“I wish you the best of luck in the world,” he said cordially, “and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to hear of your success. You look like Dusé, Bernhardt, Julia Marlowe, and at times like a composite of all the great actresses.” He did not laugh when he said that, and he wrung my hand warmly as if he actually meant it.
Once when I was a little girl, my father had punished me for something bad that I had done, and I determined to run away from home and be a gypsy. I followed an organ-grinder down the street and told him that I wanted to go with him. But he turned around and drove me back, shouting angry words at me. I crept home and hid in the barn till Charles found me there and dragged me into the house by the ear.
In running away from Reggie I had somewhat the same feeling. My heart was bursting with my love for him and at the same time with my vindictive purpose to punish him. I felt my knees trembling under me as I climbed aboard the train. Nevertheless, Reggie’s influence over me seemed to vanish the farther away we got from Boston as it had when I left Montreal.
As we came into New York, I peered out of the window. The city appeared uninviting and the buildings ugly as the train passed along; nevertheless I felt already its encroaching fascination. I experienced the feelings of a child who holds a package of unknown contents in his hand, wondering and fearing to open it lest he be disappointed.
Lil lived on One hundred and ninth Street and she had sent me directions how to get there. When I came out on Forty-second Street with my valise in my hand, I did not know which way to go—which was east, west, south or north.
A man on the train, who had given me a magazine and opened the window for me, offered to carry my valise. He asked me where I was going and I told him that I wanted to find the Sixth Avenue elevated. Carrying my bag, he took me to the elevated station at Sixth Avenue and Forty-second Street. I thanked him and he said:
“It’s nothing. If I had a sister arriving in a strange town alone, I’d hope some one would do as much for her.”
XL
LIL had a tiny little flat near Columbus Avenue. She was delighted to see me and introduced me to the two other girls. They were both quite pretty with bright golden hair and wonderful complexions. Lil whispered to me that their hair was bleached and she said that they got their complexions from the corner drug store. I suppose in the daytime I could have seen that for myself, but I had arrived at night and I was dead tired. The girls were all very friendly and later in the evening a number of men friends called. I was too tired and sleepy to sit up with them and I went to bed. The flat was so small that I could hear them talking and they seemed to sit up all night. In spite of the noise of their chatter and laughter I went to sleep.
I stayed with Lil in that flat for a month and we all shared expenses. I got work right away with some advertising photographers who paid me five dollars for a sitting—but that would take a good part of the day. Lil and the other girls posed for the “Standard,” a kind of theatrical magazine, that ran pictures of chorus girls, etc. I remember one picture which showed the girls tumbling out of a toboggan, and another where they all were supposed to have fallen out of a street-car. I could have done this work, too, but it seemed tawdry and dirty work to me and so long as I could get the photographic work I much preferred it.