Lodusky Part 5

"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 pa.s.siveness 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 pa.s.sionate, 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."