairy? I thought you said she’d give me my wish?”

Ada would answer:

“Oh, fairies are invisible, and no doubt the carriage is right near by, but you can’t see it.”

“But what’s the use,” I would say, “of a carriage I can’t see?”

“Try it again,” would say Ada. “Perhaps they’ll relent. You probably offended them, or didn’t do it just right.”

For seven nights more, I would faithfully repeat the formula. Then at Ada’s suggestion I would hunt in the tall grass at the end of the garden.

“Perhaps,” Ada would say, “there is a fairy sitting on the edge of a blade of grass and she has the carriage.”

Then I would lie in the grass and wait for the carriage to become visible. I never got that doll’s carriage. The fairies never relented.

I dozed for a little while and was awakened by the faint crowing of cocks, and I thought sleepily of a little pet chicken I used to dress in baby’s clothes, and I dreamed of a lovely wax doll that Mrs. McAlpin had given me.

It was queer how, as I lay there, all these little details of my childhood came up to my mind. I saw that wax doll as plainly as if I had it in my arms again. My brother Charles had taken a slate pencil and had made two cruel marks on its sweet face, and had left the house laughing at my rage and grief. All day long I had nursed my doll, rocking it back and forth in my arms and sobbing:

“Oh, my doll! Oh, my doll!”

Ada had said:

“Don’t be silly. Dolls don’t feel. But she is disfigured for life, like smallpox.”

I threw her down. I rushed up to Charles’ room, bent upon avenging her. Hanging on the wall was a lacrosse stick, the most treasured possession of my brother. I seized a pair of scissors and I cut the catgut of that lacrosse. As it snapped, I felt a pain and terror in my heart. I tried to mend it, but it was ruined.

Ada’s shocked face showed at the door.

“I’m glad!” I cried to her defiantly.

“Poor Charles,” said Ada, “saved up all of his little money to get that stick, and he did all those extra chores, and he’s the captain of the Shamrock Lacrosse team. You are a mean, wicked girl, Marion.”

“I tell you I’m glad!” I declared fiercely.

But when Charles came home and saw it, he held that stick to his face and burst out crying, and Charles never, never cried. I felt like a murderer, and I cried out:

“Oh, I’m sorry, Charles. Here’s all my pennies. You buy a new one.”

“You devil!” he stormed and lifted up his hand to strike me. I fled behind papa’s chair, but I wished, oh! how I wished, that Charles would forgive me.

It all came back to me like a dream, in the train, and I found myself crying for Charles even as I had cried then.

And again I began to think of Reggie, Reggie who had hurt me so terribly, Reggie whom I had thought I loved above everybody else in the world. What was it he had said to me? That I should be his wife without a ceremony! I sat up in the seat. I felt frozen stiff. I was looking at the naked truth in the plain light of day. The glamour was gone from my romance. I was awake to the bare, ugly facts.

The train was moving slowly, and some one said we were nearing Boston. I shook off all memories of Montreal and an expectant feeling of excitement came over me. What did this big United States mean to me? I felt suddenly light and happy and free! Free! That was a beautiful word that every one used in this “Land of the Free.”

I went into the dressing-room and washed my face and hands and did my hair fresh. A girl was before the mirror, dabbing powder and rouge over her face, and she took up all the room so I could not get a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

“You look as fresh as a daisy,” she said, turning around and looking at me, “and I guess you’ve had a good night’s rest. I hardly sleep in those stuffy sleepers, and my fellow’s to meet me so I don’t want to look a fright.”

I asked if we were near to Boston, and she said we were there now. The train had come to a standstill.

XXV

WHEN I left the train with my bag in my hand, I felt excited and a little bit afraid. I realized that I had no special destination, and the part of the city where the station was did not look as if it was a place to find a room. There were many cars passing, and I finally got on one, a Columbus Avenue.

