XIII

“The summer days are comingThe blossoms deck the bough,The bees are gaily hummingAnd 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 meantanother 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 becausethe 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, eventhe 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 ofcoats 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 ‘paintingen 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 northlight), 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 winterthey 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.

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’vegotto work!”

Reggie drew me down to the sofa beside him.

“Now, old girl, listen to me. I’ll not stopyour 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 topummelReggie 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 mein 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 inlove 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.

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 withsoft 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.”

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 triedto 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.

IHAD 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 andindignation. 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.”

“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 openthe 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 tome, 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 nevercouldresist 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 planteda 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.

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 dayIn 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 withinstructions 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, howcanyou 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.”

IHAD 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 sitby 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.

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 anexpensive 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 isshegoing 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 thingand 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 Iwas 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.

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. Reggieheartily 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 toshutthe 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:

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