Janet of the Dunes Part 12

"Great heavens! And you let them in?"

"They found the key and came in." Thornly muttered something inaudibly.

"They wanted to see your pictures; they saw everything, and me!" Again the misery spread over the vivid face. Thornly was unable to take his eyes from that pitiful gaze, but for a moment his own position in this play held part.

"What did they say?" he asked at length.

"Mr. Devant said nothing! I cannot remember what she said--but whatever it was, it made me know that she thinks me--oh! what can I say?--something too awful to bear! And you, you knew what women like her might think! That is why you made me promise not to tell; that is why you kept the door locked! You knew how the people like her would scorn me! and yet you would not save me! Oh! I know it was because of your pictures! You would let folks like her think what they wanted to, so long as you got what you wanted!" The brief confidence in him was gone.

There was a power in this fury that shook Thornly as he listened. The blazing face of outraged womanhood confronted him, and the accusation brought truth and torment with it.

"Get what I wanted?" he groped blindly in his soul for an honest answer as to what he had wanted.

"Yes. What you wanted! You wanted my face, because it is beautiful; because I was like this place, the Hills and dunes! You thought me like them, just a thing to put upon your canvas to make you rich and famous!

But I am a girl, like that girl up at Bluff Head! I am as good as she!"

"My G.o.d!" Thornly looked at the bowed head, that sank again beneath the waves of pa.s.sion. His eyes grew dim and his face paled. His soul had answered and had pa.s.sed judgment that gave him grace to breathe freely!

"Janet," he said gently, "my poor girl! I am going to wait by the door until you get out of the net and into your shoes; then come to me. I have much, much to say to you." He did not offer, by thought or motion, to a.s.sist her. He turned and sat guard by the open door, puffing vigorously at his pipe.

Janet disentangled herself and put on her stockings and shoes. Then, shod and with a strange dignity, she crossed the room and stood beside the man, leaning against the jamb of the door for support.

Thornly looked up and smiled; then he shook the ashes from his pipe, placed it in his pocket, and offered Janet his stool. She shook her head.

"I'll sit on the sand," she said, and sank down outside the door.

"My poor Janet," Thornly began, "I do not know what to say. I want to make you understand and I am afraid I may make further mistakes. I see I have wronged you. In a sense, I've been a bungling fool; but as true as G.o.d hears me, I didn't want you upon my canvas for any low or mean reason. I swear that as truly as I ever spoke. It seemed my right to make live what I saw in you. Maybe it was not my right--I begin to fear it was not--but it seemed so at first. I don't know how to say it, but somewhere I have read a thought like this. When an artist enters his studio he hangs up his pa.s.sions with his coat and hat. You won't understand that. No woman can, perhaps, and not many men; but it's true as surely as heaven hears me! and it accounts for a deal of good as well as bad! That is the way I felt. I was greedy to catch you as I saw you.

I wanted no one to share the triumph. I never thought of women like Katharine or men like Mr. Devant. I did think of the Quinton folks, and that is the only reason I locked the door! Please try and believe that, my dear girl! If I had one unselfish thought, it was for you and for your people, not for the others like those at Bluff Head. I could have told them all about it when my pictures were hung at the Academy; and that would have ended it."

The girl upon the sands sat with hands clasped around her knees. Her dark, clear eyes never wavered from the speaker's face, and Thornly saw trust and a growing calm rising in them again.

"If I had gone far enough in thought," he continued, "I might have hoped that such beauty and power as you have would have made you great and strong enough in nature to want to help make these pictures, in spite of everything! I believe in a slow, dull way I did think that about you once in a while. I know I never meant to harm the woman in you, Janet; believe me, I swear that!"

His eyes met hers and never faltered. The girl drew a long breath. Then she s.h.i.+vered slightly and sighed again.

"I--I think I see, a little, what you mean," she quivered; "you thought I was better than I am. Higher, n.o.bler than some folks, because I am so--so beautiful?" Not a shadow of common vanity rang through the words.

"You thought I would be glad to help in your pictures and never care what others might think, others who cannot understand? You are a great artist, and you thought me an artist--but in a different way? Oh! it comes to me just as Davy's Light comes of an early morning, when the fog lifts. What a mean, wretched thing I have been to let stings hurt, when that splendid picture--waits--for--me!" A radiance spread over the wistful face. Thornly was dazzled and could only stare helplessly.

"See," she had arisen, and stood before him in all her strong, young beauty; "you need me? Without me you cannot make your splendid picture?"

Thornly shook his head.

"It is not the money you want, nor just the fame, but you want to give the world a great joy."

"Yes, yes! As G.o.d is my witness, Janet, that is my desire."

"Then I will help. Oh! forgive me! Come, please, come, only"--here she smiled pitifully--"please leave the door open! It shall never matter again; nothing can change things now."

Thornly staggered to his feet and half extended his hand to draw the girl in; then something stayed him.

"I cannot paint to-day, Janet," he whispered. "Something is changed.

Perhaps the old longing will return, but I must not trust myself until I know. Go, little Pimpernel, you are the greater artist of us two!"

