IVAN UPSET CANOE
Thepicture progressed steadily. There were no interruptions from the weather, and a paid model would not have been so regular as was Rix. But progress was slow. Roger blamed himself in part for this; he was a slow workman, growing slower always as his work neared completion. “I never saw anybody so painstaking,” said Rix. “And you’re just the opposite in everything else but your painting.” The chief reason, however, for the snail’s pace of this particular work was the model. Rix came early and stayed late; but, after their plain talk and agreement, her strength seemed to fail rapidly. She looked just the same; she had every sign of perfect health; but after ten or fifteen minutes of posing she would insist on a rest—a good, long rest. As he had no right to criticise or control this voluntary model, he could not protest. And, it being essential to the picture that the model keep on till the end, was he not merely doing his simple duty by his picture in trying to amuse and interest her during the long pauses? Not that talking with herwas a disagreeable task—no, indeed, or a task at all. But his conscience, as a serious man bent upon a career, needed constant reassurance that he was really not trifling away the gorgeous lights of those long mornings in dawdling with a foolish, frivolous girl who cared only for laughter—that he was not encouraging his liking for her and failing in his duty as an honorable man, as her friend, to discourage her liking for him.
“Don’t be cross with me,” she said one morning when he fell into an obviously depressed reverie during a rest. She had the habit of observing him as a woman observes only the man of whom she believes that he is more worth while as a subject for thought than herself.
“I’m not cross with you,” replied he.
“Then, with yourself.”
“Can’t help it. I work so infernally slow—slower all the time.”
He thought he saw the diaphanous gossamer of a smile flit swiftly across her face. But he could not be sure; it might have been an imagining of his own sensitiveness. “I read somewhere,” observed she, “that genius is the capacity for taking infinite pains.”
“I’m hanged if I know whether I’m taking pains, as I hope, or am just dawdling, as I fear and as you believe. However, we’ll soon be done.”
“You say that as if you were glad.”
“Oh, of course I’m pleased to work in such charming company,” said he politely. His face took on the expression that always made her uneasy as he added: “Still, I never lose sight of my career.”
“No danger of that,” declared she, with a conviction of tone which she could have found it in her heart to wish insincere. “I never saw anyone so persistent and so—so hard.”
He laughed at the absurdity of her calling him hard. What would she think if she knew what a relentless taskmaster he usually was!
“How much longer do you think you’ll need me?” asked she.
“Not many days. Three or four, perhaps.”
It was her turn to drop into depressed abstraction. She roused herself to say, “Won’t you use me in another picture?”
He frowned—it was nearly a scowl. “No, indeed,” said he. “I’ve—that is, I’ve imposed on you enough.”
“You sounded as if you were going to sayIhad imposed onyouenough,” she reproached, with an air of aggrieved suspicion that was perhaps a trifle overdone.
“What are you laughing at?”
“I?” cried she with the utmost innocence. “I feel like anything but laughing.”
He subsided. “Well, if you weren’t laughing you ought to have been.”
She rather disappointed him by refusing to take the bait. Instead of asking why, she returned to her original point. “Don’t you think pictures with figures in them—especially women—are more interesting than just grass and leaves and things?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Then you’ve got to havesomemodel. Why not me? Haven’t I been giving satisfaction?”
“Indeed, you have. But I’ll get a model who isn’t so interesting to talk with—one who doesn’t demand such high pay. Time is the most valuable thing in the world.”
“Not mine. It’s dirt cheap.” She sighed. “I don’t know what I’ll do with myself when you get through with me,” she said dolefully. “I’ve always been restless before. I see now I was right in thinking it was because I didn’t have something to do—something useful.”
The subject dropped. While he was as inexpert as the next strongly masculine man in the ways of women, he had intuitions that more than replaced analysis. And there was something in her increasing tendency to reverie that made him uneasy—that made him wonder whether this idle child were not plotting some newdevice for stealing more of his time from his career. “She’ll get left, if she is,” he said to himself. But he continued to have qualms of nervousness. She was crafty, this innocent maiden; she was always taking him by surprise.
