“I board at the house there. I returned home late and was thirsty. I
came here for water to drink.”
Her temper died down as suddenly as it had flamed, and she seemed given
up to a miserable, shamed trepidation.
“Oh,” she said, “don't ye tell 'em--don't--I--I'm Dusk Dunbar.”
Then, as was very natural, he became curious and possibly did smile--a
very little.
“What in the name of all that is fantastic are you doing?”
She made an effort at being defiant and succeeded pretty well.
“I wasn't doin' no harm,” she said. “I was--dressin' up a bit. It aint
nobody's business.”
“That's true,” he answered coolly. “At all events it is not mine--though
it is rather late for a lady to be alone at such a place. However, if
you have no objection, I will get what I came for and go back.”
She said nothing when he stepped down and filled the gourd, but she
regarded him with a sort of irritable watchfulness as he drank.
“Are ye--are ye a-goin' to tell?” she faltered, when he had finished.
“No,” he answered as coolly as before. “Why should I?”
Then he gave her a long look from head to foot The dress was a poor
enough velveteen and had a cast-off air, but it clung to her figure
finely, and its sleeves were picturesque with puffs at the shoulder and
slashings of white,--indeed the moonlight made her all black and white;
her eyes, which were tawny brown by day, were black as velvet now under
the straight lines of her brows, and her face was pure dead fairness
itself.
When, his look ended, his eyes met hers, she drew back with an impatient
movement. .
“Ye look as if--as if ye thought I didn't get it honest,” she exclaimed
petulantly, “but I did.”
That drew his glance toward her dress again, for of course she referred
to that, and he could not help asking her a point-blank question.
“Where _did_ you get it?” he said.
There was a slow flippancy about the manner of her reply which annoyed
him by its variance with her beauty--but the beauty! How the moonlight
and the black and white brought it out as she leaned against the rock,
looking at him from under her lashes!
“Are ye goin' to tell the folks up at the house?” she demanded. “They
don't know nothin' and I don't want 'em to know.”
He shrugged his shoulder negatively.
She laughed with a hint of cool slyness and triumph.
“I got it at Asheville,” she said. “I went with father when they was a
show thar, 'n' the women stayed at the same tavern we was at, 'n' one
of 'em tuk up with me 'n' I done somethin' for her--carried a letter or
two,” breaking into the sly, triumphant laugh again, “'n' she giv' me
the dress fur pay. What d'ye think of it? Is it becomin'?”
The suddenness of the change of manner with which she said these last
words was indescribable. She stood upright, her head up, her hands
fallen at her sides, her eyes cool and straight--her whole presence
confronting him with the power of which she was conscious.
“Is it?” she repeated.
He was a gentleman from instinct and from training, having ordinarily
quite a lofty repugnance for all profanity and brusqueness, and yet some
how,--account for it as you will,--he had the next instant answered her
with positive brutality.
“Yes,” he answered, “Damnably!”
When the words were spoken and he heard their sound fall upon the soft
night air, he was as keenly disgusted as he would have been if he had
heard them uttered by another man. It was not until afterward when he
had had leisure to think the matter over that he comprehended vaguely
the force which had moved him.
But his companion received them without discomfiture. Indeed, it really
occurred to him at the moment that there was a possibility that she
would have been less pleased with an expression more choice.
“I come down here to-night,” she said, “because I never git no chance
to do nothin' up at the house. I'm not a-goin' to let _them_ know. Never
mind why, but ye mustn't tell 'em.”
He felt haughtily anxious to get back to his proper position.
“Why should I?” he said again. “It is no concern of mine.”
Then for the first time he noticed the manner in which she had striven
to dress her hair in the style of her model, Rebecca Noble, and this
irritated him unendurably. He waved his hand toward it with a gesture of
distaste.
“Don't do that again,” he said. “That is not becoming at least “--though
he was angrily conscious that it was.
She bent over the spring with a hint of alarm in her expression.
“Aint it?” she said, and the eager rapidity with which she lifted her
hands and began to alter it almost drew a smile from him despite his
mood.
“I done it like hern,” she began, and stopped suddenly to look up at
him. “You know her,” she added; “they're at Harney's. Father said ye'd
went to see her jest as soon as ye got here.”
“I know her,” was his short reply.
He picked up the drinking-gourd and turned away.
“Good-night,” he said.
“Good-night.”
At the top of the rocky incline he looked back at her.
