The Girl Who Came Back · Improvement Era

The Girl Who Came Back BY ELIZABETH CANNON PORTER

"I think, father, that I shall go to New York this winter to study art." Mary Baldwin's tones were even, although her heart was thumping spasmodically against her ribs. She had chosen a propitious time when her father was nearly through with his boiled dinner to make her last attack. Her defenses she had carefully prepared beforehand. The grizzled old farmer eyed his daughter, "Can't you get enough art here?" "No," answered Mary "I've taken all they give at the high ;

school, and if I'm going to do anything worth while, I've got to have the training." "'Fraid I can't afford it this year, with taxes coming on, water assessments, the new drain ditch to pay for, and three horses dying." "Oh, I've got nearly three hundred dollars saved up, mostly my chicken money," countered Mary, gaining courage. Ever since the ambition to be a great artist had been born in Mary, years before, when her drawings first attracted attention in the country school, she had started saving for this purpose. The flower gar- den and the chickens were hers, and from the latter she had saved dollar by dollar in an old umbrella cover in the bottom of her trunk. Then she would change them into bills of larger denom- ination until the umbrella had, not a silver lining, — but a green- back one. "H'm," ejaculated the old man, a fleeting look of surprise taking the place of his usual stolidity. "Didn't know there was that much money in chickens What has your mother got to say !

about it?" "Mary's a good girl and deserves a chance," replied Mrs. Baldwin valiantly. Mr. Baldwin had not consulted his wife's judgment for thirty years for nothing, and he knew himself beaten. "I don't like the idea of my girl being off alone in that big city," he mumbled. "I shall write to the Fergusons there to look after her," re- plied his wife, "and I think Mary can take care of herself," she added. "What will it all amount to?" Mr. Baldwin could see money in "broad acres," hogs and cows, but art he considered "high- falutin'."

426 IMPROVEMENT ERA "I've promised mother that if I don't make it go I'll give it up with good grace and come back home and not string it on forever like Angeline Walker." Angeline Walker was the daugh- ter of a neighbor who had been studying music abroad for six years. Although they heard wonderful reports of her voice, she was still pouring gold into the hands of greedy foreign music teachers and seemed as far from a position as ever. "No, nor you hadn't better be like Cissie Landis, either," mut- tered the old man wrath fully. Cissie was the daughter of a widow who had toiled in the fields with her calloused hands to send her pretty daughter to a business college. The girl returned a gum- chewing stenographer with peroxide hair and a trunk full of fol- de-rols. She divided her time between cold-creaming her face and manicuring her finger nails and thought her mother very foolish for having spoiled her looks with toil. "Well, since you and your mother have decided on it, when do you go?" "The school of design opens in about three weeks, and I think that I'd better start a little before that so I can get settled." "The old place will seem lonesome without you, and what are you going to do about Lem Hardy?" Mr. Baldwin arose and reached for his hat. Mary tossed her head. "I'm not going to alter my plans for Lem Hardy." The person in question was the good-looking, honest young farmer that called to see Mary on Sunday nights. The next two weeks were busy ones at Willow farm. Mrs. Baldwin left her canning and pickling to run the sewing machine, and if her mother-heart ached over the parting with this her last birdie to fly the nest — her two older children were married she hid it under a bright smile, for she was determined that her girl should have a chance. There were her clothes to be got ready, friends to say good-bye to, several afternoon parties to attend and her trunk to pack. Lem Hardy came over with his fast horse and took her driving through the bright autum afternoons. He seemed very serious and pre-occupied, as if he had something on his mind, but every time he tried to get rid of it, Mary adroitly changed the subject. "It isn't as were going away forever, you know if I winter in New York won't hurt me, and it may do A me lots of good I'll find out if I really have any ability, and if I haven't I'll be more satisfied to come home and settle clown," she assured him and she parted with him with the comfortable feelino- that she hadn't committed herself. "If he cares anything for me he'll wait, and if he doesn't, he's not worth bothering about " she thought, but she couldn't forget the dumb question in his eyes when he parted with her at the depot, but it was not till her mother pressed several gold pieces into her hand (the proceeds

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from the sale of Lottie, the yellow cow, that Mrs. Baldwin had

raised from a calf) saying, "You may want some different clothes when you get there," that Mary totally broke down.

