Read Ebook: Marion: The Story of an Artist's Model by Watanna Onoto Hutt Henry Illustrator

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Ebook has 1654 lines and 65271 words, and 34 pages

He took it with both hands, greedily, and now as I looked at him another, a fiendish, impulse seized me. Big boys had often hit me, and although I had always fought back as valiantly and savagely as my puny fists would let me, I had always been worsted, and had been made to realize the weakness of my sex and age. Now as I looked at that beggar boy, I realized that here was my chance to hit a big boy. He was smiling at me gratefully across that slice of sugared bread, and I leaned over and suddenly pinched him hard on each of his cheeks. His eyes bulged with amazement, and I still remember his expression of surprise and pained fear. I made a horrible grimace at him and then ran out of the room.

There was a long, bleak period, when we knew acutely the meaning of what papa wearily termed "Hard Times." Even in "Good Times" there are few people who buy paintings, and no one wants them in Hard Times.

Then descended upon Montreal a veritable plague. A terrible epidemic of smallpox broke out in the city. The French and not the English Canadians were the ones chiefly afflicted, and my father set this down to the fact that the French Canadians resisted vaccination. In fact, there were anti-vaccination riots all over the French quarter, where we lived.

And now my father, in this desperate crisis, proved the truth of the old adage that "Blood will tell." Ours was the only house on our block, or for that matter the surrounding blocks, where the hideous, yellow sign, "PICOTTE" , was not conspicuously nailed upon the front door, and this despite the fact that we were a large family of children. Papa hung sheets all over the house, completely saturated with disinfectants. Every one of us children was vaccinated, and we were not allowed to leave the premises. Papa himself went upon all the messages, even doing the marketing.

He was not "absent-minded" in those days, nor in the grueling days of dire poverty that followed the plague. Child as I was, I vividly recall the terrors of that period, going to bed hungry, my mother crying in the night and my father walking up and down, up and down. Sometimes it seemed to me as if papa walked up and down all night long.

My brother Charles, who had been for some time our main support, had married and although he had fervently promised to continue to contribute to the family's support, his wife took precious care that the contribution should be of the smallest, and she kept my brother, as much as she could, from coming to see us.

A day came when, with my mother and it seemed all of my brothers and sisters, I stood on a wharf waving to papa on a great ship. There he stood, by the railing, looking so young and good. Papa was going to England to try to induce grandpa--that grandfather we had never seen--to help us. We clung about mama's skirts, poor little mama, who was half distraught and we all kept waving to papa, with our hats and hands and handkerchiefs and calling out:

"Good-bye, papa! Come back! Come back soon!" until the boat was only a dim, shadowy outline.

The dreadful thought came to me that perhaps we would never see papa again! Suppose his people, who were rich and grand, should induce our father never to return to us!

I had kept back my tears. Mama had told us that none of us must let papa see us cry, as it might "unman" him, and she herself had heroically set the example of restraining her grief until after his departure. Now, however, the strain was loosened. I fancied I read in my brothers' and sisters' faces--we were all imaginative and sensitive and excitable--my own fears. Simultaneously we all began to cry.

Never will I forget that return home, all of us children crying and sobbing, and mama now weeping as unconcealedly as any of us, and the French people stopping us on the way to console or commiserate with us; but although they repeated over and over:

"Pauvre petites enfants! Pauvre petite m?re!" I saw their significant glances, and I knew that in their minds was the same treacherous thought of my father.

But papa did return! He could have stayed in England, and, as my sister Ada extravagantly put it, "lived in the lap of luxury," but he came back to his noisy, ragged little "heathens," and the "painting, painting of pot-boilers to feed my hungry children."

"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:

She cast a disparaging glance at the box, and then, addressing Ellen, she continued:

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."

"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:

"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."

"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 fianc? 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.

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