She was kneeling upon the brink of the spring, her sleeve pushed up to
her shoulder, her hand and arm in the water, dipping for the fragment of
looking-glass.
It was really not wholly inconsistent that he should not directly
describe the interview in his next meeting with his betrothed. Indeed,
Rebecca was rather struck by the coolness with which he treated the
subject when he explained that he had seen the girl and found her beauty
all it had been painted.
“Is it possible,” she asked, “that she did not quite please you?”
“Are you sure,” he returned, “that she quite pleases _you?_”
Rebecca gave a moment to reflection.
“But her beauty”--she began, when it was over.
“Oh!” he interposed, “as a matter of color and curve and proportion she
is perfect; one must admit that, however reluctantly.”
Rebecca laughed.
“Why 'reluctantly?'” she said.
It was his turn to give a moment to reflection.
His face shadowed, and he looked a little disturbed.
“I don't know,” he replied at length; “I give it up.”
He had expected to see a great deal of the girl, but somehow he saw her
even oftener than he had anticipated. During the time he spent in the
house, chance seemed to throw her continually in his path or under his
eye. From his window he saw her carrying water from the spring, driving
the small agile cow to and from the mountain pasturage, or idling in
the shade. Upon the whole it was oftener this last than any other
occupation. With her neglected knitting in her hands she would sit
for hours under a certain low-spreading cedar not far from the door,
barefooted, coarsely clad, beautiful,--every tinge of the sun, every
indifferent leisurely movement, a new suggestion of a new grace.
It would have been impossible to resist the temptation to watch her;
and this Lennox did at first almost unconsciously. Then he did more.
One beautiful still morning she stood under the cedar, her hand
thrown lightly above her head to catch at a bough, and as she remained
motionless, he made a sketch of her. When it was finished he was seized
with the whimsical impulse to go out and show it to her.
She took it with an uncomprehending air, but the moment she saw what it
was a flush of triumph and joy lighted up her face.
“It's me,” she cried in a low, eager voice. “Me! Do I look like that
thar? Do I?”
“You look as that would look if it had color, and was more complete.”
She glanced up at him sharply.
“D'ye mean if it was han'somer?”
He was tempted into adding to her excitement with a compliment.
“Yes,” he said, “very much handsomer than I could ever hope to make it.”
A slow, deep red rose to her face.
“Give it to me!” she demanded.
“If you will stand in the same position until I have drawn
another--certainly,” he returned.
He was fully convinced that when she repeated the attitude there would
be added to it a look of consciousness.
When she settled into position and caught at the bough again, he watched
in some distaste for the growth of the nervously complaisant air, but it
did not appear. She was unconsciousness itself.
It is possible that Rebecca Noble had never been so happy during her
whole life as she was during this one summer. Her enjoyment of every
wild beauty and novelty was immeasurably keen. Just at this time to be
shut out, and to be as it were high above the world, added zest to her
pleasure.
“Ah,” she said once to her lover, “happiness is better here--one can
taste it slowly.”
Fatigue seemed impossible to her. With Lennox as her companion she
performed miracles in the way of walking and climbing, and explored the
mountain fastnesses for miles around. Her step grew firm and elastic,
her color richer, her laugh had a buoyant ring. She had never been so
nearly a beautiful woman as she was sometimes when she came back to the
cabin after a ramble, bright and sun-flushed, her hands full of laurel
and vines.
“Your gown of 'hodden-gray' is wonderfully becoming, Beck,” Lennox said
again and again with a secret exulting pride in her.
Their plans for the future took tone from their blissful, unconventional
life. They could not settle down until they had seen the world. They
would go here and there, and perhaps, if they found it pleasanter so,
not settle down at all. There were certain clay-white, closely built
villages, whose tumble-down houses jostled each other upon divers
precipitous cliffs on the wayside between Florence and Rome, toward
which Lennox's compass seemed always to point. He rather argued that the
fact of their not being dilated upon in the guide-books rendered them
additionally interesting. Rebecca had her fancies too, and together
they managed to talk a good deal of tender, romantic nonsense, which
was purely their own business, and gave the summer days a delicate yet
distinct flavor.
The evening after the sketch was made they spent upon the mountain
side together. When they stopped to rest, Lennox flung himself upon the
ground at Rebecca's feet, and lay looking up at the far away blue of the
sky in which a slow-flying bird circled lazily. Rebecca, with a cluster
of pink and white laurel in her hand, proceeded with a metaphysical and
poetical harangue she had previously begun.
