Chapter 16 #2
Marigold changed her tack—one didn’t need to make an adversary of everyone.
As her Grandmother Manners used to say, one might catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
“I am a senior—again—but I never got my portrait for the Legenda,” as the annual college yearbook was called, “made last year. How does one get that done?”
Eliza Anthony crossed her arms over her chest. “You didn’t come up here breathing fire to get your portrait taken.”
“No, but I had forgotten about the senior portraits. And you were all invitation to take my picture the day before yesterday.”
“That was before I knew you.”
Something about Eliza’s prickly intellect earned Marigold’s respect. And sharpened her determination. “I did not know you were the one commissioned to take the seniors’ portraits.”
“Commissioned is not exactly the right term—while I am allowed to take portraits, I am not being paid by the Legenda board.”
“So, you’re doing it out of the goodness of your heart?” Such an arrangement seemed entirely too altruistic for the mercenary Miss Anthony.
“And you’re surprised to find I have any goodness in my heart, aren’t you, Miss Manners?” Eliza’s slight smile was wry.
“A little,” Marigold admitted with her own wry smile. “But I am happy to be proven wrong.”
“Don’t get your hopes up too high—I’ll make my money in the end. You have to purchase a ticket, which I will sell to you for a reduced rate, as compared to last year’s senior class photographer, Mr. Charles Hearn of Boston, who charged more, and to whom everyone had to travel for their portrait.”
Again, Marigold had seen the almost bitterly determined smile on Eliza’s face before—in her own mirror. “So, the discount is part of your goodness?”
“Partially—and the convenience to my fellow students. But fortunately, I am able to make that discounted rate back by selling the portraits—printed and matted and framed, all at a considerable markup—to the loving parents and families of our graduates, who will want some small commemoration of where their money has gone for the past four years.”
Another thought occurred. “Did you sell a portrait to Professor Currier?
“No.” Eliza looked genuinely puzzled. “Not that I remember. Who was it of?”
“I don’t know,” Marigold admitted. “I was hoping you would tell me.”
“Because you’re such a nice, polite, altruistic person?” Eliza Anthony’s smile was just on the polite side of snide. “Sarah Appleton warned me about you.”
“Naturally.” Marigold let her own smile slide into scorn. “Such a public-spirited soul, my cousin Sarah. So concerned with the well-being of others. So above reproach.”
Eliza Anthony surprised Marigold by laughing. “Rivalry from the cradle? I didn’t know you were cousins.”
“Distant ones. I’m sure she doesn’t let that particular information out, since I’m such an embarrassment to the family—here spending my own hard-earned funds for my education instead of being entitled to generations of prim, faultless puritan wealth.”
That gave Eliza pause. “Are you really paying for your own education here?”
“I am.” Marigold found she was quite proud of the fact. “I have begun to make my way through the world by writing stories that are to be published in The Argosy magazine. So, I do understand your plight to be taken seriously as a professional, Miss Anthony.”
“What do you know,” the young woman mused, turning back to her pans of solutions, as if perhaps she were beginning to change her mind about Marigold.
Which gave Marigold leave to have a good look at the labels on the drawer pulls.
While the drawers above had the descriptors Landscapes and Buildings alongside others with sizes of paper and equipment—stereopticons and lanterns—the bottom cupboards were labeled with the names of various chemicals.
Sodium sulfide, hydroquinone, and borax figured prominently.
“Do you make your prints yourself?” she queried.
The photographer’s answer dripped with sarcasm. “No one else here, Miss Manners.”
“Call me Marigold, please. May I call you Eliza?”
“Call me anything you like,” Eliza countered, “if you commission your portrait. You’d be an easy ticket—you’re very photogenic.”
“Thank you.” Marigold took some time to look over the other accoutrements of the studio. “What about other portraits—ones that aren’t these senior class pictures?”
The girl shrugged in an offhand manner that Marigold was sure was meant to convey her indifference. “Occasionally. I’ve taken a few portraits of townspeople.”
Something in Eliza’s tone was … slippery. “Is that allowed—having townspeople here in the student laboratory?” Professor Cleaver had said that access was restricted.
“Not really.” This time, the shrug was more defiant. “As I said, I’m trying to make my own way as a professional.”
“How exceptionally mercenary of you.”
“How eminently practical,” the young woman countered. “And don’t try to tell me you’re anything different. Because I’ve read stories in The Argosy, and I know what they’re like, so I simply won’t believe you.”
Marigold could really have nothing to say to that—nothing that wasn’t entirely hypocritical. But she could not let the girl’s cynicism stand. “The trick, dear Eliza, is to mix the mercenary and the practical so that no one else gets taken advantage of. Or hurt.”
But even as she said the words she knew she herself had done just that—the image of Cab Cox, stunned and hurt by her rejection of his proposal last spring, filled her mind’s eye.
But he had got over that, surely—he was still her friend. He still said always.
But what about others, who weren’t so understanding or so forgiving? What were young women like her—or like Eliza—to do in a world that rarely forgave them for the sin of being ambitious? That called their hopes and dreams selfish?
And how were they to make their supposedly selfish way when that way was often purposefully barred to them? Barred by men who were unlike Cab and who demanded their fealty or their obedience instead of their genius?
The answer, she feared, was that they had to continually steel themselves against the pressures to make themselves always likable.
And Miss Anthony, like herself, had already fashioned herself with that steel.