It was dark when the train wound down the Hudson and approached the great city. Mary, who had been sitting stiffly with her hat on for an hour had her first misgiving when she peered out through the rain-bespattered window and saw the lights of the elevated. The Fergusons, who lived in Harlem, met her at the 125th street station, so she was spared the rush and roar of the great central depot. They rushed her in a taxi to their flat. As it was already overcrowded, they explained to her that they had engaged a room for her at a "family" hotel next door, for the present, until she could look around a little more and get located. When they mentioned the price Mary felt the chills run up and down her back. Mary hunched herself on the Ferguson sofa that night and the next day she procured her trunk and took up her abode in a dark back room of the family hotel. Her one window opened onto a court which emitted many smells. At night the mice ran through her room and at two o'clock in the morning she could hear the guests stumbling up the back stairs. The hotel parlor was decorated with gilt mirrors and^ lacquer vases but the curtains at the windows were dirty and even the great glittering dining room at the fashionable dinner hour had an unwholesome atmosphere. The electric bulbs shone on the tinsel dresses of the women, but above the bare shoulders were sallow complexions and drug-dulled eyes. The food was mostly mixed up messes with French names. Mary had yet to learn that clean, plain food in New York cost more than "a las." If there were any fresh eggs they never drifted down to the "Woodward ;" beefsteak was the most expensive thing in the city; and even the milk, Mary imagined the nigger wench in the kitchen had stuck her finger into. When Mary thought of what she paid for these things here, and then remembered how her father toiled to wring every dollar from the soil with his potatoes and wheat, it turned her sick. Mary plunged herself into her work at the school with inde- fatigable energy, and from the first she did well. The teachers encouraged her ability, and the students liked the clear-eyed western girl. Two of the women she met there were to play an important part in her life that winter. The Fergusons, she soon found, were luxuries she could not afford. The two boys attended Columbia University and the girls, Mary discovered, were taking a course mostly in dressing and matinees. Although they were generous in their invitations,

Mary had to buy clothes that she really didn't need in order to go around with them. Also, she took her turn in paying for the

428 IMPROVEMENT ERA numerous luncheons, teas, boxes of chocolates, bouquets of fresh flowers, and other things the girls were always loping in between shows. So, gradually she separated herself from them and began finding out the free things that would benefit her. She found the public library, and read up on landscape gardening and archi- tecture. She visited the museum, and when she felt she needed air she walked in Central park- Her half holidays she spent in the Metropolitan art gallery, and it was here, in the long hours brooding over the pictures that the realization came to Mary that nine-tenths of success in art, as in everything else, is hard work, and she began to wonder in her heart whether it were worth so — much of a woman's life. Even if one could succeed and how many of them didn't ! The J. Pierpont Morgan collection was on exhibition there, and she read with gasps the prices that had been paid for some of the works of art. But then the men who had painted these pictures were dead, and many of them had toiled in poverty all their lives. A few days after her arrival Mary had been much comforted bv a letter from her mother, breathing heart-ache in every line. The girl tucked it into the bosom of her dress as a talisman against the evils of the great city. A week later came a check from her father with a few scribbled lines saying that he could send her the enclosed amount as an allowance every month, "until art got to paying." Mary breathed a sigh of relief, and set to work with renewed energy, determined that the loved ones at home should not be disappointed. Among the girls at the art school that Mary got acquainted with was Mattie Welch, a lanky, matter-of-fact girl with mouse- colored hair. Mary learned that many of the students tabooed Mattie because she wasn't an artist. She "did" fashion drawings for the Sunday supplement of one of the newspapers, "Some smart gowns seen at the Horse Show," "Evening costumes at the opening of the opera," "The imported gowns of Gaby Deslys." But Mattie made her living at it, and she had a contempt for "sap-heads" who loafed around afternoon teas and talked art but who never did any of it. One day, when she heard Mary lamenting that she didn't live nearer the school of design, she exclaimed, "Why don't you come and live with me. I have a hall bedroom that I pay three dollars a week for and the old ladv lets me use her gas in the morning to get my breakfast. For four dollars I can get a larger room and we could both occupy it." Mary gratefully accepted her offer. The girls lunched down town and carried their supper up_ from the delicatessen around the corner. So Mary began to gain on her expenses, but nevertheless she was beginning to feel that it was about time that art was "beginning to pay," for she had had a long rudimentary training before she went east.

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Three of the teachers had shown special interest in her. They were the French water-color teacher, a woman sculptor and a big, red-faced New Yorker who taught' illustrating. Mary got her first lesson from the woman, Mrs. Long. She was considered a successful artist, and she made a good appearance when she was out. One afternoon she invited the western girl to go to a lecture with her. When Mary called for her, at her rooms, she was ushered into a bare, untidy studio. Mrs. Long was in a bitter mood that afternoon, and when Mary ventured to admire the figure of a baby that the sculptor had been modeling, she burst out, "Yes; that's all the children I have, stone ones. I've been making that for the new Foundling hospital. Take it from me, girlie, that it's better to marry than to follow up art. I'm con- sidered successful, and this is ill the home I've got," she shrugged her shoulders. "I had a home once and a husband, a young — newspaper man out in Denver.; He didn't make much money, and I couldn't keep- house, and he; got to drinking to brace him up so

