Why don’t you come and see us to-night? and bring along the fellow Hatty said she saw you walking with on Fourteenth St. How are you anyway?—I’m leaving for Providence to-morrow. With love,
Lil.”
I had been thinking of Lil’s letter all day, but I could not make up my mind how to answer it. The thought of making forty dollars in two weeks appealed to me very much, for we were not very busy now, and Menna expected to go West very soon. On account of my work with Menna I had not done much posing in New York, but I intended to call on some artists and see about engagements when Menna should go. Forty dollars was a lot of money to me, and it would take me many weeks to earn that much in posing. It did seem as if I simply could not refuse this chance. But my mind kept turning to Paul Bonnat. I could think of nobody else but him. He had made my life worth while. I thought of all the happy times we had together. He did not have much money to spend on me, and he could not take me to expensive places like Reggie used to, but he lived as I did, and we enjoyed the same things—things that Reggie would have called silly and cheap. We went to the exhibitions of the artists, long walks in the park, to the Metropolitan Museum, and, best of all, to the opera. That was the one thing Paul would be extravagant about, although our seats were in the top gallery of the family circle. I would be out of breath by the time I climbed up there, but I learned to appreciate and love the best only in music, just as Paul was teaching me to understand the best in all art.
There, I listened with mingled feelings and enjoyment to the operas of Wagner. His “Tristan und Isolde” rang in my ears for days, and by the time I heard “Die Meistersinger,” I was able thoroughly to enjoy what before had been unknown land to me. We Canadians had never gone much beyond a little of Mendelssohn, which the teachers of music seemed to consider the height of classical music, and the people were still singing the old sentimental songs, not the ragtime the Americans love, but the deadly sweet melodies that cloy and teach us nothing. Of course, no doubt, things have changed there now; but it was that way when I was a girl in Montreal.
I did not want to leave New York even for two weeks. I had begun to love my life here. There was something fine in the comradeship with the boys in the old ramshackle studio building. I had been accepted as one of the crowd, and I knew it was Bonnat’s influence that made them all treat me as a sister. Fisher once said that a “fellow would think twice before he said anything to me that wasn’t the straight goods,” and he added, “Bonnat’s so darned big, you know.”
I had often cooked for all of the boys in the building. We would have what they called a “spread” in Bonnat’s or Fisher’s studio, and they would all come flocking in, and fall to greedily upon the good things I had cooked. I felt a motherly impulse toward them all, and I wanted to care for and cook for—yes—and wash them, too. Some of the artists in that building were pretty dirty.
Paul had never spoken of love to me, and I was afraid to analyze my feelings for him. Reggie’s letters were still pouring in upon me, and they still harped upon one thing—my running away from him in Boston. He kept urging me to come home, and lately he had even hinted that he was coming again to fetch me; but he said he would not tell me when he would come, in case I should run off again.
I used to sit reading Reggie’s letters with the queerest sort of feelings for, as I read, I would not see Reggie in my mind at all, but Paul Bonnat. It did seem as if all the things that Reggie said that once would have pierced and hurt me cruelly had now lost their power. I had even a tolerant sort of pity for Reggie, and wondered why he should trouble any longer to accuse me of this or that, or even to write to me at all. I am sure I should not have greatly cared if his letters had ceased to come. And now as I turned over in my mind the question of leaving New York, I thought not of Reggie, but of Paul. It is true, I might only be away for the two weeks in Providence; on the other hand, I realized that should we succeed there, I would be foolish not to go on with the troupe to Boston. I decided finally that I would go.
I went over especially to tell Paul about it. I said:
“Mr. Bonnat, I’m going away from New York, to do some more of that—that living-picture work.” I waited a moment to see what he would say—he had not turned around—and then I added, as I wanted to see if he really cared—“Maybe I won’t come back at all.”