There came a stage in his work when it did not especially matter whether he had a model or not. He let her continue to come, however—while he evolved how best to effect the separation. He felt certain she was simply making use of him in whiling away leisure hours that would otherwise bore her; still, courtesy demanded that, in ridding himself of her, he show consideration for her. After all, she had been most valuable to him, had helped him to make what he hoped would be regarded as far and away the best picture he had ever produced. “Never again!” he swore solemnly. “Never again will I work with anyone I can’t pay off and discharge. Free labor is the most expensive. Something for nothing takes the shirt off your back when you come to pay.”
She was posing in her canoe, well out from the shore. He was laboring at an effect of luminous shadow that would better bring out the poetry he had been striving to put into the expression of her face. A slight sound made him glance at the other shore of thelake—about two hundred yards away, in that little bay. At a point where his model’s back was full toward them, two young men were standing staring at her. The expression of their faces, of their bodies, made them a living tableau of the phrase, “rooted to the spot.” At first glance he was angered by their impertinence; but directly came an intuition that something out of the ordinary was about to happen. Swift upon the intuition followed its realization. One of the young men—the shorter, much the shorter—shouted in a voice of angry amazement:
“Beatrice!”
That shout acted upon Roger’s model like the shot from a gun it so strongly suggested. She glanced over her shoulder, lost her balance. Up went her arms wildly; with a shriek of dismay she rolled most ungracefully into the water. Her flying heels gave the capsized canoe a kick that sent it skimming and bobbing a dozen yards away. Roger lost no time in amazement at the sudden and ridiculous transformation of the serene tranquillity of the scene. The girl was head downward; her agitated heels were more than merely ludicrous, they were a danger signal. He flung down palette and brush, dashed into the shallow water, strode rapidly toward where Rix was struggling to right herself. He soon arrived, reached under, seizedher by the shoulder and brought her right side up. She splashed and spluttered and gasped, clinging to him, he holding her in his arms. It would have been impossible to recognize the lovely and charming model of two minutes before in this bedraggled and streaming figure. Yet it was obvious that for Roger there was even more charm than before. He was holding her tightly and was displaying an agitated joy in her safety out of all proportion to the danger she had been in.
“What a mess!” she exclaimed, as soon as she could articulate. “Where are those two?”
He glanced across the bay, located them running along the shore, making the wide detour necessary to getting to where he had stood painting her. “They’re coming,” said he. He spoke gruffly and tried to disengage himself.
Still clinging to him she cleared her eyes of water and looked. “Yes, I see,” gasped she. “How cold it is! The one ahead is my brother. About the only thing he can do is sprint. So he’ll get here first. You must act as if you knew him—must call him Heck—that’s the short for Hector. I’ll prompt him all right.”
“Come on. Let’s wade ashore.” Again he tried to release himself from her. “The water’s not four feet deep.”
“Don’t let go of me,” pleaded she. “I’m a little weak—and oh, horribly cold!” And she took a firmer hold.
He did not argue or hesitate, but decided for the most expeditious way ashore. That is, he gathered her up in his arms as easily as if she had weighed thirty pounds instead of nearly one hundred and thirty—making no account of the hundred pounds or so of water she was carrying in her garments. As she had predicted, Hector distanced his taller and heavier companion and arrived well in advance of him. When he came panting to within a hundred yards or so of where she was wringing out her skirts Roger sung out, loudly enough for his voice to reach the ears of the still distant other youth: “Hello, Heck. She’s all right.”
“Heck” stopped short in astonishment. Then he came on, but at a slower gait. “Who areyou?” he said to Roger.
Rix looked up from her clothes-wringing. “Call him Chang,” she said tranquilly to her brother. “Hank mustn’t know.”
“What the dev—” began Heck.
“Shut up, Heck,” Beatrice ordered in the tone members of the same family do not hesitate to use to one another in moments of extreme provocation.“Don’t try to think. You know you can’t. You’ve certainly got sense enough to see that Hank must be made to believe that Chang and you are old friends.” She added in a still lower tone: “Drop that hit-on-the-head look. He’s not ten seconds away.”
Hector had barely time for an indifferently successful but passable rearrangement of his expression when up dashed Hank, puffing, all solicitude. “You’re not hurt very much, dear—are you?” he panted. “Might know—Heck’s such an awful fool.”
“Mr. Chang, Mr. Vanderkief,” interrupted Beatrice.