he could write. So I chucked it all to follow up a career. I

sometimes think that if I'd known how to do anything, and could have backed him up, that we'd have pulled through, for he wasn't half bad and I might have had flesh-and-blood children instead of clay models for Foundling hospitals." Mr. Armstrong, the man who taught illustrating, had got Mary to illustrate a little story for a friend of his who "wrote for the magazines." Mary had sat up till two o'clock in the morning until the sketches were finished. Armstrong met her in the hall, one day, and told her that his friend Spencer was well pleased with the pictures and wanted to see her about doing some more. Spencer was coming up to his studio to supper that night. Couldn't she come, too, and talk it over with him? Mary thanked him glowingly. Aside from the success it portended, it meant a check for the Christmas holidays which were now approaching. Mary went. That night when she flung herself into their room, Mattie looked up and caught the expression on the other girl's face. "Why, what on earth's the matter?" she exclaimed. Mary sat down on the edge of the lounge and buried her face in her hands. The older girl came over and tried to comfort her in her clumsy way. When she could finally talk, Mary told her of her evening's experience. "Armstrong made an appointment with me to meet Mr. Spencer to see about illustrating another of his stories. When I went to Mr. Armstrong's rooms, Spencer hadn't come, but our host made it very interesting for me, showing me his great collec- tion of sketches and explaining his ideas of illustrating. Finally when Mr. Spencer didn't come, he suggested that we go on and have supper without him. The meal was sent up on trays from

430 IMPROVEMENT ERA the cafe below, and he served it studio style, very charmingly. Then he poured out some champagne, which I, of course, refused. He drank it and it loosened his tongue. He began to hint that he could get me all kinds of commissions, would make a famous illustrator of me if I would just "be good" to him. At first I pretended I didn't understand, but when his meaning got too obvious I got up and found my hat, suggesting that Mr. Spencer must have been detained. At that Armstrong came over and grabbed hold of me and tried to kiss me, and I only got loose by threatening to scream and rouse the building. Then I backed slowly toward the door, and slammed it in his face. I didn't stop to get my gloves or rubbers, either," she finished with an hysterical laugh. "Well," asked Mattie, "what could you expect? Lots of the girls in New York have 'backers,' men who buy them positions in musical comedies, and then pay for their costumes, spend hun- dreds of dollars to get their pictures in the magazines, and hire "write-ups" for them in the newspapers. Then the men take all their friends to see the show and exhibit their protege, and inci- dentally that swells the box office receipts. Is it any wonder that managers prefer girls with backers to ability? A good many girls who expect to succeed in other professions have to pay the price." "But I'm not that kind," interposed Mary, hotly. "No, and that's probably the reason that Armstrong took a fancy to you. It must be that 'Mormon' religion of yours that makes you so particular." "Yes, that and my mother. Whenever I've been in doubt as to what to do I would always think, 'What would mother want me to do?' and I've never failed of the right answer yet," and at mention of her mother's name Mary buried her face in the pillow and sobbed. Mattie Welch went over and clumsily patted the brown hair, "Never mind, I don't think you've heard the last of Armstrong yet, but if I know you, it just takes opposition to show what you can do. Besides, he can't drive you to the wall." "What do you mean by that?" asked Mary, looking like an April day through her tears. "You've got your father's check to fall back on, and he can't

starve you out as if you were alone in this great city, dependent on your own resources."

"Are many of the men here like Armstrong?" "A good man nowadays is a rare and precious thing. Most of the New York women are glad to marry any kind of man at all." "I know one back home who is absolutely good."

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"Does he want to marry you?" asked the downright Mattie. "Yes," blushingly. "And here you've left that to come back here and puddle around with art!"

The next three days were dark and stormy, and to Mary it seemed as if she had all the bad luck that could come to a strug- gling young artist. Two days after her visit to Armstrong's studio, the postman brought back her sketches with a brief note that "the editor found the illustrations unavailable for Mr. Spen- cer's story." Mary had toiled laboriously over the pictures, and as they had been made for that particular story, they wouldn't do for anything else. At the holiday exhibit of the school of de- sign, fresh disappointment awaited her. The two water-color sketches she had entered had both been rejected. One was a climbing rose on a yellow, sunlit, Mexican wall, and the other was a pool lying between Salt Lake City and the lake over which the wild ducks screamed. Not only that but Mr. Le Conte, the water-color instructor, treated her decidedly cool, and several other teachers avoided her. Her conventialized sego lily wall paper design, which she had confidently expected would take a prize had been stuck down in a dark corner without even an "honorable mention." When she recited her troubles that night in their room, Mattie burst out, "It's that Armstrong. I knew it."

