Yet, an hour later, Paul came seeking her at Mrs. St. Aubyn's, and,
failing, returned in the morning before she breakfasted. Unsuccessful
a second time, and then a third, he wrote twice, imploring her not to
judge him by a moment's madness.
Jean made no reply. Moved by the eloquent memory of Paul's many
kindnesses and with the charity she hoped of others for herself, she
did him the justice to believe him better than his lowest impulse. But
while she was willing to grant that the Paul who, in the first shock of
her revelation, thought all the world rotten, was not the real Paul,
she would not have been the woman she was, had his offense failed
to bar him from her life. Her decision was instinctive and instant,
requiring no travail of spirit, though she could not escape subsequent
heart-searchings whether she had unwittingly laid herself open to
humiliation and a scorching shame that the dentist, or any man, could
even for a moment have held her so cheap.
Necessity turned her thoughts outward. The marriage plans had all
but devoured her savings, and while she was clothed better than ever
before, she lacked ready money for even a fortnight's board. Immediate
employment was essential, yet, when canvassed, the things to which she
might turn her hand were alarmingly few. After her experience with
Meyer & Schwarzschild, she was loath to go back to her refuge-taught
trade except as a last resort, while department-store life, as she had
found it, seemed scarcely less repellent. At the outset it was her hope
to secure somewhere a position like her last, but the advertisements
yielded the name of only one dentist in need of an assistant, and this
man had filled his vacancy before she applied. Thereafter she roamed
the high seas of "Help Wanted: Female" without chart or compass.
The newspapers teemed with offers of work for women's hands. The
caption "Domestic Service" of course removed a host of them from
consideration, and the demand for stenographers, manicures, and like
specialized wage-earners disposed of many others; but, these aside,
opportunity still seemed to beckon from infinite directions. Thus, the
paper-box industry clamored for girls to seam, strip, glue, turn in,
top-label, close, and tie; the milliners wanted trimmers, improvers,
frame-makers, and workers in plumage and artificial flowers; the
manufacturers of shirt-waists and infants' wear called for feminine
fingers to hemstitch, shirr, tuck, and press; deft needles might turn
their skill toward every conceivable object from theatrical spangles to
gas-mantles; nimble hands might dip chocolates, stamp decorated tin,
gold-lay books, sort corks, tip silk umbrellas, curl ostrich feathers,
fold circulars, and pack everything from Bibles to Turkish cigarettes.
But this prodigious demand, at first sight so promising, proved on
close inspection to be limited. Beginners were either not wanted at
all or, if taken on trial, were expected to subsist on charity or
air. Experience was the great requisite. Day after day Jean toiled up
murky staircases to confront this stumbling-block; day after day her
resources dwindled.
Amy was keenly sympathetic and pored over the eye-straining
advertisement columns as persistently as Jean herself.
"How's this?" she inquired, glancing up hopefully from one of these
quests. "'Wanted: Girl or woman to interest herself in caring for the
feeble-minded.'"
"I tried that yesterday."
"No good?"
"They only offered a home."
"And with idiots! They must be dotty themselves."
Then Jean, ranging another column, thought that she detected a glimmer
of hope.
"Listen," she said. "'Wanted: Girl to pose for society illustrations.'
Do you think there is anything in this?"
"Too much," returned Amy, sententiously. "Don't answer model ads. It
isn't models those fellows want any more than they are artists. Real
artists don't need to advertise. They can get all the models they want
without it. I never thought to mention posing. Why don't you try it?
You have got the looks, and it's perfectly respectable."
"Is it?" rejoined Jean, dubiously. "I thought this advertisement
sounded all right because it says 'society illustrations.'"
"It's just as proper to pose nude, if that's what you're thinking
about. I know the nicest kind of a girl who does. Her mother is
paralyzed. But that's only one branch of the business, and it's all
respectable. Why, you'll find art students themselves doing it to help
along with their expenses. I know what I'm talking about, because I've
posed."
"You!"
"Just a little. It was for an artist who boarded here a while before
you came. He moved uptown when he began to get on, and now you see his
pictures in all the magazines. I was a senator's daughter in one set
of drawings and a golf-girl in a poster. It's easy work as soon as
your muscles get broken in, and it stands you in fifty cents an hour
at least. The girl I told you of sometimes makes twenty-five or thirty
dollars a week, but she poses for life classes; they're in the schools,
you know. I made up my mind to go into it once."
"Why didn't you?"
Amy laid a derisive finger on her tip-tilted nose.
"Here's why," she laughed. "It was this way: The artist who used to
board here told me of another man who paid three or four models regular
salaries. He did pictures about Greeks and Romans, and all those
girls had to do, I heard, was to loaf round in pretty clothes, and
once in awhile be painted. I went up there one day and it certainly
was a lovely place, just like a house in a novel I'd read called 'The
Last Days of Pompey-eye.' A girl was posing when I came, and, if
you'll believe me, that man had rigged up a wind-machine that blew her
clothes about just as though she was running a race. Well, I didn't
stay long. The artist--he was seventy-five or eighty, I should say,
and grumpy--turned me sideways, took one look at my nose, and said I
was too old, nineteen hundred years too old! He thought he was funny.
