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 an expensive 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 is _she_ going 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
thing and 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 I was 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.