“To my eyes,” she said, “it has a pathetic air of loneliness--pathetic
and yet not exactly sorrowful. It knows nothing but its own pure, brave,
silent life. It is only pathetic to a worldling--worldlings like us. How
fallen we must be to find a life desolate because it has only nature for
a companion!”
She stopped with an idle laugh, waiting for an ironical reply from the
“worldling” at her feet; but he remained silent, still looking upward at
the clear, deep blue.
As she glanced toward him she saw something lying upon the grass between
them, and bent to pick it up. It was the sketch which he had forgotten
and which had slipped from the portfolio.
“You have dropped something,” she said, and seeing what it was, uttered
an exclamation of pleasure.
He came back to earth with a start, and, recognizing the sketch, looked
more than half irritated.
“Oh, it is that, is it?” he said.
“It is perfect!” she exclaimed. “What a pictare it will make!”
“It is not to be a picture,” he answered. “It was not intended to be
anything more than a sketch.”
“But why not?” she asked. “It is too good to lose. You never had such a
model in your life before.”
“No,” he answered grudgingly.
The hand with which Rebecca held the sketch dropped. She turned her
attention to her lover, and a speculative interest grew in her face.
“That girl”--she said slowly, after a mental summing up occupying a few
seconds--“that girl irritates you--irritates you.”
He laughed faintly.
“I believe she does,” he replied; “yes, 'irritates' is the word to use.”
And yet if this were true, his first act upon returning home was a
singular one.
He was rather late, but the girl Lodusky was sitting in the moonlight at
the door. He stopped and spoke to her.
“If I should wish to paint you,” he said rather coldly, “would you do me
the favor of sitting to me?”
She did not answer him at once, but seemed to weigh his words as she
looked out across the moonlight.
“Ye mean, will I let ye put me in a picter?” she said at last.
He nodded.
“Yes,” she answered.
“I reckon he told ye he was a-paintin' Dusk's picter,” “Mis'” Harney
said to her boarders a week later.
“Mr. Lennox?” returned Rebecca; “yes, he told us.”
“I thort so,” nodding benignly. “Waal now, Dusk'll make a powerful
nice picter if she don't git contrairy. The trouble with Dusk is her
a-gittin' contrairy. She's as like old Hance Dunbar as she kin be. I
mean in some ways. Lord knows, 'twouldn't do to say she was like him in
everythin'.”
Naturally, Miss Noble made some inquiries into the nature of old Hance
Dunbar's “contrairiness.” Secretly, she had a desire to account for
Lodusky according to established theory.
“I wonder ye haint heern of him,” said Mis Harney. “He was just
awful--old Hance! He was Nath's daddy, an' Lord! the wickedest feller!
Folks was afeared of him. No one darsn't to go a-nigh him when he'd
git mad--a-rippin' 'n' a-rearin' 'n' a-chargin'.. 'N' he never got no
religion, mind ye; he died jest that a-way. He was allers a hankerin'
arter seein' the world, 'n' he went off an' stayed off a right smart
while,--nine or ten year,--'n' lived in all sorts o' ways in them big
cities. When he come back he was a sight to see, sick 'n' pore 'n'
holler-eyed, but as wicked as ever. Dusk was a little thing 'n' he was
a old man, but he'd laugh 'n' tell her to take care of her face 'n' be a
smart gal. He was drefful sick at last 'n' suffered a heap, 'n' one day
he got up offen his bed 'n' tuk down Nath's gun 'n' shot hisself as cool
as could be. He hadn't no patience, 'n' he said, 'When a G--derned man
had lived through what he had 'n' then wouldn't die, it was time to
kill him.' Seems like it sorter 'counts fur Dusk; she don't git her
cur'usness from her own folks; Nath an' Mandy's mighty clever, both on
'em.”
“Perhaps it does 'count for Dusk,” Rebecca said, after telling the tale
to Lennox. “It must be a fearful thing to have such blood in one's
veins and feel it on fire. Let us,” she continued with a smile, “be as
charitable as possible.”
When the picture was fairly under way, Lennox's visits to the Harneys'
cabin were somewhat less frequent. The mood in which she found he had
gradually begun to regard his work aroused in Rebecca a faint wonder. He
seemed hardly to like it, and yet to be fascinated by it. He was averse
to speaking freely of it, and still he thought of it continually.
Frequently when they were together, he wore an absent, perturbed air.