Somebody told me afterward that he was a has-been and couldn't sell his
pictures any more."
With the idea that posing might answer as a stop-gap until she found
some other means of support, Jean forthwith visited an agency whose
address Amy furnished. She found the proprietor of this enterprise a
jerky little man with a disquieting pair of black eyes which thoroughly
inventoried her every feature, movement, and detail of dress.
"Chorus, front row, show-girl, or church choir?" he demanded briskly.
"I thought this was a model agency," Jean said; "I wish to try posing
if--"
"Right shop. What line, please?"
"In costume."
"You don't follow me. Fashion-plate, illustrating, lithography, or
commercial photography."
"I'm not sure," she hesitated, bewildered by this unexpected broadening
of the field. "What can I earn?"
The little man waved his arms spasmodically.
"Might as well ask me what the weather'll be next Fourth of July," he
sputtered. "See that horse there?" pointing out of his window at a
much-blanketed thoroughbred on its way to the smith's. "How fast can
he trot? You don't know! Of course you don't. How much can you earn?
I don't know. Of course I don't. You see my point? Same case exactly.
Illustrators pay all the way from half a dollar to a dollar and a half
an hour. Camera-models make from one dollar to three. And there you
are."
"I've had no experience."
"That's plain enough. Sticks out like a sore thumb. But you don't need
any. Fact, you don't. That's the beauty of the business. Appearance and
gumption, they're the cards to hold. You've got appearance. A girl has
to have the looks, or I don't touch her fee. Fair all round, you see.
If a girl's face or get-up is against her, I've no business taking her
money. If an illustrator says, 'Send me up a model who looks so and
so,' that's just the article he gets. First-class models, first-class
illustrators, there's my system."
"I need work at once," Jean stated. "What is my chance?"
"Prime. You ought to fill the bill for a man who 'phoned not two
minutes before you walked through the door. High-class artist, known
everywhere, liberal pay. There needn't have been any delay whatever, if
you'd thought to bring your father or mother along."
Jean's rising spirits dropped dismally at this remark.
"My father is dead," she explained. "My mother lives in the country."
"Then get her consent in writing. Means time, of course, and time's
money, but it can't be helped."
"Is it absolutely necessary?"
"You'll have to have it to do business with me," replied the agent,
beginning to shuffle among his papers.
"But my mother knows I am trying to earn a living," she argued.
"Besides, I'm nearly of age. I shall be twenty-one next week."
"Drop in when you get your letter," directed the little man,
inflexibly. "Minor or not, I make it a rule to have parents' consent.
Troubles enough in my line without papa and mamma. Good day."
Outside the door Jean decided upon independent action. This last
resource was at once too attractive and too near to be relinquished
lightly. The idea of obtaining Mrs. Fanshaw's consent was preposterous,
even if she could bring herself to ask it--the term "artist's model"
conveyed only scandalous suggestions to Shawnee Springs; but there
was nothing to prevent her hunting employment from studio to studio.
Amy had mentioned the address of the illustrator whom success had
translated from Mrs. St. Aubyn's world, and to him Jean determined to
apply first.
Her errand brought her to one of the innumerable streets from which
wealth and fashion are ever in retreat before a vanguard of the
crafts of which wealth and fashion are the legitimate quarry, and
to a commercialized brownstone dwelling with a modiste established
in its basement, a picture-dealer tenanting its drawing-room, and a
mixed population of artists, architects, and musicians tucked away
elsewhere between first story and roof. She found the studio of Amy's
acquaintance readily, and obeying a muffled call, which answered her
knock, pushed open the door of an antechamber that had obviously once
done service as a hall-bedroom. Here she hesitated. The one door other
than that by which she entered led apparently into the intimacies of
the artist's domestic life, for the counterpane of a white iron bed,
distinctly visible from her station, outlined a woman's recumbent form.
"In here, please," called the voice. "I'm trying to finish while the
light holds."
On the threshold Jean had to smile at her own unsophistication. The
supposed bedroom was a detail of the studio proper, the supposed wife a
model impersonating a hospital patient who held the centre of interest
in a gouache drawing, to which the illustrator was adding a few last
touches by way of accent.
"I see you don't need a model," Jean said, with a smile inclusive of
the girl in the bed.
He scrutinized her impersonally, transferred a brush from mouth to
hand, and caught up a bundle of galley-proofs.
"No," he decided, more to himself than Jean. "It's another petite
heroine, drat her! But I'd be glad to have you leave your name and
address," he added, indicating a paint-smeared memorandum book which
lay amidst the brushes, ink-saucers, and color-tubes littering a small
table at elbow. "I may need your type any day."
Jean complied, thanked him, and turned to go.
"Try MacGregor, top floor--Malcolm MacGregor," he suggested. "Tell him
I said to have a look at your eyes."
