Part 7

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.

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:

“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.