Vanderkief, big and heavy, red and breathless, mechanically bowed. The effort of that conventional gesture seemed suddenly to recall to him the state of mind suspended by the catastrophe. He gave the big artist a second and longer and unpleasantly sharp stare. Roger returned it with polite affability of eye. “We must build a fire,” said be, “and dry this young lady. Come on, Heck.” The way “Heck” winced seemed to delight him—and Beatrice and he exchanged one of those furtive looks of sympathetic enjoyment of a secret joke that proclaim a high degree of intimacy and understanding. Said Roger to the stiff and uneasy “Hank”: “Will you help, Mr. Vandersniff?”
“Mr. Vanderkief,” corrected Beatrice. “Whileyou three are building the fire I’ll retire into the bushes and squeeze out all I can of the lake.”
Not without making Hank’s eyes glint jealously and her brother’s eyes angrily, but without either’s overhearing, she contrived to say to Roger, “You’ll help me out, won’t you?”
“Sure,” said he. “But my name’s Roger Wade—not Chang.”
“And mine’s Beatrice Richmond.”
“That’s plenty to go on. Now, hide in the bushes. We must hurry up the fire.” And he cried to Hank: “Come on, Vanderkief!”
Miss Richmond’s teeth were chattering; but she delayed long enough to engage her brother aside a moment. “His name’s Wade, not Chang.”
“Good Heaven!” muttered Heck. “What’s the meaning of all this? Beatrice, who on earth is the fellow? Why, you aren’t even sure of his name!”
“Mind your own business,” said Beatrice tranquilly. “He’s an old friend of yours—of mine—of the family—an artist we met in Paris. Don’t forget that.”
Heck clinched his fists and drew his features into a frown that would have looked dangerous had his chin been stronger. “I’ll not stand for it. I’m going to take you bang off home.”
“And put Hank on to the whole business?—andend the engagement?—and disgrace me?—and yourself?—and the family?” Everyone of these cumulative reasons why Heck could not refuse to conspire she emphasized with a little laugh. She ended: “Oh, I guess not. I care less about it than you do. Be careful, or I’ll give it away, myself. It would be such fun!”
Hector, despite his anger, gave an appreciative grin, for he had a sense of humor.
“Behave yourself,” said Beatrice. “Go help get wood.”
“But what’ll mother say—and father! Holy cat! How father will scream!”
“Don’t you worry. Do your part!” And Beatrice vanished among the bushes and huge glacial rocks.
Roger conducted his part in the deception with signal distinction. He so busied himself collecting huge pieces of wood and bearing them to the central pile they were making in an open space that he had no breath or time for conversation; and as the other two men could not but follow so worthy an example, not a word was said. Besides, a glance at the face of either big Hank or little Heck was enough to disclose how industriously they were thinking. Once Hank, finding himself near the picture, began to edge round for a look at it. He thought Roger was busy far away. Heliterally jumped when Roger’s voice—authoritative, anything but friendly—hurled at him: “I say there, you! Keep away from that picture! I don’t let anybody look at my unfinished things.”
“I—I beg your pardon,” stammered Vanderkief, hastily putting himself where no suspicion of even peeping could possibly lie against him.
The fire was a monster, and Roger and Beatrice—who addressed him alternately as Chang and Mr. Wade—were soon drying out. They talked and laughed in the highest spirits, not unmindful of the gloominess of the silent, listening brother and fiancé, but positively enjoying it. Presently Beatrice turned to her brother and said, “I’ve persuaded Mr. Wade to accept mother’s invitation.”
Roger smiled agreeably. “Not exactly, Miss Richmond,” parried he, as skillfully as if the stroke had not come without the least warning. “I couldn’t be sure, you know.”
Beatrice looked at the watchful Vanderkief—a handsome fellow, almost as big as Roger, but having the patterned air of a fashionable man instead of Roger’s air of unscissored individuality. “Chang is still the toiling hermit,” said she. “Mother’s having hard work to get him even for dinner.” She turned to Roger. “You must come, this once, Chang,” pleadedshe. In an undertone she added, “You owe it to me—to help me out.”
“There’s no resisting that,” said he, but he did not conceal his dissatisfaction.
