FullReads

“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.