ARTISTS
Pap closed the door carefully behind him before he looked at Sheila. At
once his face changed to one of deep concern.
"Why, girl! What's happened to you? You got no call to feel like that!"
He went over to her and took her limp hand. She half turned away. He
patted the hand.
"Why, girl! This isn't very pleasant for me. I aimed to make you happy
when I brought you out to Millings. I kind of wanted to work myself into
your Poppa's place, kind of meant to make it up to you some way. I aimed
to give you a home. 'Home, sweet home, there's no place like home'--that
was my motto. And here you are, all pale around the gills and tears all
over your face--and, say, there's a regular pool there on your pillow.
Now, now--" he clicked with his tongue. "You're a bad girl, a regular
bad, ungrateful girl, hanged if you aren't! You know what I'd do to you
if you were as young as you are little and foolish? Smack you--good and
plenty. But I'm not agoin' to do it, no, ma'am. Don't pull your hand
away. Smacking's not in my line. I never smacked my own children in their
lives, except Dickie. There was no other way with him. He was ornery.
You come and set down here in the big chair and I'll pull up the little
one and we'll talk things over. Put your trust in me, Miss Sheila. I'm
all heart. I wasn't called 'Pap' for nothing. You know what I am? I'm
your guardian. Yes'm. And you just got to make up your mind to cast your
care upon me, as the hymn says. Nary worry must you keep to yourself.
Come on now, kid, out with it. Get it off your chest."
Sheila had let him put her into the big creaking leather chair. She sat
with a handkerchief clenched in both her hands, upon which he, drawing up
the other chair, now placed one of his. She kept her head down, for she
was ashamed of the pale, stained, and distorted little face which she
could not yet control.
"Now, then, girl ... Well, if you won't talk to me, I'll just light up
and wait. I'm a patient man, I am. Don't hurry yourself any."
He withdrew his hand and took out a cigar. In a moment he was sitting on
the middle of his spine, his long legs sprawled half across the room, his
hands in his pockets, his head on the chair-back so that his chin pointed
up to the ceiling. Smoke rose from him as from a volcano.
Sheila presently laughed uncertainly.
"That's better," he mumbled around his cigar.
"I've had a dreadful day," said Sheila.
"You won't have any more of them, my dear," Sylvester promised quietly.
She looked at him with faint hope.
"Yes'm, dish-washing's dead."
"But what can I do, then?"
Hudson nodded his head slowly, or, rather, he sawed the air up and down
with his chin. He was still looking at the ceiling so that Sheila could
see only the triangle beneath his jaw and the dark, stringy neck above
his collar.
"I've got a job for you, girl--a real one."
He pulled out his cigar and sat up. "You remember what I told you the
other night?"
"About my being a--a--beacon?" Sheila's voice was delicately tinged with
mockery. So was her doubtful smile.
"Yes'm," he said seriously. "Well, that's it."
"What does a beacon do?" she asked.
"It burns. It shines. It looks bright. It wears the neatest little black
dress with a frilly apron and deep frilly cuffs. Say, do you recollect
something else I told you?"
"I remember everything you told me."
"Well, ma'am, I remember everything you told _me_. Somebody said she
was grateful. Somebody said she'd do anything for Pap. Somebody
said--'Try me.'"
"I meant it, Mr. Hudson. I did mean it."
"Do you mean it now?"
"Yes. I--I owe you so much. You're always so very kind to me. And I
behave very badly. I was hateful to you this evening. And, when you came
to my door, just now, I was--I was _scared_."
Pap opened his eyes at her, held his cigar away from him and laughed.
The laugh was both bitter and amused.
"Scared of Pap Hudson? _You_ scared? But, look-a-here, girl, what've I
done to deserve that?"
He sat forward, rested his chin in his hand, supported by an elbow on his
crossed knees and fixed her with gentle and reproachful eyes.
"Honest, you kind of make me feel bad, Miss Sheila."
"I am dreadfully sorry. It was horrid of me. I only told you because I
wanted you to know that I'm not worth helping. I don't deserve you to be
so kind to me. I--I must be disgustingly suspicious."