Vanderkief’s jealousy would no longer permit him to be silent. He blurted out: “I don’t see why you annoy Mr.—Mr.——”
“Wade,” assisted Roger easily.
“I thought it was Chang,” said Vanderkief with a slight sneer.
“So it is,” cried Beatrice gayly. “But only for the favored few whom Mr. Wade admits to friendship. You know he’s not like you and Heck, Hanky. He’s a real personage. He can do things.”
Hanky looked as if he would like nothing on earth or in Heaven so much as a chance at this big, impressive-looking mystery, with bare fists and no referee. “I was about to say,” he went on, “it’s a shame to annoy so busy and important a chap with invitations.”
Roger looked at him in a large, tolerant way that visibly delighted Beatrice. “Much obliged, Vanderkief,” said he. “But I’m fond of the Richmonds, and it’s a pleasure to break my rule for them.” He beamed on Heck. “Iamglad to see you again!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t realize how much I had missed you till I saw you once more. Isn’t this like old times?”
“Well, I guess,” said Heck on the broad grin. “It is old times!”
“But you’d better take your sister home now—walk her briskly every inch of the way. Really, she ought to run.”
“No,” said Beatrice. “I’m going back as I came.”
“But who’s to wade into that icy water for your canoe?” inquired Roger. “Not I, for one.”
“Certainly not,” cried she. “I spoke without thinking. I’ll send one of the servants for it in a boat.”
“Now, hurry along,” said Roger; “and walk fast. And if I can arrange to come to dinner I’ll send up a note this afternoon.”
Beatrice was eying him reproachfully; but as Hank was watching her she did not venture to protest. “I’ll see you to-morrow morning,” said she.
“Oh, no—don’t bother to come. I’ll let you know when I need you.”
“So this is where you’ve been spending your mornings?” said Vanderkief.
“Some of them,” replied Beatrice. “It was to have been a surprise. Still— You didn’t let them see it, did you, Chang?”
“Not a peep,” he assured her.
Vanderkief’s tension somewhat relaxed. Roger admired the innocent Miss Richmond. Really, she hadbeen displaying a genius for deception—whose art lies in saying just enough and leaving it to the dupe’s own imagination to do the heavy work of deceit. The parting was accomplished in good order, Vanderkief showing a disposition to be apologetically polite to Roger now that he had convinced himself he was mistaken in his first jealous surmises. “If you make a good job of Miss Richmond,” said he graciously, “I’ll see that a lot of things are put in your way.”
Roger thanked him with a simple gratitude that put him in excellent humor with himself. After the three set out Beatrice came running back. “You saved me,” she said. “I’m so ashamed for having dragged you into such a mess. But you must do one thing more. Youmustcome to dinner.”
“Can’t do it,” said Roger. “Here’s where I step out.”
This seemed to astonish her. She looked at him doubtfully, was so agitated by his expression that she hastily cried, “Oh, no, you’ll not desert me. I admit it’s my fault. But you wouldn’t be so unfriendly as to get me into trouble!”
“How would I get you into trouble? It’s just the other way. If I came to your house it’d make a tangle that even Vanderkief would see.”
“No—no, indeed,” protested she. “I can’t stopto explain now.Don’tbe so suspicious, Chang. I’ll be here to-morrow morning—no, at the studio. Pete—that is, Hank—might follow me here. And now that you know who we are, don’t you see there’s no reason for——”
She laughed coquettishly, and away she sped, before he could repeat his refusal. To call after her would be to betray her.
As he was working in the usual place near the cascade the next morning she came upon him from the direction of the studio. “What a fright you’ve given me!” exclaimed she, dropping to the grass a few yards away. “I went up to the studio as I told you I would.”
He had bowed to her with some formality. His tone was distinctly stiff as he replied: “My work compelled me to be here. Anyhow, Miss Richmond, it’s clear to me, and must be to you, that our friendship must cease.”
“You don’t look at me as you say that,” said she, obviously not seriously impressed.
“It isn’t pleasant to say that sort of thing to you,” replied he. “But your coming again, when you ought not, forces me to be frank.”
“Why?” said she, clasping her knees with her hands. “Why must our friendship cease?”
“There are many reasons. One is enough. I do not care to continue it.”
“How nasty you are this morning, Chang!”
He took refuge in silence.
