MARTINE'S ALTRUISM
In spite of her love of fun, Martine was considerate enough not to tease Angelina about her recital. Later, by degrees of her own accord, the little Portuguese told the story. After all, there was not much to tell. She had depended on a few posters scattered at random to fill the hall. She had thought that the girls of the Excelsior Club would sell many tickets. But she had fixed the price so high that the girls could neither afford to buy them, nor succeed in disposing of them to their friends.
Moreover, on the night of the recital, a Grand Army fair was holding an auction to which admission was free, and thither every one with a penny to spend had rushed, hoping for bargains. Even if Angelina had been a well-known elocutionist, she would have had difficulty in drawing people from the greater attraction.
"But I never thought," she said, "that some of the people who regularly bought tickets from me would never pay for them, just because they thought it was too much trouble to go when they found out how far away the hall was. My brother John bought and paid for tickets, and so did you, Miss Martine, and with the tickets I sold I just made out to pay Mr. Smithkins the ten dollars I'd promised him. But it was very embarrassing about the hall—and if it hadn't been for your fifteen dollars, I don't know what I should have done."
Martine did not explain her brother's part in the matter.
"Of course, that Mrs. Stinton could have charged it as well as not. It wouldn't have been anything to her. They say she owns a whole block of houses down by the ferry. But it's my last of the Excelsior Club. I consider they went back on me."
"I hope you have learned a lesson, Angelina. You ought not to have promised to pay for the hall until you were sure of getting enough money out of a recital. You should have waited—"
"But I couldn't give a recital without a hall, and I should have paid if I'd sold more tickets."
"Well, this ought to be the last of your recitals."
"Didn't I do well?" asked Angelina, anxiously.
"Oh, that isn't the point."
Martine did not care at this moment to give her precise opinion of Angelina's dramatic ability.
"But you see, this must have cost you a great deal, and you ought to save your money—everybody ought, and life is more serious—there, Angelina—I'll leave it all to mamma. She'll advise you," concluded Martine, feeling that she was getting into deep water, in advocating principles that she herself had not always been able to live up to.
The experience of that memorable Saturday, combined with the advice given by Mrs. Stratford, so far influenced Angelina that for the time she devoted herself exclusively to her household duties, ceased to take elocution lessons, and began to save money. At first she offered to pay Martine a dollar a week, but when the latter learned that Angelina had other debts, she urged her to consider them first.
"I can wait," she said, "and when you have finished paying for that pink satin dress—it would be a good idea for you to make your mother a present."
Nora Gostar, who always kept closely in touch with the Rosas at their home in Shiloh, had asked Martine to influence Angelina to do more for her family.
"Ever since the Four Club years ago began to help the Rosas, Angelina has taken it for granted that the public would look after them. It is true that on the whole they are now fairly prosperous. With her boarders and her garden Mrs. Rosa makes both ends meet, and John always has something to spare for his brothers and sisters. It is only Angelina who seems ready to escape all responsibility. You will remind her, won't you, Martine?"
"Yes," said Martine, "but some people say I haven't enough sense of responsibility myself."
"My dear, then no one has observed you lately. You certainly have taken hold splendidly of the girls in your painting class. Two or three of them, you know, have been called 'hard cases.' No one else ever could interest them, and yet they seem perfectly devoted to you."
"Oh, they are so amusing," said Martine, "that I can't help throwing myself into the work, and then I find out what they want to do, and let them do it. It's silly to make people do things they dislike. Of course," she added, with some embarrassment, "I am aware that this wouldn't be the right principle if I were a real artist, and were trying to make artists out of them. Some of them can't even draw, but they do take an interest in color, and so I am always hunting for good pictures in black and white—and their color effects sometimes are quite wonderful."
Martine did not explain that not a little of her own pocket money was spent for pictures suitable to her rather original method of conducting the class. Photographs and lithographs cost money, and though Amy remonstrated that it was contrary to art to gild the lily, Martine replied that the end would justify her means.
Among her six little pupils only one showed marked talent. She was a Russian girl who had been in Boston but a year, and her gift took the form of a genius for making caricatures.
Her pencil was constantly in her hand, and even with her brush she could outline figures and scenes on the margins of her pictures that would send the others into fits of uproarious laughter.
"Esther, Esther," Martine said one day, "you should never make fun of older people. Who is that tall, thin person, with the lorgnette in her hand?"
"That's teacher," explained one of the others, "the teacher in our school. It's her dead image, ain't it?" and the friend to whom she turned for confirmation, nodded, adding—
"When she's mad she puts her glasses up just so—and we all feel cheaper 'n thirty cents."
"I hope you don't make fun of me this way, Esther, behind my back."
"Oh, no'm, you ain't a teacher."
As Martine was already aware that her girls always spoke of her as "the young lady," this doubtful compliment passed without criticism. Neither in her heart did she think it wise to criticise the little girl's caricatures.
She was delighted when Mrs. Redmond, after looking at Esther's drawings, said that the child had real talent. Then without further delay, without indeed consulting anyone, Martine engaged an expensive teacher to give Esther drawing lessons once a week. Mrs. Redmond would have taught her gratuitously, had she not felt that the little girl's peculiar talent would be best developed by a teacher who made a specialty of figure drawing.
Before Mr. Stratford's departure for England Martine had suggested that he add to the sum he had given her for Yvonne. To the little Acadienne had gone one third of three hundred dollars. This was a sum that Mr. Stratford had asked his daughter to share with her two friends Amy and Priscilla, and expend on the three young people in whom they had taken a special interest during their trip through Acadia.
It had surprised Martine not a little when her usually generous father had hesitated about granting her little request for Yvonne.
