Part 11

“My! but she gave us a scare,” said the girl. “We were just going out of the front door last night to get a bite of supper over at the Plaza, and as we opened the door she was coming up the front steps, and she suddenly threw out her hands as if she were drowning, and would have fallen down the stairs had not Al caught her.”

There was a long silence, and then I heard her voice again--she was stroking my hand.

“Poor girl! What a _pretty_ little thing she is.”

I put my cheek against her hand. Somehow it seemed to me natural that she should be good and kind to me. Then the doctor said:

“I will have her moved to the hospital. This room is too small, and she will need the best of care.”

“Why can’t I care for her?” asked the girl suddenly. “I can do it! Oh, you don’t believe me, eh?” I heard them both laugh, and she said:

“It’ll be lots of fun. To begin with, you carry her down to my room.”

“Do you really mean that?” I heard him ask, and her reply: “Why, of course, I do.”

I did not say a word. I did not care much what they did to me, and there seemed to me no reason why I should not be cared for by this stranger. I suppose it was my weakness, but perhaps it was the consciousness that I would have done the same in her place. Poor girls instinctively depend upon each other in crises like these. And then this girl--Lois Barret was her name--had a jolly way that made even the most trying service seem like a game to her. She acted as if she really enjoyed doing something that another person would have considered a trial. She kept saying:

“It’ll be all kinds of fun. Come along, doctor, let’s get her right down now. Can you do it?”

“Easily,” declared the doctor.

“Ah!” said she. “It’s fine to have big, broad shoulders. I wish I were a man--like you.” She added the last two words softly, and the doctor chuckled. They wrapped the blankets around me, and the doctor lifted me up in his arms and carried me down the stairs. I was so weak, that even this slight movement affected me, and I fainted.

I must have been even iller than the doctor thought, for I did not know anything more for a long time. Then one day I opened my heavy eyes, to find myself in a big sunny room, and dreamily I watched Lois Barret hovering over me like a ministering angel. Then, in the evening, I have a dim remembrance of the doctor standing in the window and putting his arm around Lois, and it seemed to me he was kissing her. I called out:

“Oh, I am not asleep. I can see you.”

They both laughed, and Lois came over and gave me something to swallow and, as I dropped asleep, they seemed to grow into one person.

XXXVII

“Lois, are you in love with Doctor Squires?” She burst out laughing.

“I’m in love with everybody and everything. Here, lie back there.”

I was to sit up in bed that afternoon, and the following day in a chair. I had been ill two weeks.

“Now,” said Lois, “I have to go down town on some business, and I’ll be gone two hours. If you want anything just knock on the wall with this,” giving me a brush, “and Billy Boyd in the next room will come in, and if it’s something he can’t do himself, he’ll call Miss Darling.”

She kissed me, and, looking fresh and radiant, she went out.

Billy Boyd roomed with a friend in the next room to Lois. His room-mate was a clerk in a department store, and Billy was a cable operator. He worked at night. Reggie would have called these boys “common Yankees.” I knew how much better, and in every way superior, they were to Reggie, whose grandfather was a Duke of something or other. These boys would run errands for Lois if she knocked on their wall for help, and when I was most sick and helpless Billy even came in and helped Lois when it was necessary to lift me. Lois treated them as if they were girls, and they treated her as if she was a boy. It was a revelation to me, as in Canada, as in Europe, the simple friendship between men and women is not known as in the United States.

Then there was big Tim O’Leary. He was a bartender in a near-by hotel. He had a room in the basement of what had once been the dining-room. He used to knock at the door and ask in his big voice, which sounded for all the world like a foghorn:

“How’s the little Canadian girl?”

He would send the waiters from the hotel where he worked over with all sorts of stuff that a sick person was not allowed to eat, big platters of lobster salads, chicken salads, club sandwiches, wine and beer. Lois told him I could only have a little broth, and then Tim sent over a big pitcher of rich soup. Lois tasted it, and then fed a spoonful of it to the doctor, and they both laughed. Then she went to the boys’ room and knocked, and they were glad to get the good stuff.