"I'm very sorry the day is spoiled," she returned brokenly; "if I had only known more, it would have been different. It seems as if I cannot ever forgive myself."

She turned, and went sadly over the hills with never a backward look.

And Thornly gazed after her with yearning eyes. She was taking with her--what? Inspiration? Yes, but something deeper and more vital was pa.s.sing with that vanis.h.i.+ng form. What was it? What had occurred to change the summer sunlight to drearest gray?

CHAPTER VII

Late August hung heavily over Quinton. The city folks, who counted their year's playtime by two weeks' vacation, had come and gone, in relays.

The artists, never tiring of the changing charms of this new-found beauty-spot, gave no heed to the pa.s.sing season. Only cold, and acute bodily suffering could attract their attention. Good, poor, and indifferent revelled in the inspiration-haunted Hills and magnificent sweep of sh.o.r.e.

The natives counted their gains with bated breath and dreamed visions of future summers that made them dizzy.

Poor Susan Jane was the only woman, apparently, upon the mainland, who had swung at anchor through all the changed conditions. Susan, who once had been the ruling spirit of the village and Station! Susan, whose sharp tongue and all-seeing eye had governed her kind! Susan had been obliged to gather such bits of driftwood as had floated to her chair, during the history-making season,--and draw such pleasure from it as she could. The strain had worn upon the paralyzed body. The active mind had stretched and stretched for material until the helpless frame weakened. The sharp tongue was two-edged now, and gossip that reached Susan Jane a.s.sumed the blackest color. Her searching eyes saw through everything, and gripped all secrets.

David's songs, as he mounted the winding stairs, took on a soberer strain. Sometimes he omitted, even at the top, his hilarious outburst to the "lobster pots;" and his sigh and laugh combination was an hourly occurrence.

Janet noticed it all. She was alive to the atmospheric chill of the village, though in no wise understanding it. She was troubled and fretted by many things, but she went her way. The money she had earned by posing she dealt out in miserly fas.h.i.+on to Susan Jane; while at the same time she a.s.sumed many household cares to ease David, whom she loved.

There was no more money coming to her now, for after the scene in the hut upon the Hills Thornly had gone away for a week, and upon his return he had told Janet he would send her a message when again he needed her.

The man's tone had been most kindly, but it seemed a rebuff from which the girl had not been able to recover. Once or twice she had stolen to the hut, when she was sure the master was away; always the key was in its hiding place. Softly she had gone in and stood in the sacred room.

The same picture stood ever upon the easel, the same beautiful unfinished picture! Upon one visit the girl had taken a rare pimpernel blossom she had found in a lonely hollow and laid it on the empty stool before the canvas. It was still there when she went again! Faded and neglected it lay before the shrine, and the message never came that was to call her to the Hills.

The people of the village, too, were different. They were busy and took small notice of the girl. Business, Janet thought, was the only reason.

Mrs. Jo G. in particular was changed, but it had been a hard summer for Mrs. Jo G., and when, after many attempts to secure Janet as waitress, she had failed, she turned upon the girl sharply.

"You might be doin' worse things!" she snapped, "you're growin' more an'

more like yer ma, an' it ain't t' yer credit!" That was the first inroad the oncoming wave of sentiment had made in the bulkhead of local reticence.

Janet started. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"What I say. An' what's more, Janet, if you can't turn in an' be useful t' them as was good enough fur you before, you can stop away from us altogether. I don't want Maud Grace t' get any fool notions in her head."

Once Janet would have turned upon such an attack, but somehow the spring of resistance was checked. After all what did it matter? But she took her mother's picture from the carpet-bag that night and hid it in her blouse with the long-silent whistle! More and more she remained at the lighthouse. Seldom, even, did she sail over to the dunes and never unless she felt strong enough to leave a pleasant impression upon Billy.

Over all this, Mark Tapkins watched and brooded, and he slouched more dejectedly between the Light and his father's little home.

"I tell you!" he often confided to his inner self, "city life is blightin'! When I was there, it took the breath out o' me, an' now it's come t' Quinton, it's knocked a good many different from what they once was!" With this oft-repeated sentiment Mark reached his father's door one day and through it caught the smell of frying crullers. Old Pa Tapkins was realizing his harvest from the boarders by acting upon Janet's suggestion to Mark. From early sunrise until the going down of the sun, Pa, when not necessarily preparing food for three regular meals, was mixing, shaping, frying, and selling his now famous cakes.

People, in pa.s.sing, inhaled the fragrance of Pa's cooking and stopped to regale themselves and take samples to friends who were yet to be initiated. Pa and his crullers were becoming bywords, and they often helped out, where meals at the boarding place failed and conversation lacked humor.

As Mark stepped into the kitchen, not only his father, but Captain Billy hailed him.

"h.e.l.lo! Cap'n Billy," cried Mark, "come off fur a change, have ye?"

"Yes, yes," Billy replied through a mouthful of cruller, hot enough to make an ordinary man groan with pain. "Yes, yes; I've come off t' see the doin's."