“You do not look content,” she said to him once.
He passed his hand quickly across his forehead and smiled, plainly with
an effort, but he made no reply.
The picture progressed rather slowly upon the whole. Rebecca had thought
the subject a little fantastic at first, and yet had been attracted by
it. A girl in a peculiar dress of black and white bent over a spring
with an impatient air, trying in vain to catch a glimpse of her beauty
in the reflection of the moonlight.
“It 's our spring, shore,” commented “Mis'” Dunbar. “'N' its Dusk--but
Lord! how fine she's fixed. Ye're as fine as ye want to be in the
picter, Dusk, if ye wa'n't never fine afore. Don't ye wish ye had sich
dressin' as thet thar now?”
The sittings were at the outset peculiarly silent. There was no untimely
motion or change of expression, and yet no trying passiveness. The girl
gave any position a look of unconsciousness quite wonderful. Privately,
Lennox was convinced that she was an actress from habit--that her
ease was the result of life-long practice. Sometimes he found his own
consciousness of her steady gaze almost unbearable. He always turned
to meet her deep eyes fixed upon him with an expression he could not
fathom. Frequently he thought it an expression of dislike--of secret
resentment--of subtle defiance. There came at last a time when he
knew that he turned toward her again and again because he felt that he
must--because he had a feverish wish to see if the look had changed.
Once when he did this he saw that it _had_ changed. She had moved a
little, her eyes were dilated with a fire which startled him beyond
self-control, her color came and went, she breathed fast. The next
instant she sprang from her chair.
“I wont stand it no longer,” she cried panting: “no longer--I wont!”
Her ire was magnificent. She flung her head back, and struck her side
with her clinched hand.
“No longer!” she said; “not a minute!”
Lennox advanced one step and stood, palette in hand, gazing at her.
“What have I done?” he asked. “What?”
“What?” she echoed with contemptuous scorn. “Nothin'! _But d'ye think I
don't know ye?_”
“Know me!” he repeated after her mechanically, finding it impossible to
remove his glance from her.
“What d'ye take me me fur?” she demanded. “A fool? Yes, I was a fool--a
fool to come here, 'n' set 'n' let ye--let ye despise me!” in a final
outburst.
Still he could only echo her again, and say “Despise you!”
Her voice lowered itself into an actual fierceness of tone.
“Ye've done it from first to last,” she said. “Would ye look at her
like ye look at me? Would ye turn half way 'n' look at her, 'n' then
turn back as if--as if--. Aint there”--her eyes ablaze--“aint there no
_life_--to me?”
“Stop!” he began hoarsely.
“I'm beneath her, am I?” she persisted. “Me beneath another woman--Dusk
Dunbar! It's the first time!”
She walked toward the door as if to leave him, but suddenly she stopped.
A passionate tremor shook her; he saw her throat swell. She threw her
arm up against the logs of the wall and dropped her face upon it sobbing
tumultuously.
There was a pause of perhaps three seconds. Then Lennox moved slowly
toward her. Almost unconsciously he laid his hand upon her heaving
shoulder and so stood trembling a little.
When Rebecca paid her next visit to the picture it struck her that it
appeared at a standstill. As she looked at it her lover saw a vague
trouble growing slowly in her eyes.
“What!” he remarked. “It does not please you?”
“I think,” she answered,--“I feel as if it had not pleased you.”
He fell back a few paces and stood scanning it with an impression at
once hard and curious.
“Please me!” he exclaimed in a voice almost strident. “It should. She
has beauty enough.”
On her return home that day Rebecca drew forth from the recesses of her
trunk her neglected writing folio and a store of paper.
Miss Thorne, entering the room, found her kneeling over her trunk, and
spoke to her.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
Rebeeca smiled faintly.
“What I ought to have begun before,” she said. “I am behindhand with my
work.”
She laid the folio and her inkstand upon the table, and made certain
methodical arrangements for her labor. She worked diligently all day,
and looked slightly pale and wearied when she rose from her seat in
the evening. Until eleven o'clock she sat at the open door, sometimes
talking quietly, sometimes silent and listening to the wind among the
pines. She did, not mention her lover's name, and he did not come.
She spent many a day and night in the same manner after this. For the
present the long, idle rambles and unconventional moon-lit talks were
over. It was tacitly understood between herself and her aunt that
Lennox's labor occupied him.