Tim was a man of immense stature, and he would tell us all kinds of stories of his experiences when he was a coalheaver in New York and the fights he got into, and the times he was arrested, and always got off with a light fine. Dr. Squires called him a “rough diamond,” and, much-sought-after society man as Doctor Squires was, he liked to go off with Tim O’Leary and have a drink and “chin” together. I did admire the doctor for that, and I remembered how Reggie had been ashamed and angry with me because I had spoken to the conductor on the train, who had been an old schoolmate of mine.

There was a knock at the door, and I called “Come in.” The door was cautiously and softly opened, and Tim thrust in an inquiring face.

“How’s yourself?” he inquired in a big whisper.

“I’m very well, thank you, Mr. O’Leary,” I said.

“And Miss Barret, how’s herself?”

“Oh, she’s well, too. She had to go out for a couple of hours.”

“Sure then I’ll stay and take care of you mesilf,” said Tim. “I’m dead tired. Standing behind a bar is hard on the feet; so if you don’t mind, I’ll be taking off my shoes and stretch mesilf out on the couch for a rest.”

I assured him I would be very glad to have him do it. The big man worked sometimes ten and twelve hours at a stretch, and it was so quiet and peaceful in this room, I felt the rest would do him good, just as it was doing me.

XXXVIII

The sun was shining and the warm breath of summer felt good to me. I was up now; but I felt impatient with my own weakness and I had a restless desire to move about and do things. I realized my indebtedness to Lois, and I wondered if I would ever be able to wipe it out.

I had had very dreadful news from my people. Wallace, Ellen’s husband, had died after a long illness. When I first heard that I wanted to go at once to my sister, and I was heart-broken because of my inability to comfort and help her. Lois wrote to Ellen for me, telling her that I would join her in New York, just as soon as I was strong enough to travel; but Ellen had written back that she was going to England with her little boy to Wallace’s people.

I thought of how close Ellen and I had been to each other as children, and of the strangeness and cruelty of fate that cut sisters apart. It seemed to me that this was a world of all pain. Yet, if we measured our griefs by those of others, mine shrank into insignificance beside those of Ellen. Always there had been some way out for me, but Ellen’s road had been walled up. Death had shut to her forever the golden door of Hope. I knew that no one--not even her little son--could ever take to Ellen the place of Wallace, her young hero and lover and husband. Poor Wallace! Literary critics had said he was a genius, and I think that he was. He was only twenty-seven when he died, with his second book of essays but half written and his play still unproduced.

Lois had a little gas stove in the room on which she boiled coffee and eggs. She called to me to come now to breakfast. I said to her sadly:

“Lois, I’m awfully indebted to you.”

“Not on your life,” said Lois. “You don’t owe me anything, and if you say anything more about it, I’ll get real cross. You can’t imagine how nasty I am when I’m cross,” she laughed. “I’ve had the time of my life nursing you, and Dr. Squires says--”

A beautiful flush came over Lois’ face, and I said:

“Oh, Lois, I do hope you’ll get married and be ever and ever so happy.”

“I’ve got to go to England,” said she. “My parents are there now, and there’s a law-suit over some property a relative who died lately left. You see, I’m the real heir, they say. I’m really a ward in Chancery.”

“Why, Lois, I thought you were an American.”

“So I am. I was born in Massachusetts, but my mother is English, and now I’ve got to go over there to see about this property they say I’m rightful heir to. I’ll have to leave the end of the month.”

“Oh, how I’ll miss you!” I cried. “I don’t know how in the world I’ll ever get on without you.”

“When you get your strength back,” said Lois, “you’ll not feel that way, and you’re going to stay right here and room with me till I go. So don’t worry, whatever you do. Get to work now, and forget everything blue.”

I had not told Lois I was a model. I had simply said that at home I had been an artist.

She had brought down my paints and palette, and now, as I arranged my things, she watched me with great interest. She had brought me a print of a basket of fruit and a bowl of flowers, and asked me if I wouldn’t copy this for her. I painted them on two wooden plates she had, and she was delighted and cried out admiringly:

“Aren’t you the smartest girl, though.”