"Well!" Sylvester sighed. "Very few folks get me. I'm kind of
mis-understood. I'm a real lonesome sort of man. But, honest, Miss
Sheila, I thought you were my friend. I don't mind telling you, you've
hurt my feelings. That shot kind of got me. It's stuck into me."
"I'm horrid!" Sheila's eyes were wounded with remorse.
"Oh, well, I'm not expecting understanding any more."
"Oh, but I do--I do understand!" she said eagerly and she put her hand
shyly on his arm. "I think I do understand you. I'm very grateful. I'm
very fond of you."
"Ah!" said Sylvester softly. "That's a good hearing!" He lifted his arm
with Sheila's hand on it and touched it with his lips. "You got me plumb
stirred up," he said with a certain huskiness. "Well!" She took away her
hand and he made a great show of returning to common sense. "I reckon we
are a pretty good pair of friends, after all. But you mustn't be scared
of me, Miss Sheila. That does hurt. Let's forget you told me that."
"Yes--please!"
"Well, then--to get back to business. Do you recollect a story I
told you?"
"A story? Oh, yes--about an Englishman--?"
"Yes, ma'am. That Englishman put his foot on the rail and stuck his glass
in his eye and set his tumbler down empty. And he looked round that bar
of mine, Miss Sheila. You savvy, he'd been all over the globe, that
feller, and I should say his ex-perience of bars was--some--and he said,
'Hudson, it's all but perfect. It only needs one thing.'"
This time Sheila did not ask. She waited.
"'And that's something we have in our country,' said he." Hudson cleared
his throat. He also moistened his lips. He was very apparently excited.
He leaned even farther forward, tilting on the front legs of his chair
and thrusting his face close to Sheila's "'_A pretty barmaid_!' said he."
There was a profound silence in the small room. The runners of a sleigh
scraped the icy street below, its horses' hoofs cracked noisily. The
music of a fiddle sounded in the distance. Babe's voice humming a waltz
tune rose from the second story.
"A barmaid?" asked Sheila breathlessly. She got up from her chair and
walked over to the window. The moon was already high. Over there,
beckoning, stood her mountain and her star. It was all so shining and
pure and still.
"That's what you want me to be--your barmaid?"
"Yes'm," said Sylvester humbly. "Don't make up your mind in a hurry, Miss
Sheila. Wait till I tell you more about it. It's--it's a kind of dream of
mine. I think it'd come close to breaking me up if you turned down the
proposition. The Aura's not an ordin-ar-y bar and I'm not an ordin-ar-y
man, and, say, Miss Sheila, you're not an ordin-ar-y girl."
"Is that why you want me to work in your saloon?" said Sheila, staring
at the star.
"Yes'm. That's why. Let me tell you that I've searched this continent for
a girl to fit my ideal. That's what it is, girl--my ideal. That bar of
mine has got to be perfect. It's near to perfect now. I want when that
Englishman comes back to Millings to hear him say, 'It's perfect' ... no
'all but,' you notice. Why, miss, I could 'a' got a hundred ordin-ar-y
girls, lookers too. The world's full of lookers."
"Why didn't you offer your--'job' to Babe or Girlie?"
Sylvester laughed. "Well, girl, as a matter of fact, I did."
"You did?" Sheila turned back and faced him. There was plenty of color
in her cheeks now. Her narrow eyes were widely opened. Astonishingly
large and clear they were, when she so opened them.
"Yes'm." Sylvester glanced aside for an instant.
"And what did they say?"
"They balked," Sylvester admitted calmly. "They're fine girls, Miss
Sheila. And they're lookers. But they just aren't quite fine enough.
They're not artists, like your Poppa and like you--and like me."
Sheila put a hand up to her cheek. Her eyes came back to their accustomed
narrowness and a look of doubt stole into her face.
"Artists?"