“Surely you’re not jealous of Hanky?” said she, with audacious mischief.
He ignored this.
“Don’t look so sour. I was merely joking. Are you cross because I made you help me tell—things that weren’t quite so?”
“I don’t like that sort of business,” said he, unconvincingly industrious with his brush.
“Neither do I,” said she. “But what was I to do? You know, you forced me into engaging myself to him.”
He stopped work, stared at her. The light—or something—that morning was most becoming to her, the smallish, slim, yellow-haired sprite—most disturbingly becoming.
She went on in the same sweet, even way: “And if it hadn’t been for my coming here to act as your model I’d not have got into trouble. And, having got in, what was there to do but get out with as little damage to poor Peter’s feelings as possible?” Then she looked at him with innocent eyes, as if she had uttered the indisputable.
Roger surveyed her with admiration. “You are—the limit!” he exclaimed. “The limit!”
“But isn’t what I said true?” urged she. “What else could I have done?”
“True? Yes—true,” said he, making a gesture of resignation. “I admit everything—anything.”
“Now, do be reasonable, Chang!” she reproached. “Where isn’t it true?”
“If I let myself argue with you I’d be running wild through the woods in about fifteen minutes. Tell me, does anyone in your family—or among your acquaintances—doesanyoneever dispute with you?”
She reflected, ignoring the irony in his tone. “No,” said she, “I don’t believe they do. I have my own way.”
“I’d have sworn it,” cried he.
“You are the only one that ever opposes me,” said she.
“I? Oh, no. Never! But in this one thing I must.” He changed to seriousness. “Rix, I’ll have nothing to do with your deceiving that nice young chap. That’s flat and final.”
“Isn’t he nice, though!” exclaimed she. “I’ve always liked him since he was a little boy at dancing school with such a polite, quiet way of sniffling. He hates to blow his nose. You know, there are peoplelike that. I wouldn’t hurt his feelings for the world. You see, everybody can’t be harsh and hard like you. Now, you take a positive delight in saying unpleasant truths.”
“I’m nothing of a liar,” said he curtly.
“I like that in you,” cried she with enthusiasm. “It makes me feel such confidence. You’re the only person I ever knew whom I believed in everything they said.”
He gave her a look of frank surprise and suspicion. “What are you driving at?” he demanded. “Now, don’t look innocent. Out with it!”
“I don’t understand,” said she, smiling.
“Pardon me, but you do—perfectly. What are you wheedling for?”
“Howcanwe be friends,” pleaded she, “if you’re always suspecting me?”
“We’re not going to be friends,” replied he positively. “This—here and now—is the end.”
It was evident that his words had given her a shock—a curious shock of surprise, as if she had expected some very different reception to this proffer of hers. However, after a brief reflection she seemed to recover. “Howcanso clever a man as you be so foolish?” expostulated she. “You know as well as you’re sitting there that we simply can’t help being friends.”
“Friends—yes,” he conceded. “But we’re not going to see each other.”
“And what would I say to Pete?”
“Something clever and satisfying. By the way, how did you manage to get away with it when you reached home?”
She laughed delightedly. She was looking her most innocent, most youthful. “Oh,sucha time!” cried she. “Mother— You don’t know mother, so you can’t appreciate. But you will, when you do know her. It was a three-cornered row—Heck and mother and I. Heck took a shine to you, so he was really about half on my side. I told just how I met you—the whole story—except I didn’t tell the exact truth about the picture.”
Her look was so queer that he said in alarm: “What did you say about it?”
“We’ll talk of that later,” replied she—and his knowledge of her methods did not allow him to receive with an eased mind this hasty insistence on delay. “Mother wanted to know who you were, and, of course, I couldn’t tell her—not anything that would satisfy a woman like mother. She forbade me ever to see you again. I told her that, on the contrary, I’d see you this morning. She raved—my, how she did rave!” And Rix burst into peals of laughter. “You oughtto have heard! She’s so conventional. She accused me—but you can imagine.”
“Yes, I can,” said he dryly. “And she’s right—absolutely right. We’ll not see each other again.”
“Oh, but she wants to see you,” rejoined Miss Richmond. “She can hardly wait to see you, herself. She’s badly frightened lest you’ll not come.”