Tim O’Leary came in while I was painting, and the admiration of that big bartender was pathetic. He actually walked on tiptoe to come nearer to have a look. Then he said:

“I’ll be back in a second.”

He left the room, and returned shortly with a parcel wrapped up in white tissue paper, which he gently unfolded. He showed us a little piece of white satin with some pink flowers painted in the center, and trimmed around with cream lace; also two pieces of embroidery of a really fine quality. He handled these works of art, as he called them, poor fellow, with an almost reverent tenderness, and Lois and I loudly expressed our admiration of them.

“I’m keeping them,” said Tim, “for the little girl back home. She’ll be coming to me before long, and I’ll have her little nest as elegant as the finest of them,” he said shyly. “My Katy has eyes like this little girl here, and it’s real smart you are to do such grand work, Miss Marion.”

“Say, Mr. O’Leary,” I said, “I’m going to make you something to add to your collection for your little girl.”

I kept my word, and in a few days I had painted on a piece of blue satin that Lois found among her things a bunch of roses which poor Tim declared he could almost smell. That same evening he brought me two enormous whiskey bottles. They were about five feet high--sample bottles. They were, of course, empty. Tim made the astonishing request of me that I should paint on them, and he offered to pay me.

So I painted a little seascape on one and a wreath of lilies of the valley and forget-me-nots on the other. Of course, I would not take pay from Tim for them. The following day Tim came rushing in to tell me he had placed them on his bar, and all of his friends and customers had thought them great, and one man had offered him five dollars apiece for them. He said that nothing would induce him to part from them, but he was sending over to me all the big sample whiskey bottles he could get, and also beer and wine and champagne bottles, and he said if I would paint on these he would sell them for me. Well, the astonishing part is that he did sell them. I must have decorated at least twenty of those awful bottles, and Tim got me about forty dollars for my work. So I was able to pay Miss Darling, and I went over to the boarding-house where I still owed that bill and I paid it. To my surprise the landlady tried to force two dollars back upon me:

“We all know how sick you’ve been,” she said, “and I said to my man: ‘We’ll never see the color of that board money,’ and he ses: ‘You’ll get it yet,’ and you see he’s always right. So here, you can take two of it back, and may you have the good luck your pretty face should bring you.”

Lois sailed on one of the small merchant liners, and it left the pier at five in the morning, so we had to get up very early to see her off. We had sat up very late the night before, and Dr. Squires had spent the evening with us and promised to be at the pier to see her off. The morning was foggy and chilly. I clung tightly to Lois before I let her go, and the doctor said:

“Here, give another fellow a chance.”

He, too, kissed Lois, and there were tears in both their eyes.

XXXIX

It is inconceivably hard for a girl without a definite trade or profession, and possessed of no particular talent, to earn her own living. With Tim O’Leary’s help I had made a little money that tided me over for a time, but I realized that it was merely a temporary relief. The artists would not be returning for a couple of months, and I was in a quandary what I should do. A letter from Lil Markey, the girl who had posed for Count von Hatzfeldt in Montreal, made me consider the advisability of joining her in New York.

This is Lil’s letter:

“DEAR MARION:

Here I am in little old New York. Been here two months now. I’m trying to get a job on the stage, and I’ve almost landed one. You ought to come on here. There’s lots better opportunities, especially for a model. I have all the work I can do just now posing for the Standard, a theatrical paper.

Now, there’s a fellow here who is going to get a bunch of girls and put us in living pictures. All one needs is the looks. Say, why don’t you come on and join me here? I’ve a little flat with a couple of other girls, and we need another to squeeze in and help pay the expenses. I’d prefer you to anyone I’ve seen here. Say, some of them are tough though!

I was awfully sorry to hear about the old Count dying. Ada told me how cut up you were about it, too. I’ve a date now--my meal-ticket!

With love,

LIL.”

