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.
Miss Darling had told me about a boarding place opposite her house,
where I could get good board for three dollars a week. I crossed over
that evening and entered one of those basement dining-rooms that lined
almost the whole avenue. I had a newspaper with me, and while I waited
for my dinner I went over the advertisements.
I was interrupted by a stir and movement in the room. A girl had come in
with a little dog, and everybody was looking at the dog. She came over
to my table and took the seat directly in front of me. I stared at her.
I could not believe my eyes. There, sitting right at my table, was my
little sister, Nora! I had thought she was in Jamaica.
We both jumped to our feet and screamed our names, and then I began to
cry, and Nora said hastily: “Sh! They are all looking at us!”
The dining-room was full of medical students and Harvard students. I had
noticed them when I came in--one reason why I buried myself in the
paper, because they all looked at me, and one, a boy named Jimmy Odell
(I got to know Jimmy well later) tried to catch my eye, and when I did
look at him once, he winked at me, which made me very angry, and I
hadn’t looked up once again, till Nora came in.
You may be sure those students didn’t take their eyes off us all through
that meal, and every one of them fed Nora’s dog. They had started to
laugh and hurrah when Nora and I first grabbed at each other, but when I
cried they all stopped and pretended to fuss with the dog.
I don’t know what I ate that day. Nora said I ate my meal mixed with
salt tears, but she, too, was excited and we both talked together. Nora
had changed. She seemed more sophisticated than when I saw her last, and
she had her hair done up. She showed me this almost the first thing, and
she said it made her look as old as I. She thought that fine. She
assumed an older-sister way with me which was very funny, for I had
always snubbed her at home as being a “kid” while I was a grown-up young
lady.
When we went to her room, which, strange to say, was in the same block
as mine, two of the students followed us, one of them that Odell. We
didn’t pay any attention to them, though Odell had the insolence to run
up the steps when Nora was turning the key in the lock, and ask if he
couldn’t do it for her. We both regarded him haughtily, which made him
ashamed, I suppose, for he lifted his hat and ran down the stairs again.
Nora’s room was just about the same as mine, only she had a narrow cot
instead of a folding bed, and she had a box for her foolish little dog.
He was a white fox terrier and was not very good, for if she left him a
single moment you could hear his cries all over the neighborhood.
Consequently she was obliged to take him with her whenever she went out.
I was awfully provoked next day, because I wanted her to go with me to
the studios, but that miserable little dog made such a fuss that she
turned back before we had reached the corner. She said she’d bring him
along. I told her she was crazy. No girl could go looking for work with
a dog along. She seemed to prefer the dog to me, which made me much
huffed with her, for she went back to her room.
Nora was expecting money by telegraph from some doctor in Richmond, for
whom she was going to work. She had been doing the same sort of work as
Ada, writing for a newspaper, and she had written “tons of poetry and
stories and other things,” she said.
I wanted to talk over home things, and the work we were to do, etc., but
Nora made me listen to all her stories. She would pile up the two
pillows on her bed for a comfortable place for me, and then coax me to
lie there while she read. She would say:
“Now, Marion, let me make you comfortable, and you rest yourself--you
look awfully tired, and I’m sure you need a rest!--while I read you
this.”
Then she would read one story after another, till I would get dead
tired, but if I closed my eyes she would get offended; so I’d hold them
open no matter how sleepy I got. Sometimes I couldn’t help laughing at
the funny parts in her stories, which delighted her, and she would laugh
more than I would, which would make her little dog yelp and jump about.
Then when I cried in sad parts, she would get much excited, and say:
“Now I know it must be good. Some day huge audiences in big theatres all
over the world will be crying just as you are now.”
Then her dog would jump up and lick her face, and I would say:
“Don’t you think that’s enough for to-night?”
Poor little Nora! She had hardly any money, but it didn’t seem to bother
her a bit. Though I knew I would miss her, I advised her to take the
steady position offered in Richmond, instead of starving here, and a few
days later I saw her off for the South. She looked pathetic and awfully
childish (in spite of her hair done up), and I felt more lonely than
ever. I was crying when I got back to the lodging-house, and when I
opened the door, Miss Darling was standing talking to some man in the
hall. She called to me just as I was going up the stairs:
“Miss Ascough, here’s a nice young gentleman wants to meet you.”
I came back down the stairs, and there was that Harvard student, Odell.
He had a wide smile on his face, and his hand held out. There was
something so friendly and winning in that smile, and somehow the
pressure of his big hand on mine felt so warm and comforting, and I was
so lonely, that when he asked me to go out with him to dinner and after
that to the theatre I said at once:
“Yes, I will.”
Thus began my acquaintance with a boy who devoted himself to me
throughout his stay in Boston, and who, in his way, really loved me.