“Monsieur de St. Vidal is ringing the doorbell,” called Ellen, “why
don’t you open the door, Marion? I believe he has a birthday present for
you in his hand.”
It was my sixteenth birthday, and Monsieur de St. Vidal was my first
beau! He was a relative of our neighbors, the Prefontaines, and I liked
him pretty well. I think I chiefly liked to be taken about in his
stylish little dogcart. I felt sure all the other girls envied me.
“You go, Ellen, while I change my dress.”
I was anxious to appear at my best before St. Vidal. It was very
exciting, this having a beau. I would have enjoyed it much more,
however, but for the interfering inquisitiveness of my sisters, Ada and
Ellen, who never failed to ask me each time I had been out with him,
whether he had “proposed” yet or not.
Ellen was running up the stairs, and now she burst into our room
excitedly, with a package in her hand.
“Look, Marion! Here’s your present. He wouldn’t stop--just left it, and
he said, with such a Frenchy bow--whew! I don’t like the French!--‘Pour
Mamselle Marion, avec mes compliments!’” and Ellen mimicked St. Vidal’s
best French manner and voice.
I opened the package. Oh, such a lovely box of paints--a perfect
treasure!
“Just exactly what I wanted!” I cried excitedly, looking at the little
tubes, all shiny and clean, and the new brushes and palette.
Ada was sitting reading by the window, and now she looked up and said:
“Oh, did that French _wine merchant_ give that to Marion?”
She cast a disparaging glance at the box, and then, addressing Ellen,
she continued:
“Marion is disgustingly old for sixteen, but, of course, if he gives her
_presents_” (he had never given me anything but candy before) “he will
propose to her, I suppose. Mama married at sixteen, and I suppose _some_
people--” Ada gave me another look that was anything but
approving--“_are_ in a hurry to get married. _I_ shall never marry till
I am twenty-five!” Ada was twenty.
This time, Ellen, who was eighteen, got the condemning look. Ellen was
engaged to be married to an American editor, who wrote to her every day
in the week and sometimes telegraphed. They were awfully in love with
each other. Ellen said now:
“Oh, he’ll propose all right. Wallace came around a whole lot, you know,
before he actually popped.”
“Well, maybe so,” said Ada, “but I think we ought to know that French
wine merchant’s intentions pretty soon. I’ll ask him if you like,” she
volunteered.
“No, no, don’t you dare!” I protested.
“Well,” said Ada, “if he doesn’t propose to you soon, you ought to stop
going out with him. It’s bad form.”
I _wished_ my sisters wouldn’t interfere in my affairs. They nagged me
everlastingly about St. Vidal, and it made me conscious when I was with
him. They acted like self-appointed monitors. The minute I would get in,
they would begin:
“Well, did he propose?” and I would feel ashamed to be obliged to admit,
each time, that he had not. Ada had even made some suggestions of how I
might “bring him to the point.” She said men had to be led along like
sheep. Ellen, however, had warmly vetoed those suggestions, declaring
stoutly that Wallace, her sweetheart, had needed no prodding. In fact,
he had most eloquently and urgently pleaded his own suit, without Ellen
“putting out a finger” to help him, so she said.
That evening St. Vidal called and took me to the rink, and I enjoyed
myself hugely. He was a graceful skater, and so was I, and I felt sure
that everyone’s eye was upon us. I was very proud of my “beau,” and I
secretly wished that he was blond. I did prefer the English type.
However, conscious of what was expected of me by my sisters, I smiled my
sweetest on St. Vidal, and by the time we started for home, I realized,
with a thrill of anticipation, that he was in an especially tender mood.
He helped me along the street carefully and gallantly.
It was a clear, frosty night, and the snow was piled up as high as our
heads on each side of the sidewalks. Suddenly St. Vidal stopped, and
drawing my hand through his arm, he began, with his walking stick, to
write upon the snow:
“Madame Marion de St. Vida--”
Before he got to the “l,” I was seized with panic. I jerked my hand from
his arm, took to my heels and ran all the way home.
Now it had come--that proposal, and I did not want it. It filled me with
embarrassment and fright. When I got home, I burst into Ada’s room, and
gasped:
“It’s done! He did propose! B-but I said--I said--” I hadn’t said
anything at all.
“Well?” demanded Ada.
“Why, I’m not going to, that’s all,” I said.
Ada returned to the plaiting of her hair. Then she said sceptically:
“Hm, that’s very queer. Are you _sure_ he proposed, because _I_ heard he
was all the time engaged to a girl in Côte des Neiges.”
“Oh, Ada,” I cried, “do you suppose he’s a bigamist? I think I’m
fortunate to have escaped from his snare!”
The next day Madame Prefontaine told mama that St. Vidal had said he
couldn’t imagine what in the world I had run away suddenly from him like
that for, and he said:
“Maybe she had a stomach ache.”
V
“Ellen, don’t you wish something would happen?”
Ellen and I were walking up and down the street near the English church.
“Life is so very dull and monotonous,” I went on. “My! I would be glad
if something real bad happened--some sort of tragedy. Even that is
better than this deadness.”
Ellen looked at me, and seemed to hesitate.
“Yes, it’s awful to be so poor as we are,” she answered, “but what I
would like is not so much money as fame, and, of course, love. That
usually goes with fame.”
Ellen’s fiancé was going to be famous some day. He was in New York, and
had written a wonderful play. As soon as it was accepted, he and Ellen
were to be married.
“Well, I tell you what I’d like above everything else on earth,” said I
sweepingly. “I would love to be a great actress, and break everybody’s
heart. It must be perfectly thrilling to be notorious, and we certainly
are miserable girls!”
We were chewing away with great relish the contents of a bag of candy.
“Anyhow,” said Ellen, “you seem to be enjoying that candy,” and we both
giggled.
Two men were coming out of the side door of the church. Attracted by our
laughter, they came over directly to us. One of them we knew well. He
was Jimmy McAlpin, the son of a fine old Scotch, very rich, lady, who
had always taken an especial interest in our family. Jimmy, though he
took up the collection in church, had been, so I heard the neighbors
whisper to mama, once very dissipated. He had known us since we were
little girls, and always teased us a lot. He would come up behind me on
the street and pull my long plait of hair, saying:
“Oh, pull the string, gentlemen and ladies, and the figure moves!”
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.
[Illustration: Looking at me he added: “May I send you some roses just
the color of your cheeks?”]
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?”