Lil’s letter had started my thoughts on an old trail. The desire to act came creeping back on me. It was like an old thirst that suddenly awoke and tugged at one’s consciousness to be satisfied. In Boston I had not thought to see theatrical managers. Reggie had long ago successfully squelched my ambitions in that line. Now Lil’s letter and her reference to Mr. Davis quickened a new hope within me.

Perhaps, as Lil wrote, conditions were better in New York. Certainly there should be more work for a model, and perhaps I might in time really get on the stage. I had enough money for my fare and a little over, and New York appealed to me. Still, I had not definitely decided to go until after I had read the letter that came from Reggie:

“DEAREST OLD GIRL:” (he wrote.)

“I am so glad you are keeping well, and have quite recovered from your recent indisposition. I have been up to my eyes and ears in important work. I’m going to run for the next elections for the ninth ward. What do you think of that for a young and rising Barrister? I’ll bet you are proud of your Reggie, now aren’t you, darling? As for me, now that the rush has let up a bit, I am simply famishing for the sight of my little Marion. And _now_ for the _best_ news of all. I’m leaving for Boston to-morrow evening, and I’ll be with you within a day! There won’t be any more cross, stiff little letters coming to me from Boston, from a strange Marion that’s not a bit like the loving little girl I know. The States is no place for a girl like you, darling, and I’m going there to fetch you home. Be at North station at 8.15.

Your

REGGIE.”

As I read Reggie’s letter, strange thoughts swept turbulently over me.

What was he coming for? Why should he take me back? Had the time come at last when he felt able to marry me? He had put off our marriage so long upon one excuse or another that I could not help feeling sceptical over the possibility that now the time had actually come; for his mention of his coming political fight made me wonder whether he would not be the first to think that this was a bad time for him to marry. He would need the support of the Marbridge family more than ever, and I knew that much of that support had come because of _Miss_ Marbridge’s personal interest in Reggie. Ada had written me that it was generally rumored in Montreal that they were engaged.

No! I felt sure Reggie was coming simply to gratify his selfish desire to see me. In his way, I knew he loved me, so far as it was possible for a man like Reggie to love, and it seemed to me that never again could I supinely be the victim of his vanity and pride. He should not come to me and pour out his confidences and his boastings; nor lavish on me caresses that could not be sincere. His influence over me had waned; and yet as I thought of his coming now, I felt a vague sense of helplessness and even terror. Might not the old influence prevail after all?

I walked up and down my miserable little room, wringing my hands and desperately trying to decide what I should do. I thought of his coming with a feeling of both longing to see him and of revulsion. I reread his letter and it seemed to me, in spite of his tender phrases, that the man’s self-centered character stood out clearly in every line. All of Reggie’s letters to me had laid stress upon the success of his progress both in politics and the law, and although he assumed that I would be pleased and proud, I had in reality felt fiercely resentful. I could not help comparing his circumstances and mine. I had literally been starving in Boston. I had done that thing which in the eyes at least of my own kind of people, if known to them, would have put me “beyond the pale.” I had stood in a room, naked, before half a score of men! My face burned at the thought, and I suffered again the anguish I had felt when I ascended, like a slave, that model’s throne.

Feverishly I packed my clothes. I would go to New York! Reggie should not again find me here to hurt me further.

My train would not leave till night and I had a few friends to whom I wished to bid good-bye. When I was leaving the house I met Tim O’Leary, and he invited me to have lunch with him. I smiled to myself as I sat opposite that bartender thinking what Reggie would say if he could see me and I suddenly said to Tim:

“Tim, do you know, you are more of a real gentleman than the grandson of a Duke I know.”

Tim’s broad, red face shone.

When I said good-bye to Rose St. Denis she took me in her arms like a mother.

“Enfant,” she said, “you are so t’in from ze seekness, I have for you ze pity in my ’eart. I will not see your face never again, but I will make me a prayer to le bon Dieu to pitifully tek care of ‘ma petite sœur.’”

“Oh, Rose,” I said, crying, “I’ll never, never forget _you_. I think the thought of _you_ will always keep me _good_!”

