Chapter 2

“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.