Roger let his absolute disbelief show in his face. There must somewhere be bounds to what this resourceful and resolute young person could accomplish. These assertions of hers were beyond those bounds—far beyond them.
“It was this way,” pursued Miss Richmond with innocent but intense satisfaction in her own cleverness. “I pointed out to her that, if I didn’t go to you and keep on with the picture, Hanky—that’s Peter Vanderkief—would realize I’d been flirtingwildlywith a strange man I had picked up in the woods and would break the engagement. And mother is set on my marrying Peter. So she sent me off herself this morning and took charge of Peter to keep him safe. Am I not clever?”
“I can think of nothing to add to what I have already said on that point,” observed Roger mildly. “I am actually flabbergasted!”
“So was mother,” said she with innocent, youngtriumph. “And she used just that word. Here’s a note from her to you.”
Miss Richmond took a letter from the pocket of her jacket and held it toward him. He made no move to advance and take it from her. Instead he made a gesture that was the beginning of a carrying out of the boyish impulse to put his hands behind his back.
“Do you want me to get up and bring it to you?” said she.
“I want nothing to do with it,” said he coldly. “I don’t know your mother. I’ve no doubt she’s an estimable woman, but I’ve no time to enlarge the circle of my acquaintances.”
Miss Richmond once more seemed astounded by this unmistakable evidence of an intention on his part to end their friendship absolutely. She looked at him incredulously, then questioningly, then haughtily. She put the note in her pocket, rose and stood very straight and dignified. “That is rude,” she said.
“Yes, it is rude,” admitted he. “But you have left me no alternative. There is only the one way to avoid being drawn into deceptions that are most distasteful to me.”
She eyed him as if measuring his will. She saw no sign of yielding. “You think I’m contemptible, don’t you?” said she, her tone friendly again.
“I do not presume to judge you. You have your own scheme of life, I mine. They are different—that is all. I don’t ask you to accept mine. You must not ask me to accept yours. You must not—shall not—entangle me in yours.”
She leaned against a tree, gazed thoughtfully at the rainbow appearing and disappearing on the little waterfall. When she returned to him her face was sweet and sad. He glanced up from his work, hastily fixed his gaze on it again. “You are right—absolutely right,” she said. “I’ve always done as I pleased. And everyone round me—the family, the servants, the governesses—everyone—has humored and petted me and encouraged me to take my own way.”
“I understand,” said he. “The wonder is—” But he deemed it wise not to say what the wonder was.
“You really can’t blame me, Chang, can you, for having got into the habit of thinking whatever I please to do is right?”
“Certainly I don’t blame you, Rix,” said he gently. “Considering what you’ve probably been through, you’re amazing. In the same circumstances I’d have been unfit to live.”
“You don’t despise me?” asked she eagerly.
“Despise you? Why, I couldn’t despise anybody. It’s a roomy world—room for all kinds.”
“You like me? Not love,” she hastened to explain, “just like. Do you?”
He smiled his friendliest. “Sure! You’re about the nicest girl I ever met—when you want to be.”
“Thank you,” she said, tears in her eyes; and she dropped back into her reverie, he resuming his work. There was a long pause between them—a pause filled by the song of birds thronging the foliage above and around them, and by the soft music of the falling waters. “Sometimes I think it’s an awful bad thing for people to have all the money they want—to be rich,” said she pensively. “That’s one trouble with our family.”
“Why, you told me you had to marry for money,” said Roger, much surprised. He hated liars; he was loath to believe that she had lied to him.
She looked miserably confused. “You didn’t understand quite,” she replied hastily. “And I can’t explain—not now. You mustn’t ask me.”
“Ask you? It’s none of my business.”
“I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean to deceive you,” pleaded she. “But—I can’t explain now.”
“Don’t think of it again,” said he, with a careless wave of one of his long brushes. It was no new experience to find that people supposed to be rich were merely struggling along on the edge of the precipice of poverty.Poor child, making one of those hideous sacrifices on the altar of snobbishness!—or, rather, being sacrificed, for she was too young to realize to the full what she was doing. Still, Peter Vanderkief did not size up so badly, as husband material went.
