Onoto Watanna

“ 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. ”

“ Wheatley, who was out of breath, could say a word, he exclaimed:{89}
“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?” ”

“ Miss Darling knocked at my door, and brought in a telegram. I thought at first it was from Reggie—that he was at last coming, as he had been threatening in all of his letters to do, and my hands were trembling when I broke the flap. But it was from poor Jimmy—Jimmy en route to Colorado, entreating me to write to him and assuring me that he never would forget his “own little Marion,” and that he would “make good” and I’d be proud of him yet. I sat down to write an impulsive answer to the boy, and then my eye fell upon his mother’s letter. No! I would not ruin her son’s life. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ You wouldn’t really care if I drank myself to death.”
“I would care, Jimmy. I care an awful lot about you.”
Jimmy stopped short in the street.
“Do you mean that? You do care for me?” I nodded. “Very well, then,” said he, “it’s up to you to stop me. If you’ll marry me, I’ll quit the booze. That’s on the level, Marion.”
“Now, Jimmy, you know what I told you before, and yet you couldn’t keep away from that old flask of whiskey. You love it better than me. And I’m not going to marry you till I do see some real signs in you of reforming. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I felt as if I really did understand Bonnat’s point of view, and I said:
“I think he means that he will understand human life better. I’ve heard artists in Boston discussing something about that, and I cannot explain it to myself. I only feel that he is right.”
“Oh, rats!” answered Menna. “It’s all very well if one can afford to do it. I can’t, and Bonnat can’t. He went without food for a whole week, except some bread and milk, and he’s a big, hearty animal, and he went without his winter overcoat all last winter, because he gave it to that little consumptive Jew, Shubert. ”

“ 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.{144}
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. ”

“ Menna, I knew, could not possibly do the work this week, for he was working on an order for another dealer, and I had come to Jacobs to collect for old work. I thought, however, that I could easily do it myself. So I said to Jacobs:
“I know a woman artist who’ll do it for you.”
“A woman! No, sir! I would not have a woman do any work for me,” said the dealer. “I have had all I want to do with women artists. They do much inferior work to the men, take twice as long, and get swelled heads about it. They whine if they don’t make a fortune out of their daubs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We Canadians had never gone much beyond a little of Mendelssohn, which the teachers of music seemed to consider the height of classical music, and the people were{290} still singing the old sentimental songs, not the ragtime the Americans love, but the deadly sweet melodies that cloy and teach us nothing. Of course, no doubt, things have changed there now; but it was that way when I was a girl in Montreal.
I did not want to leave New York even for two weeks. I had begun to love my life here. There was something fine in the comradeship with the boys in the old ramshackle studio building. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As we were going along in the car, Jimmy said to Evans:
“Say, Bill, you want to get next to my sister’s friend, Miss Underwood. She’s a fine girl, and has heaps of dough. My sister wants her for a sister-in-law, but little Jimmy has his own ideas.” Turning to me, he added with a tender smile: “She can’t begin to hold a candle to you, Marion.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I can even understand what it is to pity and not envy the rich. They miss so much. Money cannot buy that knowledge of humanity that comes only to him who has lived among the real people in the world—the poor!{270}
All of which is what Bonnat would call “beside the question”—digression, that has “nothing to do with the thing, tra la!”
“Do you see that piece of drapery, Miss Ascough?” said Mr. Christain. “Well, Bonnat bought that yesterday at a little Jew shop on Third Avenue where they have several prices for everything. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Do you remember what beautiful hair Daisy had—the only one in our family with golden hair—well, it is all shaved off, mama says, though that was unnecessary till her final vows.{173} So we’ve lost Daisy. It’s just as if she were dead.
Have you broken off your engagement to that Reggie Bertie? You know I always said he was no good, and I never believed he really loved you. That kind of man only loves himself. Anyway there is no need to get married if you can earn your own living. I think most men are hateful. ”

“ 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{29} 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. ”

“ 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. ”