Lodusky Part 4

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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sed 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, sh.o.r.e," 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 pa.s.siveness. 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 hoa.r.s.ely.

"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 pa.s.sionate 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?"