"But do you think that it's all Armstrong's influence against me?" asked Mary. "Well," answered Mattie, "a person may be hit by a brick or two by accident, but when a brick wall falls on your head, you can be pretty sure that someone pushed it." The next morning Mary arose early and donned her best suit. Her two rejected pictures she carefully wrapped and sent to her mother and Lem Hardy for Christmas. The rest of her water-color sketches, exquisite flowers, and bits of scenery, she gathered up and took to an old man who kept a curio store down town. She offered to put the sketches in cheap, ready-made frames and pay him a commission on all he sold. The old dealer was glad to help the bright-faced western girl, and made a window display of them, and before the holidays they were nearly all sold. Then, one night, Mattie Welch came home with the news that Miles, the reporter, on the Star who "did" the human interest story 'for the Sunday supplement every week wanted Mary to make the pen and ink illustrations for his write-ups. As for the all the best things in it art exhibit itself Mary remarked, "that from west." She heard a group of New York artists were the fact that they standing in front of a cowboy picture lamenting the "had never had a chance in the west."

432 IMPROVEMENT ERA One day in March came a scribbled little note from Mrs. Baldwin saying that she hadn't written because she had been sick in bed for three weeks. Mary knew that her mother must be very sick indeed if she took to her bed. In times of calamity people often see things in their true values, so Mary realized how empty a career would be, if she lost her mother. She walked the floor half the night, then set her things in order, and when her father's telegram reached her two days later she took the first train for the west. When the train pulled into Salt Lake, Lem Hardy met her at the station. He said little but looked a great deal. "My, but it's good to see you again," he smiled.

"It's good to be home. How is mother?" "About the same. Your father sent me after you, while he stayed with her." When Mary reached the farm house and threw her arms around the wasted form of her mother, she felt that she had in- deed come home. Her father seeiTjed a helpless old man now that his brave help- mate was stricken. "You pull your mother through," he promised, "and I'll fix up as much as you like." Mary had told him that she would give up going back to New York, if he would make certain improvements about the place. One thing the East had taught her was that unless art made peo- ple's immediate surroundings more beautiful, it had failed in its first purpose. ,

With the return of Mary the old farm house took on new life. The hired help that had grown slack while their mistress lay ill, got busy. Lem Hardy haunted the place in the hopes of being of service even the old doctor ceased to complain so much ;

of the mud on his automobile, and the sick woman in the capable hands of her daughter, gradually regained her strength. As soon as Mrs. Baldwin could be moved, Mary remodeled her room. She painted the sombre old furniture white, tinted the walls, and hung gay chintzes at the windows. The old attic she had white-washed, and mended the old- fashioned furniture which had really better lines than many of the new fads in furniture. Mary called this room her studio, and did her art work up there while she listened to the chirping of the mating birds outside. Her father kept his word, and had the old house plastered on the outside with cement. He also tore down an unsightly row of sheds and Mary herself painted the chicken coop. Mr. Baldwin could see some use in that kind of "art" work. As the days grew warmer, Mrs. Baldwin sat in the sun, on the porch, while Mary, with the help of a boy tore up and remod-

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eled the old garden. She pruned, hoed, and transplanted, and off to one side she planted row after row of gaudy annuals. Her garden was in its first riot of bloom when the idea came to Mary to use both her garden and her artistic ability to make money. She had gone with a friend to see the Russian dancers, and after the matinee they stopped in at Stancy's, a chocolate cafe, for light refreshments. Down the middle of the room extended a row of little tables with copper vases, filled with wilted roses. It occurred to Mary how much better the tables would look with fresh flowers. She got ready her proposition and presented it to the manager. She agreed to furnish fresh flowers every morning and arrange them on the tables. He accepted her offer. So, every morning Mary picked the flowers at dawn when the dew was still on them. Her father placed his roadster at her disposal and she ran her flowers into town in half an hour and had them all arranged by the time other people were going to their work. The garden bore valiantly. After the roses came bachelor buttons and tiger lilies, then poppies, marigolds and goldenglow, zenias, petunias, and cosmos, dahlias, asters, and pinks. The sweet peas and nasturtiums bloomed continuously, and during a dearth Mary decorated her tables with wild flowers to the delight of some eastern tourists. This work opened up the way for her to become assistant to one of the leading florists who decorated for the leading hotel, and several fashionable clubs of the city. This man had more work than he could do, and he was glad to fall back on his clever co-worker. Mary studied the art of table decorating carefully, and she was successful from the first. By the time the frost killed her gardening, in the glory of its chrysanthemums, she had saved enough to install a green-house with a steam heating plant for the winter. So Mary made the old home charming, until she left it with Lem Hardy to create a new one.

Life's Meaning

Life's fullest meaning ne'er hath been attained By. what is sought and what for self is gained Though luxury and care-free, sensuous ease, The mortal mind a litle time may please, The acme of humanity's great plan, Is reached by mankind's service unto man. Grace Ingles Frost.