As we rode along I looked out of the window and watched the houses for a “Room to Let” sign, and presently we came to some tall stone houses, all very much alike, and ugly-and severe-looking after our pretty Montreal houses with their bits of lawn and sometimes even little gardens in front. There were “Room to Let” signs on nearly all the houses in this block. So I got out and went up the high steps of the one I thought looked the cleanest.

I rang the bell and a black woman opened the door. I said:

“Is your mistress in?” And she said: “How?”

We never say “How?” like that in Canada. If we aren’t polite enough to say: “I beg your pardon,” then we say: “What?” So I thought she meant, how many rooms did I want, and I said: “Just one, thank you.”

She walked down the hall, and I heard her say to some one behind a curtain there:

“Say, Miss Darling, there’s a girl at the door. I think she’s a forriner. She sure talks and looks like no folks I knows.”

There was a quiet laugh, and then a faded little woman in a faded little kimono came hurrying down the hall. I call her “faded-looking,” because that describes her very well. Her face, once pretty, no doubt, made me think of a half-washed-out painting. Her hair was almost colorless, though I suppose it had once been dull brown. Now wisps of grayish hair stood out about her face as if ash had blown against it. She had dim, near-sighted eyes, and there was something pathetically worn-and tired-looking about her.

“Well? What is it you want?” she inquired.

I told her I wanted a little room, and said:

“I’ve just arrived from Montreal.”

“Dear me!” she exclaimed, “you must be tired!” She seemed to think Montreal was as far away as Siberia.

She showed me up three flights of stairs to a tiny room in which was a folding bed. As I had never seen a folding bed before, she opened it up and showed me how it worked. When it was down there was scarcely an inch of room left and I had to put the one chair out into the hall.

She explained that it would be much better for me to have a folding bed, because when it was up I could use the room as a sitting-room and see my company there. I told her I did not expect any company as I was a perfect stranger in Boston. She laughed—that queer little bird-like laugh I had heard behind the curtain, and said:

“I’ll take a bet you’ll have all the company this room will hold soon.”

There was something kindly about her tired face and when I asked her if I had to pay in advance—the room was three dollars a week—she hesitated, and then said:

“Well, it’s the custom, but you can suit yourself. There’s no hurry.”

I sometimes think that nearly every one in the world has a story, and, if we only knew it, those nearest to us might surprise us with a history or romance of which we never dreamed. Take my little faded landlady. She was the last person in the world one would have imagined the heroine of a real romance, but perhaps her romance was too pitiful and tiny to be worth the telling. Nevertheless, when I heard it—from another lodger in the house—I felt drawn to poor Miss Darling. To the world she might seem a withered old maid. I knew she was capable of a great and unselfish passion.

She had come from Vermont to Boston, and had worked as a cashier in a down-town restaurant. She had slowly saved her money until she had a sufficient sum with which to buy this rooming-house, which I sometimes thought was as sad and faded as she.

While she was working so hard, she had fallen in love with a young medical student. He had even less money than Miss Darling. When she opened her rooming-house she took him in, and for three years she gave him rent free and supported him entirely, even buying his medical books, paying his tuition, his clothes and giving him pocket money. He had promised to marry her as soon as he passed, but within a few days after he became a doctor he married a wealthy girl who lived in Brookline and on whom he had been calling all the time he had been living with Miss Darling.

The lodger who told me about her said she never said a word to any one about it, but just began to fade away. She lost thirty pounds in a single month, but she was the “pluckiest little sport ever,” said the lodger.

It seemed to me our stories were not unlike, and I wondered to myself whether Reggie was capable of being as base as was Miss Darling’s lover.

While I was taking my things out of my suitcase, Miss Darling watched me with a rather curious expression, and suddenly she said:

“I don’t know what you intend to do, but take my advice. Don’t be too easy. If I were as young and pretty as you, I tell you, I would make every son of a gun pay me well.”

I said:

“I’ll be contented if I can just get work soon.”

She looked at me with a queer, bitter little smile, and then she said:

“It doesn’t pay to work. I’ve worked all my life.”

Then she laughed bitterly, and went out suddenly, closing the door behind her.