"Yes'm." Sylvester had begun to walk about. "Artists. Why, what's an
artist but a person with a dream he wants to make real? My dream's--The
Aura, girl. For three years now"--he half-shut his eyes and moved his arm
in front of him as though he were putting in the broad first lines of a
picture--"I've seen that girl there back of my bar--shining and _good_
and fine--not the sort of a girl a man'd be lookin' for, mind you, just
_not_ that! A girl that would sort of take your breath. Say, picture it,
Sheila!" He stood by her and pointed it out as though he showed her a
view. "You're a cowboy. And you come ridin' in, bone-tired, dusty, with a
_thirst_. Well, sir, a thirst in your throat and a thirst in your heart
and a thirst in your soul. You're wantin' re-freshment. For your body
and your eyes and your mind. Well, ma'am, you tie your pony up there and
you push open those doors and you push 'em open and step plumb into
Paradise. It's cool in there--I'm picturin' a July evenin', Miss
Sheila--and it's quiet and it's shining clean. And there's a big man in
white who's servin' drinks--cold drinks with a grand smell. That's my man
Carthy. He keeps order. You bet you, he does keep it too. And beside him
stands a girl. Well, she's the kind of girl you--the cowboy--would 'a'
dreamed about, lyin' out in your blanket under the stars, if you'd 'a'
knowed enough to be able to dream about her. After you've set eyes on
her, you don't dream about any other kind of girl. And just seein' her
there so sweet and bright and dainty-like, makes a different fellow of
you. Say, goin' into that bar is like goin' into church and havin' a
jim-dandy time when you get there--which is something the churches
haven't got round to offerin' yet to my way of thinkin'. Now. I want to
ask you, Miss Sheila, if you've got red blood in your veins and a love of
adventure and a wish to see that real entertaining show we call
'life'--and mighty few females ever get a glimpse of it--and if you've
acquired a feeling of gratitude for Pap and if you've got any real
religion, or any ambition to play a part, if you're a real woman that
wants to be an in-spire-ation to men, well, ma'am, I ask you, could you
turn down a chance like that?"
He stood away a pace and put his question with a lifted forefinger.
Sheila's eyes were caught and held by his. Again her mind seemed to be
fastened to his will. And the blood ran quickly in her veins. Her heart
beat. She was excited, stirred. He had seen through her shell unerringly
as no one else in all her life had seen. He had mysteriously guessed that
she had the dangerous gift of adventure, that under the shyness and
uncertainty of inexperience there was no fear in her, that she was one of
those that would rather play with fire than warm herself before it.
Sheila stood there, discovered and betrayed. He had played upon her as
upon a flexible young reed: that stop, her ambition, this, her
romanticism, that, her vanity, the fourth, her gratitude, the fifth, her
idealism, the sixth, her recklessness. And there was this added urge--she
must stay here and drudge under the lash of "Momma's" tongue or she must
accept this strange, this unimaginable offer. Again she opened her eyes
wider and wider. The pupils swallowed up the misty gray. Her lips parted.
"I'll do it," she said, narrowed her eyes and shut her mouth tight. With
such a look she might have thrown a fateful toss of dice.
Sylvester caught her hands, pressed them up to his chest.
"It's a promise, girl?"
"Yes."
"God bless you!"
He let her go. He walked on air. He threw open the door.
There on the threshold--stood "Momma."
"I kind of see," she drawled, "why Sheila don't take no interest
in dancin'!"
"You're wrong," said Sheila very clearly. "I have been persuaded. I am
going to the dance."
Sylvester laughed aloud. "One for you, Momma!" he said. "Come on down,
old girl, while Miss Sheila gets into her party dress. Say, Aura, aren't
you goin' to give me a dance to-night?"
His wife looked curiously at his red, excited face. She followed him in
silence down the stairs.
Sheila stood still listening to their descending steps, then she knelt
down beside her little trunk and opened the lid. The sound of the fiddle
stole hauntingly, beseechingly, tauntingly into her consciousness. There
in the top tray of her trunk wrapped in tissue paper lay the only evening
frock she had, a filmy French dress of white tulle, a Christmas present
from her father, a breath-taking, intoxicating extravagance. She had worn
it only once.
It was with the strangest feeling that she took it out. It seemed to her
that the Sheila that had worn that dress was dead.