Lodusky Part 3

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 n.o.ble, 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-gla.s.s.

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 antic.i.p.ated. 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, coa.r.s.ely 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 att.i.tude 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 n.o.ble 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 compa.s.s 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 gra.s.s 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.