As soon as I had washed and changed from my heavy Canadian coat to a little blue cloth suit I had made myself, I started out at once to look up the artist, Mr. Sands, whose address papa had given me.

I lost my way several times. I always got lost in Boston. The streets were like a maze, winding around and running off in every direction. I finally found the studio building on Boylston, and climbed up four flights of stairs. When I got to the top, I came to a door with a neat little visiting card with Mr. Sands’ name upon it. I remembered that Count von Hatzfeldt had his card on the door like this, and for the first time I had an instinctive feeling that my own large japanned sign: “Miss Ascough, Artist,” etc., was funny and provincial. Even papa had never put up such a sign, and when he first saw mine, he had laughed and then had run his hand absently through his hair and said he “supposed it was all right” for the kind of work I expected to do. Dear papa! He wouldn’t have hurt my feelings for worlds. With what pride had I not shown him my sign and “studio!”

I knocked on Mr. Sands’ door, and presently he himself opened it. At first he did not know me, but when I stammered:

“I’m—Miss Ascough. D-don’t you remember me? I did some work for you in Montreal eight years ago, and you told me to come to Boston. Well—I’ve come!”

“Good Lord!” he ejaculated. “Did I ever tell anybody to come to Boston? Good Lord!” And he stood staring at me as if he still were unable to place me. Then after another pause, during which he stared at me curiously, he said:

“Come in, come in!”

While he was examining me, with his palette stuck on his thumb and a puzzled look on his face as if he didn’t quite know what to say to me or to do with me, I looked about me.

It was a very luxurious studio, full of beautiful draperies and tapestries. I was surprised, as the bare stairs I had climbed and the outside of the building was most unbeautiful. Sitting on a raised platform was a very lovely girl, dressed in a Greek costume, but the face on the canvas of the easel was not a bit like hers.

Mr. Sands, as though he had all of a sudden really placed me in his mind, held out his hand and shook mine heartily, exclaiming:

“Oh, yes, yes, now I remember. Ascough’s little girl. Well, well, and how is dear old Montreal? And your father, and his friend—what was his name? Mmmmum—let me see—that German artist—you remember him? He was crazy—a madman!”

Lorenz was the artist he meant. He was a great friend of my father’s. Papa thought him a genius, but mama did not like him at all, because she said he used such blasphemous language and was a bad influence on papa. I remember I used to love to hear him shout and declaim and denounce all the shams in art and the church. He was a man of immense stature, with a huge head like Walt Whitman’s. He used to come to the Château to see the Count, with whom he had long arguments and quarrels. He was German and the Count a Dane. He would shout excitedly at the Count and wave his arms, and the Count would shriek and double up with laughter sometimes, and Mr. Lorenz would shout: “Bravo! Bravo!”

They talked in German, and I couldn’t understand them, but I think they were making fun of English and American art. And as for the Canadian—! The mere mention of Canadian art was enough to make the old Count and Lorenz explode.

Poor old Lorenz! He never made any money, and was awfully shabby. One day papa sent him to Reggie’s office to try to sell a painting to the senior partner, who professed to be a connoisseur. Mr. Jones, the partner, came out from his private office in a hurry and, seeing Lorenz waiting, mistook him for a beggar. He put his hand in his pocket and gave Lorenz a dime. Then he passed out. Lorenz looked at the dime and said:

“Vell, it vill puy me two beers.”

Reggie had told me about that. He was irritated at papa for sending Lorenz there, and he said he hoped he would not appear again.

I told Mr. Sands all about Lorenz and also about the Count I had worked for; about papa, some of whose work the Duke of Argyle had taken back to England with him, as representative of Canadian art (which it was not—papa had studied in France, and was an Englishman, not a Canadian), and of my own “studio.” While I talked, Mr. Sands went on painting. The model watched me with, I thought, a very sad expression. Her dark eyes were as gentle and mournful as a Madonna’s. She didn’t look unlike our family, being dark and foreign-looking. She was French. Mr. Sands was painting her arms and hands on the figure on the canvas. He explained that the face belonged to the wife of Senator Chase. She was the leader of a very smart set in Brookline. He said the ladies who sat for their portraits usually got tired by the time their faces were finished, and he used models for the figures, and especially the hands.

