“I’d go right over and ask her to-night.” Whereupon he picked up his hat
and said:
“I’ll do better than that. I’ll go this minute.”
One artist, famous for his paintings of sunlight, used to talk all the
time he worked, and I realized that he was not talking to me but at me,
for when I answered him he didn’t hear at all.
I didn’t make, of course, more than a living posing in costume, but for
a time I got about four hours’ work a day. It was not always regular,
and sometimes I didn’t even get that much time. Then there were days
when I had no work at all, so I barely made enough to pay for my room
and board. I realized that I would have to do something to increase my
earnings, and I tried to get work to do at night schools. Miss St. Denis
had told me there would be little chance there unless I would pose in
the nude, and that I was determined not to do, but as the summer
approached my work grew less and less, for the artists began to go away
just as Miss St. Denis had told me they would.
Though Mr. Sands had said I was an exceedingly pretty girl, I found that
beauty was by no means an exceptional possession, and especially among
the models. There were much prettier girls than I, to say nothing of the
many girl friends and relatives of the artists who were often willing to
pose for them. So my good looks did not prove as profitable as I had
hoped. Moreover, I was new at the work, had an acquaintance to build
up, and at first tired quicker than the older models.
However, I made a number of good friends among the artists. One of them,
dear old Mr. Rintoul, who had a studio in that long row of studios near
the art gallery. One day, I knocked at his door and applied for work as
a model. He opened the door and peered out at me in the dark hall. At
first he said he was sorry, but he couldn’t use me. He was a
landscape-painter, and he said he guessed I had come to the wrong man,
as there was another artist of his name on Tremont Street who painted
figures. Then he said:
“But come in, come in!”
He was a little man of about fifty, and his face had the chubby look of
a child. He wore the funniest old-fashioned clothes. He peered up at me
through his glasses, and seemed to be examining my face. After a moment
he said:
“Having a hard time, eh? Or are you extra busy now?”
I told him I was not extra busy, and he rubbed his chin in a funny way
and said:
“I believe I can use you after all. Now I’ll tell you how we’ll arrange
it. I’m a pretty busy man, so I can’t make any definite engagement, but
you come here whenever you have nothing else to do, and I’ll use you if
I can. If I’m too busy, I’ll pay you just the same. How will that do?”
I thanked him, and told him I was so glad, for work was getting scarcer
every day.
He pointed to a big armchair and said:
“Now sit down there and rest yourself. Be placid! Be placid!” He waved
his hand at me, and went to see who was knocking at the door. Then he
came back and said:
“Too busy to use you to-day. Here’s the money,” and he handed me seventy
cents, as if for two hours’ work.
“Oh, Mr. Rintoul,” I said, “I haven’t worked at all.”
“Now don’t argue,” he said. “That was our agreement, so be placid!”
One day when I went to pose, he said that all the people in the studios
were giving a tea, and they had asked him to open the doors of his
studio, so the visitors could see it. He remarked that he would take
that day off. I said:
“There must be an awful lot of artists here.”
He chuckled, and making his hand into a claw, said:
“Not all artists, but folks hanging on to the edge of art, and cackling,
_cackling_! Now run along, and keep placid!” and he handed me a dollar
for my “time.”
I never really posed for him at all, for he always had something else to
do, but he would make me sit in the big armchair and “be placid.”
He is now gone to the land where all is placid, and whenever I hear that
word I think of him, and my faith in good men is strengthened.
But not all of my experiences with the artists of Boston were as
pleasant as that with Mr. Rintoul and Mr. Sands and some others. I had
one terrible experience from which I barely escaped with my life.
I had posed several times for a Mr. Parker, who did a rushing business
for strictly commercial firms. He made advertisements such as are seen
on street-cars, packages of breakfast food and things like that. I had
posed for him in a number of positions, to show off a certain brand of
stockings as a girl playing golf, to advertise a sweater, and other
things too numerous to mention.
He was a large, powerfully built man, devoted to sports, and he used to
tell me about his place at Cape Cod, and how he fished and rode. He
discovered that I could paint, and he let me help him sometimes with his
work. We got to be very friendly, and I really enjoyed working for him
and liked him very much. His wife was a sweet-faced gentle little woman
who occasionally came to the studio, and she would sometimes put an
extra piece of cake in his lunch box for me. He said she was a saint.
Of all the artists I worked for my best hopes rested on Mr. Parker, for
he had promised, if certain work he expected came, he might be able to
employ me permanently--not merely as a model, but assisting him.
One day after I had been working for him all morning, and we had lunch
together, I sat down on a couch to glance over a book of reproductions,
when I felt him come up beside me. He stood there, without saying
anything for a while, and then, stooping down, brushed my cheek with his
beard. I was not quite sure whether he was leaning over to look at the
pictures, but I did not like his face so close, and half-teasingly I put
up my hand and pushed his face away, as I might a fly that was in my
way. Suddenly I felt a stinging slap on my face. Surprised and angry, I
leaped to my feet.
“Mr. Parker, you are a little too rough!” I said. “That really hurt me.”
I thought he was joking, but when I saw his face I realized that I was
looking at a madman.
“I intended to hurt you,” he said in the strangest voice, and then he
cursed me and struck me again on the cheek with the flat of his powerful
hand. “Take that, and that, and that!” His voice rose with each blow.
Then he took me by the shoulders and shook me till my breath was gone.
“Now I’m going to kill you!” he raved.
I fell down on my knees, and screamed that I had not meant to offend
him, but he caught hold of my hands and dragged me along toward the
window, shouting that he was going to throw me out. We were seven
stories up and he had dragged me literally on to the window sill. I
tried to brace myself for death, as all my resistance seemed as nothing
to his awful strength; but even while we struggled at the window, the
door of his studio opened and some one came in. Like a flash he turned,
and dragging me across the room, he literally threw me into the hall and
shut the door in my face. To this day I do not even know who had entered
his studio, but I believe it was a woman, and sometimes I wonder if it
could have been his wife.
In the hall I gathered myself up. My clothes were nearly torn off my
back, and I was black and blue all over. My hair was down, and blood was
running down my chin. I climbed upstairs to the studio of another artist
I had posed for, and when he opened the door to my knock, he was so
startled by my appearance that he called to his wife, a sculptress, to
come quickly.
[Illustration: He caught hold of my hands and dragged me along toward
the window shouting that he was going to throw me out.]
“What is the matter? Whatever is the matter?” she asked, drawing me in.
“You poor girl, what has happened to you?”
I could not speak at first. I tried to, but my breath was coming in
gasps, and I was sobbing. For the first time in my life hysterics seized
me. They chafed my hands and brought me something to drink, and then she
held my hands firmly in hers, and bade me tell her what had happened.
Between sobs, I described the treatment I had received. I saw husband
and wife exchange glances, and I ended:
“And now I’m going to have him arrested.”
“Listen to me,” said Mrs. Wilson. “I know you have suffered terribly,
and that man ought to be killed; but take my advice, keep away from the
police. Remember you have no witnesses. You could not prove the assault.
It would be your word against his and you are only a model. Let it pass,
and hereafter keep away from Mr. Parker.”
Her husband said:
“I’m surprised at Parker, the damned brute! I’ve heard of queer doings
down there, and I knew he had beaten messenger boys, but, by Jove, I
didn’t dream he’d beat a girl. You must have aroused his temper in some
way. You know he’s unbalanced--of course you know that--every one
does.”
No, I did not know that. He was worse than unbalanced, however. He was a
madman.
I went home bruised and sore and, as they advised, let the matter drop.
As Mrs. Wilson had said, I had no witnesses, and I was just a model!