Part 2

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.

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.