“The average woman,” said Mr. Sands, “has extreme ugly hands. The hands of Miss St. Denis, as you see, are beautiful—the most beautiful hands in America.”

I was standing by him at the easel, watching him paint, and I asked him if it were really a portrait, for the picture looked more like a Grecian dancing figure. Mr. Sands smiled and said:

“That’s the secret of my success, child. I never paint portraits as portraits. I dress my sitters in fancy costumes and paint them as some character. There is Mrs. Olivet. Her husband is a wholesale grocer. I am going to paint her as Carmen. This spirituelle figure with the filmy veil about her is Mrs. Ash Browning, a dead-and-alive, wishy-washy individual; but, as you see, her ‘beauty’ lends itself peculiarly to the nymph she there represents.”

I was so much interested in listening to him, and watching him work, that I had forgotten what I had come to see him about, till presently he said:

“So you are going to join the classes at the Academy?”

That question recalled me, and I said hastily:

“I hope so, by-and-by. First, though, I shall have to get some work to do.”

He stopped painting and stared at me, with his palette in his hand, and as he had looked at me when he opened the door.

I unwrapped the package I had brought along with me, and showed him the piano scarf I had painted as a sample, a landscape I had copied from one of papa’s and some miniatures I had painted on celluloid. I said:

“People won’t be able to tell the difference from ivory when they are framed, and I can do them very quickly, as I can trace them from a photograph underneath, do you see?”

His eyes bulged and he stared at me harder than ever. I also showed him some charcoal sketches I had done from casts, and a little painting of our kitten playing on the table. He picked this up and looked at it, and then set it down, muttering something I thought was: “Not so bad.” After a moment, he picked it up again and then stared at me a moment and said:

“I think you have some talent, and you have come to the right place to study.”

“And work, Mr. Sands,” I said. “I’ve come here to earn my living. Can you give me some painting to do?”

He put down his palette and nodded to Miss St. Clair to rest. Then he took hold of my hand and said:

“Now, Miss Ascough, I am going to give you some good advice, chiefly because you are from my old Montreal (Mr. Sands was a Canadian), because of your father and our friend, good old man Lorenz. Finally, because I think it is my duty. Now, young lady, take my advice. If your parents can afford to pay your expenses here, stay and go to the art schools. But if you expect to make a living by your painting in Boston, take the next train and go home!”

“I can’t go home!” I cried. “Oh, I’m sure you must be mistaken. Lots of women earn their livings as artists. Why shouldn’t I? I worked for Count von Hatzfeldt, and he said I had more talent than the average woman who paints.”

“How much did he pay you?” demanded Mr. Sands.

“Five dollars a week and sometimes extra,” I said.

I was so interested in listening to him and watching him work that I had forgotten what I had come to see him about.

Mr. Sands laughed.

“You would starve on that here even if you could make it, which I doubt. In Montreal you had your home and friends. It’s a different matter here altogether.”

I felt as I once did when, as a child, I climbed to the top of a cherry tree, and Charles had taken away the ladder, and I tried to climb down without it. I kept repeating desperately:

“I won’t go back! I tell you, I won’t! No, no, nothing will induce me to go back!”

I gathered up all my paintings. I felt distracted and friendless. Mr. Sands had returned to his painting and he seemed to have forgotten me. I saw the model watching me, and she leaned over and said something in a whisper to Mr. Sands. He put his palette down again and said:

“Come, Miss St. Denis. This will do for to-day. We all need a bit of refreshment. Miss Ascough looks tired.”

I was, and hungry, too. I had had no lunch, for I lost so much time looking for Mr. Sands’ studio.