Much encouraged, she mounted two more flights, knocked, and, as before,
let herself in at an unceremonious hail. This time, however, she
passed directly from hall to studio, coming at once into an atmosphere
startling in its contrast to the life she left behind. MacGregor's
Oasis, one of the illustrator's friends called it, and the phrase
fitted happily. The rack of wonderfully chased small arms and long Arab
flintlocks; the bright spot of color made upon the neutral background
of the wall by some strange musical instrument or Tripolitan fan; the
curious jugs, gourds, and leathern buckets of caravan housekeeping; the
careless heaps of oriental stuffs and garments from which, among the
soberer folds of a barracan or camel's-hair jellaba, one caught the
red gleam of a fez or the yellow glow of a vest wrought with intricate
embroideries; the tropical sun-helmet,--MacGregor's own,--its green
lining bleached by the reflected light of Sahara sand; the antelope
antlers above the lintel; the Soudanese leopard skins under foot--these
and their like, in bewildering number and variety, recalled the charm
and mystery of the African desert which this man knew, loved, and
painted superlatively.
MacGregor himself, whom she found at his easel, was, despite his
name, not Scotch, but American, with seven generations of New England
ancestors behind him. Tall, thin-featured, alert, and apparently in his
late thirties, he had the quizzical, shrewdly humorous eye which passes
for and possibly does express the Connecticut Yankee's outlook upon
life. In nothing did he suggest the artist.
"I'll be through here in no time, if you'll take a chair," he said,
when Jean had repeated the other artist's message.
Her wait was fruitful, for it emphasized most graphically the dictum
of the agent that gumption was fundamental in the successful model's
equipment. The man now posing for MacGregor in the character of an
aged Arab leading a caravan down a rocky defile, was mounted upon
nothing more spirited than an ingenious arrangement of packing-cases,
but he bestrode his saddle as if he rode in truth the barb which
the canvas depicted. He dismounted presently and disappeared in an
adjacent alcove from which he shortly issued a commonplace young man
in commonplace occidental garb, who pocketed his day's wage and went
whistling down the stairs.
MacGregor turned to Jean.
"I do want a model," he said. "I want one bad. By rights I should be
painting over yonder,"--his gesture broadly signified Africa,--"but
my market, the devil take it! is here. So I'm hunting a model. I have
had plenty come who look the part (which you don't) even Arabs from a
Wild West show; but I've yet to strike one who has any more imagination
than a rabbit. I tell you this frankly because it's easy to see you're
not the average model. That is why I asked you to wait. The model I'm
looking for must work under certain of the Arab woman's restrictions.
Out there"--his hand again swept the Dark Continent--"you never see
her face, as you probably know. You glimpse her eyes, if they're not
veiled; you try to read their story. If even the eyes are hidden,
you find yourself attempting to read the draperies. Do you grasp my
difficulty? I want some one who can express emotions not only with the
eyes, but without them. Now you," he ended, with a note of enthusiasm,
"you have the eyes. Don't tell me you haven't the rest."
Jean laughed.
"I won't if I can help it," she assured him.
He caught up a costume which lay upon a low divan, and ransacked a
heap of unframed canvases that leaned backs outward against the wall.
"This sketch will give you a notion how the dress goes," he said, and
carried his armful into the alcove.
When she reëntered the studio, MacGregor was arranging a screen of a
pattern Jean had never seen.
"It was made from an old lattice," he explained, placing a chair for
her behind it. "I picked it up in Kairwan. This little door swings in
its original position. You are looking now from a window--a little more
than ajar, so--from which generations of women, dressed as you are
dressed, have watched an Arab street."
He passed round to the front of the screen and studied her intently.
"Eyes about there," he said, indicating a rose-water jar upon a low
shelf. "Expression," he paused thoughtfully. "How shall I tell you what
I want you to suggest from the lattice? Don't think of those women of
the Orient. You can't truly conceive their life. Think of something
nearer home. Imagine yourself in a convent--no, that won't do at all.
Imagine yourself a prisoner, an innocent prisoner, peering through your
grating at the world, longing--"
"Wait," said Jean.
She threw herself into his conception, closed her mental vision
upon the studio and its trophies, erased the bustling city from her
thoughts. She was again a resentful inmate of Cottage No. 6, lying in
her cell-like room at twilight, while the woods called to her with a
hundred tongues. There were flowers in the sheltered places; arbutus,
violets--
"You've got it!" MacGregor's exultant voice brought her back. "You've
got it! We'll go to work to-morrow at nine."
"No admission, Mac?" asked a man's voice from the doorway. "I gave the
regulation knock, but you seemed--" He stopped and gazed hard into the
eyes which met his with answering wonder from the lattice.
"I've found her, Atwood," MacGregor hailed him jubilantly. "I've found
her at last."
The newcomer took an uncertain step forward, halted again, then strode
suddenly toward the screen.
"I think I have, too," he said, at the little window now. "It's Jack,
isn't it?"