“It seems a strange time to begin a picture--during a summer holiday,”
said Miss Thorne a little sharply upon one occasion.
Rebecca laughed with an air of cheer.
“No time is a strange time to an artist,” she answered. “Art is a
mistress who gives no holidays.”
She was continually her bright, erect, alert self. The woman who loved
her dearly and had known her from her earliest childhood, found her
sagacity and knowledge set at naught as it were. She had been accustomed
to see her niece admired far beyond the usual lot of women; she had
gradually learned to feel it only natural that she should inspire
quite a strong sentiment even in casual acquaintances. She had felt the
delicate power of her fascination herself, but never at her best and
brightest had she found her more charming or quicker of wit and fancy
than she was now.
Even Lennox, coming every few days with a worn-out look and touched with
a haggard shadow, made no outward change in her.
“She does not look,” said the elder lady to herself, “like a neglected
woman.” And then the sound of the phrase struck her with a sharp
incredulous pain. “A neglected woman!” she repeated,--“Beck!”
She did not understand, and was not weak enough to ask questions.
Lennox came and went, and Rebecca gained upon her work until she
could no longer say she was behindhand. The readers of her letters and
sketches found them fresh and sparkling, “as if,” wrote a friend, “you
were braced both mentally and physically by the mountain air.”
But once in the middle of the night Miss Thorne awakened with a
mysterious shock to find the place at her side empty, and her niece
sitting at the open window in a quiet which suggested that she might not
have moved for an hour.
She obeyed her strong first impulse, and rose and went to her.
She laid her hand on her shoulder, and shook her gently.
“Beck!” she demanded, “what are you doing?”
When the girl turned slowly round, she started sit the sight of her
cold, miserable pallor.
“I am doing nothing--nothing,” she answered. “Why did you get up? It's a
fine night, isn't it?”
Despite her discretion, Miss Thorne broke down into a blunder.
“You--you never look like this in the daytime!” she exclaimed.
“No,” was the reply given with cool deliberateness. “No; I would rather
_die_.”
For the moment she was fairly incomprehensible. There was in the set of
her eye and the expression of her fair, clear face, the least hint of
dogged obstinacy.
“Beck “--she began.
“You ought not to have got up,” said Beck. “It is enough to look 'like
this' at night when I am by myself. Go back to bed, if you please.”
Miss Thorne went back to bed meekly. She was at once alarmed and
subdued. She felt as if she had had a puzzling interview with a
stranger.
In these days Lennox regarded his model with morbid interest. A subtle
change was perceptible in her. Her rich color deepened, she held herself
more erect, her eye had a larger pride and light. She was a finer
creature than ever, and yet--she came at his call. He never ceased to
wonder at it. Sometimes the knowledge of his power stirred within him a
vast impatience; sometimes he was hardened by it; but somehow it never
touched him, though he was thrown into tumult--bound against his will.
He could not say that he understood her. Her very passiveness baffled
him and caused him to ask himself what it meant. She spoke little,
and her emotional phases seemed reluctant, but her motionless face and
slowly raised eye always held a meaning of their own.
On an occasion when he mentioned his approaching departure, she started
as if she had received a blow, and he turned to see her redden and pale
alternately, her face full of alarm.
“What is the matter?” he asked brusquely.
“I--hadn't bin thinkin' on it,” she stammered. “I'd kinder forgot.”
He turned to his easel again and painted rapidly for a few minutes. Then
he felt a light touch on his arm. She had left her seat noiselessly and
stood beside him. She gave him a passionate, protesting look. A fire of
excitement seemed to have sprung up within her and given her a defiant
daring.
“D'ye think I'll stay here--when ye're gone--like I did before?” she
said.
She had revealed herself in many curious lights to him, but no previous
revelation had been so wonderful as was the swift change of mood and
bearing which took place in her at this instant. In a moment she had
melted into soft tears, her lips were tremulous, her voice dropped into
a shaken whisper.
“I've allers wanted to go away,” she said. “I--I've allers said I
would. I want to go to a city somewhar--I don't keer whar. I might git
work--I've heerd of folks as did. P'r'aps some un ud hire me!”
He stared at her like a man fascinated.
“_You_ go to the city alone!” he said under his breath. “_You_ try to
get work!”
“Yes,” she answered. “Don't ye know no one”--
He stopped her.
“No,” he said, “I don't. It would be a dangerous business unless you
had friends. As for me, I shall not be in America long. As soon as I am
married I go with my wife to Europe.”