He brought out a bottle wrapped in a napkin, and a big plate of cakes. He said:

“I want you to taste my own special brand of champagne cocktail.”

He talked a great deal then about brands of wines and mixtures, etc., while I munched on the cakes which I found difficulty in swallowing, because of the lump in my throat. But I was determined not to break down before them, and I even drank some of the cocktail he had mixed for me. Presently, I said:

“Well, I guess I’ll go,” and I gathered up my things. Mr. Sands stood up and put his hands on my shoulders. Miss St. Denis was standing at his elbow, and she watched me all the time he was speaking.

“Now, Miss Ascough, I am going to make a suggestion to you. I see you are determined not to go back. Now the only way I can think of your making a living is by posing.”

I drew back from him.

“I am an artist,” I said, “and the daughter of an artist.”

He patted me on the back.

“That’s all right. I know how you feel. I’ve been a Canadian myself; but there’s no use getting mad with me for merely trying to help you. You will starve here in Boston, and I’m simply pointing out to you a method of earning your living. There’s no disgrace connected with such work, if it is done in the proper spirit. As far as that goes, many of the art students are earning extra money to help pay their tuition that way. The models here get pretty good pay. Thirty-five cents an hour for costume posing and fifty cents for the nude. We here in Boston pay better than they do in New York, and we treat them better, too. Of course, there are not so many of us here and we haven’t as much work, but a model can make a fair living, isn’t that so, Miss St. Denis?”

She nodded slowly, her eyes still on me; but there was something warm and pitying in their dark depths.

“Now,” went on Mr. Sands, “I don’t doubt that you will get plenty of work. You are an exceedingly pretty girl. I don’t need to tell you that, for, of course, you know it. What’s more, I’ll safely bet that you have just the figure we find hard to get. A perfect nude is not so easy as people seem to think—one whose figure is still young. Most models don’t take care of themselves and it’s the hardest thing to find a model with firm breasts. They all sag, the result of wearing corsets. So we are forced to use one model for the figure, another for the legs, another for the bust—and so on, before we get a perfect figure, and when we get through, as you may guess, it’s a patchwork affair at best. Your figure, I can see, is young and—er—has life—esprit. Are you eighteen yet?”

“I’m nearly twenty-two.”

“You don’t look it. Um! The hands are all right—fine!—and the feet”—he smiled as I shrank under his gaze—“they seem very little. Small feet are not always shapely, but I dare say yours are. Your hair—and your coloring— Yes, I think you will do famously. It’s rather late in the season—but I dare say you’ll get something. Now, what do you say? Give over this notion of painting for a while, and perhaps I can get you some work right away.”

“I’ll never, never, never pose—nude,” I said.

“Hm! Well, well—of course, that’s what we need most. It’s easy to get costume models—many of our women friends even pose at that. However, now would you consider it very infra dig. then to pose for me, say to-morrow, in this Spanish scarf. You are just the type I need, and I believe I can help you with some of the other artists.”

I thought of the few dollars I had left. I had only about twelve dollars in all. Mr. Sands said he would pay me the regular rate, though I was not experienced. After a moment’s thought I said:

“Yes, I’ll do it.”

“Now, that’s talking sensibly,” he said, smiling, “and Miss St. Denis here will take you with her to other places to see about getting work.”

She said:

“Yes, certainement, I will do so. You come wiz me now.”

I thanked Mr. Sands, and he patted me on the shoulder and told me not to worry. He said he would give me some work regularly till about the middle of May when he went away for the summer. I would get thirty-five cents an hour, and pose two hours a day for him.

When we got to the street, the lights were all lit and the city looked very big to me. Miss St. Denis invited me to have dinner with her. She knew a place where they served a dinner for twenty-five cents. She seemed to think that quite cheap. I told her I couldn’t afford to pay that much every night and she said:

“Well you will do so by-and-by. Soon you will get ze work—especially eef you pose in ze nude.”

I said:

“I will never do that.”