"Send her ten dollars from your own Christmas money, dear child, and later I will add to it. Your desire to help her pleases me very much, but just now I would rather not promise a large sum."
"But I did not mean very large, papa; only enough for Alexander Babet to bring her up here and stay for a few months, until the doctors know what can be done for her eyes. It would make you happier, wouldn't it, papa, to know that she could see perfectly?"
"Indeed it would, Martine, but just now I would rather postpone anything of this kind. Besides, even if I were a second Crœsus, I should be more inclined to wait until I could have more thorough knowledge of the condition of the Babet family."
"Oh, papa, surely you believe what I have told you—that Yvonne is almost blind, and that she has the most beautiful voice."
"Yes, my dear, but I know also that the Acadians are thrifty, and that the Babets will spend your gift so carefully, that it will go farther than five hundred dollars with most people. Some day we shall do more for Yvonne, but for the present she must be content with what she has."
So positively did Mr. Stratford speak, that Martine, too, had to be content. She managed, however, not only to send the money that Mr. Stratford had suggested, but a box of slightly worn garments that could be adapted to the use of the little blind girl. She remembered Yvonne's love for pretty things, and what she sent had only enough of the newness worn off to enable the box to pass the watchful customs officials of Nova Scotia.
Priscilla did not pretend to be as altruistic as Martine, though both professed to take Amy for their model. Yet letters between Eunice and Priscilla passed back and forth constantly, and after reading them Priscilla was apt to sigh, and fall into a brown study; for Eunice, having for the first time found a confidante of her own age, opened her heart almost too freely, and in emphasizing the disappointments of her daily life, sometimes threw a cloud over her friend. This is a mistake made by some young letter-writers. They write intensely of personal disappointments that soon pass away. Yet the letter that they send seems to give permanence to their troubles, and if the person to whom they write is sensitive, she pictures the absent one as continually unhappy.
Eunice and Balfour Airton were brother and sister living with their mother in Annapolis. They had been able to make pleasanter than it might have been the stay of Mrs. Redmond and the three girls in the old town.
Eunice and Priscilla had soon become warm friends, and after their comparatively short acquaintance parted almost in tears. The Airtons were descended from Tories who had gone to Nova Scotia after the Revolution, and had always been highly respected. Even before the death of Eunice's father, however, they had lost much of their property, and were under a heavy strain to make both ends meet. Balfour Airton, who was a year or two older than Martine, was working his way through college. In his vacations he served as clerk in a grocery shop. Indeed, Martine had made his acquaintance one day when lost in the fog on the North Mountain. She had been rescued by Balfour, who fortunately drove up in his grocery cart.
Balfour proved a most companionable boy, and his energy and industry made a great impression on Martine, when she contrasted him with the idler college boys whom she knew.
By a combination of proofs needless to describe here, Martine discovered that she and the Airtons were third cousins, since their great-great-grandfather and hers, Thomas Blair, was the Tory exile who had gone to Nova Scotia after the Revolution. In the same way Edith Blair, Brenda's great friend, was a cousin of Eunice and Balfour, and Martine's first impulse on returning home had been to urge her father and Mr. Blair to provide for Balfour, so that he no longer need earn his way through college.
Fortunately enough, before she had spoken to her father, she talked the matter over with Mrs. Redmond.
"My dear Martine, I sincerely hope that you will change your mind about this. Or, if you do not, hope that your father and Mr. Blair will be hard-hearted enough to refuse your request."
"How hard-hearted you are, Mrs. Redmond!"
"No, indeed, not hard-hearted—only hard-headed."
"What do you mean?"
"I am looking strictly to the practical side. In the first place, you would risk the loss of Balfour's friendship, if you should put him in the position of a pauper—for this is the light in which he might regard your interference."
"Oh, no, not a pauper!"
"Well, Balfour is very proud—and in the second place, he could not afford to risk his independence, as he must, if he should accept money from strangers."
"But they wouldn't be strangers; in the South third cousins are very near."
"Well, this isn't the South, and the relationship is on your mother's side, and Mrs. Blair's. Balfour would probably regard the men as strangers. Think over what I have said, Martine, and remember Balfour's disposition."
"It is because he is so bright and industrious that I think it a shame that he should not have as good a chance as Lucian or Robert."
"Balfour has the best possible chance. In the end his friends will be proud of him, and he will be thankful that no one took away his independence."
Martine was sufficiently impressed by what Mrs. Redmond had said to give up for the time the plan she had formed of getting help for Balfour.
When she saw that her father was not quite ready to do what she had planned for Yvonne, she was glad that she had not thrown on him the extra burden of considering the case of Balfour. She decided, however, to interest Lucian in Eunice's brother. In spite of Lucian's fondness for teasing Martine, he was really devoted to her. He was apt in the end to be influenced by her, although in the beginning often pretending to resist her influence.
In his Freshman year, Lucian was drifting into the extravagant habits of an idle group from the preparatory school where he had fitted for Harvard. Fortunately, however, at the critical moment he came under the ken of Fritz Tomkins—a Junior. Between the two there then sprang up a friendship rather unusual in its way. For even at Harvard Freshmen and Juniors are seldom intimate. So it happened that when the summer came, instead of going to Europe with two or three of his classmates, Lucian really preferred a trip with Fritz. The two went to Nova Scotia, and the constant companionship with the sensible Fritz had given Lucian new views of life, or not to put it too seriously—of the value of time and money. Fritz himself was gay and light-hearted, fond of teasing his old friend Amy Redmond, and willing always to have others laugh at him. But beneath all his apparent frivolity was a depth of purpose that those who knew him best fully realized.