He heard a sharp click in her throat. Her tears were dried, and she was
looking straight at him.
“Are ye a-goin' to be married?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“To--_her?_” with a gesture in the direction of the Harneys' cabin.
“Yes.”
“Oh!” and she walked out of the room.
He did not see her for three days, and the picture stood still. He went
to the Harneys' and found Rebecca packing her trunk.
“We are going back to New York,” she said.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because our holiday is over.”
Miss Thorne regarded him with chill severity.
“When may we expect to see you?” she inquired.
He really felt half stupefied,--as if for the time being his will was
paralyzed.
“I don't know,” he answered.
He tried to think that he was treated badly and coldly. He told himself
that he had done nothing to deserve this style of thing, that he had
simply been busy and absorbed in his work, and that if he had at times
appeared preoccupied it was not to be wondered at. But when he looked
at Rebecca he did not put these thoughts into words; he did not even say
that of course he should follow them soon, since there was nothing to
detain him but a sketch or two he had meant to make.
By night they were gone and he was left restless and miserable. He was
so restless that he could not sleep but wandered down toward the spring.
He stopped at the exact point at which he had stopped on the night of
his arrival--at the top of the zigzag little path leading down the rocky
incline. He stopped because he heard a sound of passionate
sobbing. He descended slowly. He knew the sound--angry, fierce,
uncontrollable--because he had heard it before. It checked itself the
instant he reached the ground. Lodusky leaning against a projecting rock
kept her eyes fixed upon the water.
“Why did you come here?” he demanded, a little excitedly. “What are you
crying for? What has hurt you?”
“Nothing” in a voice low and unsteady.
He drew a little nearer to her and for the first time was touched.
She would not look at him, she was softened and altered, in her whole
appearance, by a new pallor.
“Have “--he began, “have I?”
“You!” she cried, turning on him with a bitter, almost wild gesture.
“_You_ wouldn't keer if I was struck _dead_ afore ye!”
“Look here,” he said to her, with an agitation he could not master. “Let
me tell you something about myself. If you think I am a passably good
fellow you are mistaken. I am a bad fellow, a poor fellow, an ignoble
fellow. You don't understand?” as she gazed at him in bewilderment. “No,
of course, you don't. God knows I didn't myself until within the last
two weeks. It's folly to say such things to you; perhaps I say them half
to satisfy myself. But I mean to show you that I am not to be trusted.
I think perhaps I am too poor a fellow to love any woman honestly and
altogether. I followed one woman here, and then after all let another
make me waver”--
“Another!” she faltered.
He fixed his eyes on her almost coldly.
“You,” he said.
He seemed to cast the word at her and wonder what she would make of it
He waited a second or so before he went on.
“_You_, and yet you are not the woman I love either. Good God! What a
villain I must be. I am an insult to every woman that breathes. It
is not even you--though I can't break from you, and you have made me
despise myself. There! do you know now--do you see now that I am not
worth “--
The next instant he started backward. Before he had time for a thought
she had uttered a low cry, and flung herself down at his feet.
“I don't keer,” she panted; “I wont keer fur nothin',--whether ye're
good or bad,--only don't leave me here when ye go away.”
*****
A week later Lennox arose one morning and set about the task of getting
his belongings together. He had been up late and had slept heavily and
long. He felt exhausted and looked so.
The day before, his model had given him his last sitting. The picture
stood finished upon the easel. It was a thorough and artistic piece of
work, and yet the sight of it was at times unbearable to him. There were
times again, however, when it fascinated him anew when he went and stood
opposite to it, regarding it with an intense gaze. He scarcely knew
how the last week had passed. It seemed to have been spent in alternate
feverish struggles and reckless abandonment to impulse. He had let
himself drift here and there, he had at last gone so far as to tell
himself that the time had arrived when baseness was possible to him.
“I don't promise you an easy life,” he had said to Dusk the night
before. “I tell you I am a bad fellow, and I have lost something through
you that I cared for. You may wish yourself back again.”
“If you leave me,” she said, “I'll kill myself!” and she struck her
hands together.
For the moment he was filled, as he often was, with a sense of
passionate admiration. It was true he saw her as no other creature had
ever seen her before, that so far as such a thing was possible with her,
she loved him--loved him with a fierce, unreserved, yet narrow passion.
He had little actual packing to do--merely the collecting of a few
masculine odds and ends, and then his artistic accompaniments.