She shrugged. After dinner she took me to a night school where she posed, as she said she wished me to see how it was done. Of course, I had already seen Lil Markey pose for the Count, but she was just an amateur model then. It did seem worse to me, moreover, to go out there before a whole class than before one man. Miss St. Denis seemed surprised when I said that, and she declared it was quite the other way.

That night I sat in my little narrow bedroom and looked out of the window, and I thought of all I had learned that day, and it seemed clear to me that Mr. Sands was right. There was little chance of my making a living as an artist in Boston. What was to become of me then? Should I return home? The thought of doing that made me clinch my hands passionately together and cry to myself:

“No, no; never, never!”

I remembered something Mr. Davis had said to me when he was teaching me to act. He said that I should forget my own personality and try to imagine myself the person I was playing. Why should I not do this as a model? I resolved to try it. It could not be so bad, since Mr. Sands had recommended it. Yes, I would do it! I would be a model! But I should not tell them at home. They would not understand, and I did not want to disgrace them.

With the resolve came first a sense of calmness, and then suddenly a rush of rage against Reggie who had driven me to this. I had the small town English girl’s foolish contempt for a work I really had no reason for despising. As the daughter of an artist, and, as I thought, an artist myself, it seemed to me, I was signing the death warrant of my best ambitions and, as I have said, I felt, with rage, that Reggie was to blame for this. I looked out of that window, and lifting up my eyes and clasped hands to the skies, I called:

“Oh, God in Heaven, hear me, and if I ever go back to Reggie, curse me, and may all kinds of ills come upon me. Amen.”

“O God in heaven! hear me, and if ever I go back to Reggie, curse me, and may all kinds of ills come upon me. Amen!”

Now, I thought, as I got into that folding bed, “I don’t dare to go back, for God will curse me if I do.”

XXVI

MY trunk arrived next morning, and the driver charged me fifty cents to bring it from the station. I had always seen Reggie tip the drivers, so I offered him a nickel. The driver was a big, good-natured looking fellow, and he looked at the tip and then at the little room, and he said:

“I’ll not take the tip, kid, but I’ll be catching you around the corner some evening and take a kiss instead.”

He had such a merry twinkle in his eye and looked so kind that somehow I didn’t resent his familiarity. I even vengefully laughed to myself, to think how Reggie would have looked to hear that common man speak to me like that.

All of that day I went with Miss St. Denis to the studios and schools, waiting for her in some of them while she posed, and stopping only for a few minutes in others while she introduced me. I got several engagements and Miss St. Denis made me jot them down in a notebook she brought along. She said I must take everything offered to me, but that I must be careful not to get my hours mixed. I should even work at night, if necessary, for the season was almost over, and soon I would have difficulty in getting any engagements unless I was willing to pose nude at the summer schools. Nearly all the artists went away in summer—at least the ones who could afford to pay for models—and she predicted a hard time for me, unless I changed my mind about the nude posing.

I liked Miss St. Denis, and I respected her, too, even though she did seem to have no shame about stripping herself and going right out before whole classes of men.

Miss Darling had told me about a boarding place opposite her house, where I could get good board for three dollars a week. I crossed over that evening and entered one of those basement dining-rooms that lined almost the whole avenue. I had a newspaper with me, and while I waited for my dinner I went over the advertisements.

I was interrupted by a stir and movement in the room. A girl had come in with a little dog, and everybody was looking at the dog. She came over to my table and took the seat directly in front of me. I stared at her. I could not believe my eyes. There, sitting right at my table, was my little sister, Nora! I had thought she was in Jamaica.

We both jumped to our feet and screamed our names, and then I began to cry, and Nora said hastily: “Sh! They are all looking at us!”

The dining-room was full of medical students and Harvard students. I had noticed them when I came in—one reason why I buried myself in the paper, because they all looked at me, and one, a boy named Jimmy Odell (I got to know Jimmy well later) tried to catch my eye, and when I did look at him once, he winked at me, which made me very angry, and I hadn’t looked up once again, till Nora came in.

