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Marion, the Story of an Artist's Model

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<h2>XXIX</h2> IT was getting dark as I walked down Huntington Avenue and somebody was walking rapidly behind me, as if to catch up with me. “Hallo, Marion!” I turned, to see Jimmy Odell. He had been hanging around my lodging-house for days, and was always coaxing me to go to places with him and declaring that he was in love with me. I liked Jimmy, though the people where I took my meals told me he was no good. They said his people had given him every advantage, but that Jimmy had played all his life and that his mother had spoiled him. However, I found him a most lovable boy, despite his slangy speech and pretended toughness of character. Jimmy liked to pretend that he was a pretty bold, bad man of the world. He was in his junior year at Harvard and about my own age. Many a time when it seemed as if I could not stand my life, I was cheered by Jimmy with his happy, contagious laughter, and the little “treats” he would give me. Sometimes it was a ball game,{178} sometimes a show and I had had many dinners and suppers with Jimmy. But Jimmy drank far too much. He didn’t get exactly drunk, but he carried a flask of whiskey with him, and he would say to whoever was about: “Have a drink,” and if no one accepted he would say: “Well, here’s to you, anyway,” and drink himself. It was no use my lecturing him about it, for he would just laugh at me and say: “All right, grandma, I’ll be good,” and then go right ahead and do it again. Once when he told me for the hundredth time that he loved me and begged: “Come along. Let’s get married and fool ’em all.” I said: “If you do without whiskey for two weeks, and then come and tell me on your honor that you have not touched it, maybe I will.” He said: “That’s a go. I take you up!” and we shook hands solemnly on it; but the very next time he came to see me, I smelled the whiskey on him, and he said he hadn’t started the “two weeks’ water-wagon stunt” yet. I was glad to see Jimmy’s happy face that evening, and, tucking my hand in his arm, we walked along the avenue.{179} “Gee!” said Jimmy, as we passed the hotels all lighted up and looking so inviting and fine, “I wish I had the cash to blow you to a wine supper, Marion, but, I seem to spend every d——cent before I get it.” “Never mind, Jimmy,” I said. “I’ve my meal ticket for that boarding-house.” “Oh, that hash-slinging joint!” groaned Jimmy. “Say, Marion, I know a dandy place on Boylston Street, corner of Tremont, where there is mighty good grub and beer, and they don’t soak a fellow fancy prices. Let’s go there now, what do you say?” “All right, but I thought you said you were broke?” “Oh, that’s all right,” he replied airily. “Come along, and don’t ask questions.” Somehow when I was with Jimmy, I never felt serious and I seemed to catch his happy-go-lucky spirit and say to myself: “Oh, well, I don’t care!” Gaily we started for Jimmy’s restaurant. We had reached Elliott Street, when Jimmy said: “Hold on a minute. You wait in this doorway for me a moment, Marion. I have to see a man on a matter of business.” I stepped into the doorway, but I watched Jimmy. He swung into a shop over which there were hung three golden balls. Oh! I knew that place for I had already visited it. It sheltered{180} my engagement ring—the ring Reggie had given to me! In a few minutes out came Jimmy minus his spring overcoat. It is true the day had been warm, but the nights were still chilly, and I felt badly to see him without his coat. “Jimmy, what have you done? Where’s your coat?” “Oh, that’s all right,” he laughed. “I just left it with my uncle over night. My mother won’t give me a red cent when I ask her—thinks I ought to eat at home or beat it for the country, now college’s closed—but she gives it to me all right—with tears, Marion—when she sees me next day without my coat. So come along.” My feelings were mingled. If I did not go with him, I knew he would spend it all on drink. Besides, he had pawned his coat for me, and I felt it would be ungrateful to refuse to go with him now. Jimmy ordered us a splendid supper, oysters, a big steak, beer; but it would have tasted better if I had not known about that overcoat, and I almost cried when we got out to the street, and he had to turn the collar of his coat up.{181} <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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