Nothing was of consequence but these; the rest were tossed together
indifferently, but the picture was to be left until the last moment,
that its paint might be dry beyond a doubt.
Having completed his preparations he went out. He had the day before
him, and scarcely knew what to do with it, but it must be killed in one
way or another. He wandered up the mountain and at last lay down with
his cigar among the laurels. He was full of a strange excitement which
now thrilled, now annoyed him.
He came back in the middle of the afternoon and laughed a rather
half-hearted laugh at the excellent Mandy's comment upon his jaded
appearance.
“Ye look kinder tuckered out,” she said. “Ye'd oughtn't ter walked so
fur when ye was a-gwine off to-night. Ye'd orter rested.”
She stopped the churn-dasher and regarded him with a good-natured air of
interest.
“Hev ye seed Dusk to say good-by to her?” she added. “She's went over
the mountain ter help Mirandy Stillins with her soap. She wont be back
fur a day or two.”
He went into his room and shut the door. A fierce repulsion sickened
him. He had heretofore held himself with a certain degree of inward
loftiness; he had so condemned the follies and sins of other men, and
here he found himself involved in a low and common villainy, in the
deceits which belonged to his crime, and which preyed upon simplicity
and ignorant trust.
He went and stood before his easel, hot with a blush of self-scorn.
“Has it come to this?” he muttered through his clinched teeth--“to
_this!_”
He made an excited forward movement; his foot touched the supports of
the easel, jarring it roughly; the picture fell upon the floor.
“What?” he cried out. “Beck! You! Great God!”
For before him, revealed by the picture's fall, the easel held one
of the fairest memories he had of the woman he had proved himself too
fickle and slight to value rightly.
It was merely a sketch made rapidly one day soon after his arrival and
never wholly completed, but it had been touched with fire and feeling,
and the face looked out from the canvas with eyes whose soft happiness
stung him to the quick with the memories they brought. He had meant to
finish it, and had left it upon the easel that he might turn to it
at any moment, and it had remained there, covered by a stronger
rival--forgotten.
He sat down in a chair and his brow fell upon his hands. He felt as if
he had been clutched and dragged backward by a powerful arm.
When at last he rose, he strode to the picture lying upon the floor,
ground it under his heel, and spurned it from him with an imprecation.
He was, at a certain hour, to reach a particular bend in the road some
miles distant. He was to walk to this place and if he found no one
there, to wait.
When at sunset that evening he reached it, he was half an hour before
the time specified, but he was not the first at the tryst. He was within
twenty yards of the spot when a figure rose from the roots of a tree and
stood waiting for him--the girl Dusk with a little bundle in her hand.
She was not flushed or tremulous with any hint of mental excitement; she
awaited him with a fine repose, even the glow of the dying sun having no
power to add to her color, but as he drew near he saw her look gradually
change. She did not so much as stir, but the change grew slowly, slowly
upon her face, and developed there into definite shape--the shape of
secret, repressed dread.
“What is it,” she asked when he at last confronted her, “that ails ye?”
She uttered the words in a half whisper, as if she had not the power to
speak louder, and he saw the hand hanging at her side close itself.
“What is it--that ails ye?”
He waited a few seconds before he answered her.
“Look at me,” he said at last, “and see.”
She did look at him. For the space of ten seconds their eyes were fixed
upon each other in a long, bitter look. Then her little bundle dropped
on the ground.
“Ye've went back on me,” she said under her breath again. “Ye've went
back on me!”
He had thought she might make some passionate outcry, but she did not
yet. A white wrath was in her face and her chest heaved, but she spoke
slowly and low, her hands fallen down by her side.
“Ye've went back on me,” she said. “An' _I knew ye would_.”
He felt that the odor of his utter falseness tainted the pure air about
him; he had been false all round,--to himself, to his love, to his
ideals,--even in a baser way here.
“Yes,” he answered her with a bitterness she did not understand, “I've
gone back on you.” Then, as if to himself, “I could not even reach
perfection in villainy.”
Then her rage and misery broke forth.
“Yer a coward!” she said, with gasps between her words. “Yer afraid! I'd
sooner--I'd sooner ye'd killed me--_dead!_”
Her voice shrilled itself into a smothered shriek, she cast herself face
downward upon the earth and lay there clutching amid her sobs at the
grass.
He looked down at her in a cold, stunned fashion.