You may be sure those students didn’t take their eyes off us all through that meal, and every one of them fed Nora’s dog. They had started to laugh and hurrah when Nora and I first grabbed at each other, but when I cried they all stopped and pretended to fuss with the dog.

I don’t know what I ate that day. Nora said I ate my meal mixed with salt tears, but she, too, was excited and we both talked together. Nora had changed. She seemed more sophisticated than when I saw her last, and she had her hair done up. She showed me this almost the first thing, and she said it made her look as old as I. She thought that fine. She assumed an older-sister way with me which was very funny, for I had always snubbed her at home as being a “kid” while I was a grown-up young lady.

When we went to her room, which, strange to say, was in the same block as mine, two of the students followed us, one of them that Odell. We didn’t pay any attention to them, though Odell had the insolence to run up the steps when Nora was turning the key in the lock, and ask if he couldn’t do it for her. We both regarded him haughtily, which made him ashamed, I suppose, for he lifted his hat and ran down the stairs again.

Nora’s room was just about the same as mine, only she had a narrow cot instead of a folding bed, and she had a box for her foolish little dog. He was a white fox terrier and was not very good, for if she left him a single moment you could hear his cries all over the neighborhood. Consequently she was obliged to take him with her whenever she went out. I was awfully provoked next day, because I wanted her to go with me to the studios, but that miserable little dog made such a fuss that she turned back before we had reached the corner. She said she’d bring him along. I told her she was crazy. No girl could go looking for work with a dog along. She seemed to prefer the dog to me, which made me much huffed with her, for she went back to her room.

Nora was expecting money by telegraph from some doctor in Richmond, for whom she was going to work. She had been doing the same sort of work as Ada, writing for a newspaper, and she had written “tons of poetry and stories and other things,” she said.

I wanted to talk over home things, and the work we were to do, etc., but Nora made me listen to all her stories. She would pile up the two pillows on her bed for a comfortable place for me, and then coax me to lie there while she read. She would say:

“Now, Marion, let me make you comfortable, and you rest yourself—you look awfully tired, and I’m sure you need a rest!—while I read you this.”

Then she would read one story after another, till I would get dead tired, but if I closed my eyes she would get offended; so I’d hold them open no matter how sleepy I got. Sometimes I couldn’t help laughing at the funny parts in her stories, which delighted her, and she would laugh more than I would, which would make her little dog yelp and jump about. Then when I cried in sad parts, she would get much excited, and say:

“Now I know it must be good. Some day huge audiences in big theatres all over the world will be crying just as you are now.”

Then her dog would jump up and lick her face, and I would say:

“Don’t you think that’s enough for to-night?”

Poor little Nora! She had hardly any money, but it didn’t seem to bother her a bit. Though I knew I would miss her, I advised her to take the steady position offered in Richmond, instead of starving here, and a few days later I saw her off for the South. She looked pathetic and awfully childish (in spite of her hair done up), and I felt more lonely than ever. I was crying when I got back to the lodging-house, and when I opened the door, Miss Darling was standing talking to some man in the hall. She called to me just as I was going up the stairs:

“Miss Ascough, here’s a nice young gentleman wants to meet you.”

I came back down the stairs, and there was that Harvard student, Odell. He had a wide smile on his face, and his hand held out. There was something so friendly and winning in that smile, and somehow the pressure of his big hand on mine felt so warm and comforting, and I was so lonely, that when he asked me to go out with him to dinner and after that to the theatre I said at once:

“Yes, I will.”

Thus began my acquaintance with a boy who devoted himself to me throughout his stay in Boston, and who, in his way, really loved me.

XXVII

I HAD been posing for various artists for nearly two months, and I not only was used to the work but beginning to like it. How else, except as a model, could I have seen all I did at close range, and, in a way, assisted in the making of many great paintings by the best artists in Boston? Also I learned much from them, for nearly every artist I posed for talked to me as he worked. Some would tell me their hopes and fears and stories about other artists. I have even been the confidante of their love affairs.