Silence for several minutes; she, seated again and studying his strong, handsome face with its intent, absorbed expression—concentrated, powerful. She did not venture to speak until he happened to glance at her with an absent smile. Then she inquired sweetly: “May I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Won’t you please come to dinner to-morrow night? That’s what mother’s note’s about. It would be a great favor to me. It would straighten everything out. You won’t have to do any further deceiving.”
He went on with his work. After a while he asked: “Does your Peter think you love him?”
The color mounted in her cheeks. But it was in the accents of truth that she replied: “He knows I don’t.”
“And if I came I’d not be helping to deceive him as to what you think of him?”
“No—on my honor.”
He looked at her. “No’s quite enough,” said he, in a tone that made her thrill with pride. “I think you are truthful.”
“And I am—with you,” said she, her expression at its very best. “I’d be ashamed to lie to you. Not that I’ve always been quite—quite—painfullyaccurate——”
“I understand. You and I mean the same thing when we say truthful.”
“Will you come?”
“Yes. Where do you live?”
She laughed. “Why, we’retheRichmonds. Didn’t you guess?” She nodded as if a mystery had been cleared up for her. “Oh, I understand now why you’ve acted so differently from what I thought you would when you found out.”
He smiled faintly. “I suppose I ought to know. But I’m a stranger here. When I was here as a boy the city lawyers and merchants hadn’t got the habit of coming up and taking farmhouses for the summer. Are you boarding or have you a place of your own?”
She had got very red and was hanging her head. Evidently she was suffering keenly from embarrassment.
“What’s the matter, Rix?”
“I—I rather thought—after yesterday—you sort of—understood about us,” she stammered.
He laughed encouragingly. “Good Lord, don’t be a snob,” cried he. “What do I care about where you live? I don’t select my acquaintances by what’s in theirpockets, but by what’s in their heads. A while ago you said you were rich—and then you said you weren’t——”
“Oh, I’m all upset,” interrupted she. “Don’t mind the way I act. We live on Red Hill. The house up there belongs to father.”
“That big, French country house?” said Roger, surprised. “I’ve seen it. I’ll be glad to see it closer.” He painted a few minutes. “I suppose you put on a lot of style up there. Well, I’ve got evening clothes somewhere in my traps. I used to wear them occasionally in Paris, but not much. Paris doesn’t go in for formalities—at least, not the Paris I know.... What time’s the dinner?”
“Half past eight.”
He groaned and laughed. “Just my bedtime. But I’ll brace myself and show up awake.... I wonder if I’ve got an evening shirt.” He happened to glance at her, was struck by a queer gleam in her gray eyes. “What now?”
“Nothing—nothing,” she hastened to assure him. “Just some silliness. I’m full of it.”
He went on painting, and presently resumed his soliloquizing: “May have to come in ordinary clothes. But that wouldn’t be a killing matter—would it?... This isn’t town—it’s backwoods.... I’ve heard some sorts of Americans have got to be worse than the Englishfor agitation about petty little forms. Are yours that sort?”
“Mother’s a dreadful snob,” said she weakly.
“Well, I’ll do the best I can,” was his careless reply. “Perhaps it’ll be just as well if I have to horrify her.” He laughed absently.
“I hope you’ll do the best you can,” pleaded she. “For my sake.”
He looked amused. “You don’t want her to think you picked up a hooligan—eh?”
“Oh, I don’t care what she thinks—not deep down,” cried the girl. “I don’t care what anybody thinks about you—not really. But on the surface—I’m—I’m a horrible snob, too.”
“All right. I’ll try not to disgrace you utterly.”
She reflected absently. Presently she interrupted his painting with “Heck and father are both small. But Hank—I might send you down one of Hank’s shirts. He’s almost as big as you—in the way of size. And I could get my maid to borrow one from his valet——”
His expression—amused, intensely, boyishly amused—halted her. She had been blushing. She flamed scarlet, looked as if she were about to sink with humiliation. Then she lifted her head proudly and a strange light came into her eyes—a light that made him quail.“Anyway you please,” she said—and the words came jerkily—“Anythingyouplease.” And she fled.
He stared after her until she was lost to view among the rocks and bushes. He held the brush poised before the canvas—laid it down again—gazed at the radiant figure he was conjuring in the midst of his picture. He drew a huge breath. “Well, to-morrow night will be the finish,” he muttered. “And it’s high time.”