“Do you think,” he said hoarsely, “that you can loathe me as I loathe
myself? Do you think you can call me one shameful name I don't know I
deserve? If you can, for God's sake let me have it.”
She struck her fist against the earth.
“Thar wasn't a man I ever saw,” she said, “that didn't foller after me,
'n' do fur me, 'n' wait fur a word from me. They'd hev let me set my
foot on 'em if I'd said it. Thar wasn't nothin' I mightn't hev done--not
nothin'. An' now--an' now “--and, she tore the grass from its earth and
flung it from her.
“Go on,” he said. “Go on and say your worst.”
Her worst was bad enough, but he almost exulted under the blows she
dealt him. He felt the horrible sting a vague comfort. He had fallen
low enough surely when it was a comfort to be told that he was a liar, a
poltroon, and a scoundrel.
The sun had been down an hour when it was over and she had risen and
taken up her bundle.
“Why don't ye ask me to forgive ye?” she said with a scathing sneer.
“Why don't ye ask me to forgive ye--an' say ye didn't mean to do it?”
He fell back a pace and was silent. With what grace would the words have
fallen from his lips? And yet he knew that he had not _meant_ to do it.
She turned away and at a distance of a few feet stopped. She gave him a
last look--a fierce one in its contempt and anger, and her affluence of
beauty had never been so stubborn a fact before.
“Ye think ye've left me behind,” she said. “An' so ye hev--but it aint
fur allers. The time'll come when mebbe ye'll see me ag'in.”
He returned to New York, but he had been there a week before he went to
Rebecca. Finally, however, he awoke one morning feeling that the time
had come for the last scene of his miserable drama. He presented himself
at the house and sent up his name, and in three minutes Rebecca came to
him.
It struck him with a new thrill of wretchedness to see that she wore
by chance the very dress she had worn the day he had made the sketch--a
pale, pure-looking gray, with a scarf of white lace loosely fastened at
her throat. Next, he saw that there was a painful change in her, that
she looked frail and worn, as if she had been ill. His first words he
scarcely heard and never remembered. He had not come to make a defense,
but a naked, bitter confession. As he made it low and monotonously, in
brief, harsh words, holding no sparing for himself, Rebecca stood with
her hand upon the mantle looking at him with simple directness. There
was no rebuke in her look, but there was weariness. It occurred to him
once or twice and with a terribly humiliating pang, that she was tired
of him,--tired of it all.
“I have lost you,” he ended. “And I have lost myself. I have seen myself
as I am,--a poorer figure, a grosser one than I ever dreamed of being,
even in the eyes of my worst enemy. Henceforth, this figure will be
my companion. It is as if I looked at myself in a bad glass; but now,
though the reflection is a pitiable one, the glass is true.”
“You think,” she said, after a short silence, “of going away?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“To Europe.”
“Oh,” she ejaculated, with a soft, desperate sound of pain.
His eyes had been downcast and he raised them.
“Yes,” he said, mournfully. “We were to have gone together.”
“Yes,” she answered, “together.”
Her eyes were wet.
“I was very happy,” she said, “for a little while.”
She held out her hand.
“But,” she added, as if finishing a sentence, “you have been truer to me
than you think.”
“No--no,” he groaned.
“Yes, truer to me than you think--and truer to yourself. It was I you
loved--I! There have been times when I thought I must give that up,
but now I know I need not. It was I. Sometime, perhaps,--sometime,--not
now”--
Her voice broke, she did not finish, the end was a sob. Their eyes
rested upon each other a few seconds, and then he released her hand and
went away.
He was absent for two years, and during that time his friends heard
much good of him. He lived the life of a recluse and a hard worker. He
learned to know his own strength, and taught the world to recognize it
also.
At the end of the second year, being in Paris, he went one night to the
_Nouvelle Opéra_. Toward the close of the second act he became conscious
of a little excited stir among those surrounding him. Every glass seemed
directed toward a new arrival who stood erect and cool in one of the
stage-boxes. She might have been Cleopatra. Her costume was of a creamy
satin, she was covered with jewels, and she stood up confronting the
house, as it regarded her, with _sang froid_.
Lennox rose hurriedly and left the place. He was glad to breathe the
bitterly cold but pure night air. She had made no idle prophecy. He had
seen her again!
There hung upon the wall of his private room a picture whose completion
had been the first work after his landing. He went in to it and looked
at it with something like adoration.
“'Sometime'” he said, “perhaps now,” and the next week he was on his way
home.