One well-known painter proposed to a girl upon my advice. He told me all about his acquaintance with her, and of the opposition of her family as if he were telling a story, and then he asked:

“What would you do if you were the man in the case?”

I replied:

“I’d go right over and ask her to-night.” Whereupon he picked up his hat and said:

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll go this minute.”

One artist, famous for his paintings of sunlight, used to talk all the time he worked, and I realized that he was not talking to me but at me, for when I answered him he didn’t hear at all.

I didn’t make, of course, more than a living posing in costume, but for a time I got about four hours’ work a day. It was not always regular, and sometimes I didn’t even get that much time. Then there were days when I had no work at all, so I barely made enough to pay for my room and board. I realized that I would have to do something to increase my earnings, and I tried to get work to do at night schools. Miss St. Denis had told me there would be little chance there unless I would pose in the nude, and that I was determined not to do, but as the summer approached my work grew less and less, for the artists began to go away just as Miss St. Denis had told me they would.

Though Mr. Sands had said I was an exceedingly pretty girl, I found that beauty was by no means an exceptional possession, and especially among the models. There were much prettier girls than I, to say nothing of the many girl friends and relatives of the artists who were often willing to pose for them. So my good looks did not prove as profitable as I had hoped. Moreover, I was new at the work, had an acquaintance to build up, and at first tired quicker than the older models.

However, I made a number of good friends among the artists. One of them, dear old Mr. Rintoul, who had a studio in that long row of studios near the art gallery. One day, I knocked at his door and applied for work as a model. He opened the door and peered out at me in the dark hall. At first he said he was sorry, but he couldn’t use me. He was a landscape-painter, and he said he guessed I had come to the wrong man, as there was another artist of his name on Tremont Street who painted figures. Then he said:

“But come in, come in!”

He was a little man of about fifty, and his face had the chubby look of a child. He wore the funniest old-fashioned clothes. He peered up at me through his glasses, and seemed to be examining my face. After a moment he said:

“Having a hard time, eh? Or are you extra busy now?”

I told him I was not extra busy, and he rubbed his chin in a funny way and said:

“I believe I can use you after all. Now I’ll tell you how we’ll arrange it. I’m a pretty busy man, so I can’t make any definite engagement, but you come here whenever you have nothing else to do, and I’ll use you if I can. If I’m too busy, I’ll pay you just the same. How will that do?”

I thanked him, and told him I was so glad, for work was getting scarcer every day.

He pointed to a big armchair and said:

“Now sit down there and rest yourself. Be placid! Be placid!” He waved his hand at me, and went to see who was knocking at the door. Then he came back and said:

“Too busy to use you to-day. Here’s the money,” and he handed me seventy cents, as if for two hours’ work.

“Oh, Mr. Rintoul,” I said, “I haven’t worked at all.”

“Now don’t argue,” he said. “That was our agreement, so be placid!”

One day when I went to pose, he said that all the people in the studios were giving a tea, and they had asked him to open the doors of his studio, so the visitors could see it. He remarked that he would take that day off. I said:

“There must be an awful lot of artists here.”

He chuckled, and making his hand into a claw, said:

“Not all artists, but folks hanging on to the edge of art, and cackling, cackling! Now run along, and keep placid!” and he handed me a dollar for my “time.”

I never really posed for him at all, for he always had something else to do, but he would make me sit in the big armchair and “be placid.”

He is now gone to the land where all is placid, and whenever I hear that word I think of him, and my faith in good men is strengthened.

But not all of my experiences with the artists of Boston were as pleasant as that with Mr. Rintoul and Mr. Sands and some others. I had one terrible experience from which I barely escaped with my life.

I had posed several times for a Mr. Parker, who did a rushing business for strictly commercial firms. He made advertisements such as are seen on street-cars, packages of breakfast food and things like that. I had posed for him in a number of positions, to show off a certain brand of stockings as a girl playing golf, to advertise a sweater, and other things too numerous to mention.