I was fortunate in finding Dr. Squires in, though it was not his office hour. He seemed glad to see me and when I said:

“Doctor, I am off for New York,” he answered:

“What’s the matter with Boston, then?”

I explained that I thought that I could do better in New York and he agreed that my chances there were more promising. Then I said:

“Doctor, I want to thank you for all your kindness to me, and will you please tell me how much your bill is?”

He had not only come to see me two or three times a day during my illness, but he had also supplied all the medicines. He looked at me very seriously when I asked for his bill, and then he said in a deep thrilling voice:

“You do not owe me a cent. It is _I_ who am indebted to _you_.”

I knew what he meant, and, oh, it did thrill me to think that my illness had brought those two beautiful people together, Lois and her doctor.

When I was going out, I said:

“Doctor, I am going on the stage. Perhaps I’ll succeed. Wish me good-luck.”

“I wish you the best of luck in the world,” he said cordially, “and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to hear of your success. You look like Dusé, Bernhardt, Julia Marlowe, and at times like a composite of all the great actresses.” He did not laugh when he said that, and he wrung my hand warmly as if he actually meant it.

Once when I was a little girl, my father had punished me for something bad that I had done, and I determined to run away from home and be a gypsy. I followed an organ-grinder down the street and told him that I wanted to go with him. But he turned around and drove me back, shouting angry words at me. I crept home and hid in the barn till Charles found me there and dragged me into the house by the ear.

In running away from Reggie I had somewhat the same feeling. My heart was bursting with my love for him and at the same time with my vindictive purpose to punish him. I felt my knees trembling under me as I climbed aboard the train. Nevertheless, Reggie’s influence over me seemed to vanish the farther away we got from Boston as it had when I left Montreal.

As we came into New York, I peered out of the window. The city appeared uninviting and the buildings ugly as the train passed along; nevertheless I felt already its encroaching fascination. I experienced the feelings of a child who holds a package of unknown contents in his hand, wondering and fearing to open it lest he be disappointed.

Lil lived on One hundred and ninth Street and she had sent me directions how to get there. When I came out on Forty-second Street with my valise in my hand, I did not know which way to go--which was east, west, south or north.

A man on the train, who had given me a magazine and opened the window for me, offered to carry my valise. He asked me where I was going and I told him that I wanted to find the Sixth Avenue elevated. Carrying my bag, he took me to the elevated station at Sixth Avenue and Forty-second Street. I thanked him and he said:

“It’s nothing. If I had a sister arriving in a strange town alone, I’d hope some one would do as much for her.”

XL

Lil had a tiny little flat near Columbus Avenue. She was delighted to see me and introduced me to the two other girls. They were both quite pretty with bright golden hair and wonderful complexions. Lil whispered to me that their hair was bleached and she said that they got their complexions from the corner drug store. I suppose in the daytime I could have seen that for myself, but I had arrived at night and I was dead tired. The girls were all very friendly and later in the evening a number of men friends called. I was too tired and sleepy to sit up with them and I went to bed. The flat was so small that I could hear them talking and they seemed to sit up all night. In spite of the noise of their chatter and laughter I went to sleep.

I stayed with Lil in that flat for a month and we all shared expenses. I got work right away with some advertising photographers who paid me five dollars for a sitting--but that would take a good part of the day. Lil and the other girls posed for the “Standard,” a kind of theatrical magazine, that ran pictures of chorus girls, etc. I remember one picture which showed the girls tumbling out of a toboggan, and another where they all were supposed to have fallen out of a street-car. I could have done this work, too, but it seemed tawdry and dirty work to me and so long as I could get the photographic work I much preferred it.

In September we were all engaged to be living pictures by a man who was putting them on in vaudeville houses. The subjects represented were strictly proper ones, such as “Youth,” “Psyche,” “The Angelus,” “Rock of Ages,” etc. We received fifteen dollars a week. As we lived cheaply and men were always taking us out to dinner, our expenses were really small, and although Lil urged me to get some new clothes, I paid off my debt to Lu Frazer.