Folle Farine Part 44

She glanced at him half wistfully, half despairingly; she thought that he spoke in derision of her.

"You," he answered. "Why not? Look at yourself here: all imperfect as it is, you can see something of what you are."

Her eyes fell for the first time on the broad confused waves of dull color, out of whose depths her own face arose, like some fair drowned thing tossed upward on a murky sea. She started with a cry as if he had wounded her, and stood still, trembling.

She had looked at her own limbs floating in the opaque water of the bathing pool, with a certain sense of their beauty wakening in her; she had tossed the soft, thick, gold-flecked darkness of her hair over her bare shoulder, with a certain languor and delight; she had held a knot of poppies against her breast, to see their hues contrast with her own white skin;--but she had never imagined that she had beauty.

He watched her, letting the vain pa.s.sion he thus taught her creep with all its poison into her veins.

He had seen such wonder and such awed delight before in Nubian girls with limbs of bronze and eyes of night, who had never thought that they had loveliness,--though they had seen their forms in the clear water of the wells every time that they had brought their pitchers thither,--and who had only awakened to that sweet supreme sense of power and possession, when first they had beheld themselves live again upon his canvas.

"You are glad?" he asked her at length.

She covered her face with her hands.

"I am frightened!"

Frightened she knew not why, and utterly ashamed, to have lain thus in his sight, to have slept thus under his eyes; and yet filled with an ecstasy, to think that she was lovely enough to be raised amidst those marvelous dreams that peopled and made heaven of his solitude.

"Well, then,--let me paint you there," he said, after a pause. "I am too poor to offer you reward for it. I have nothing----"

"I want nothing," she interrupted him, quickly, while a dark shadow, half wrath, half sorrow, swept across her face.

He smiled a little.

"I cannot boast the same. But, since you care for all these hapless things that are imprisoned here, do me, their painter, this one grace.

Lie there, in the shadow again, as you were when you slept, and let me go on with this study of you till the sun sets."

A glory beamed over all her face. Her mouth trembled, her whole frame shook like a reed in the wind.

"If you care!" she said, brokenly, and paused. It seemed to her impossible that this form of hers, which had been only deemed fit for the whip, for the rope, for the shower of stones, could have any grace or excellence in his sight; it seemed to her impossible that this face of hers, which nothing had ever kissed except the rough tongue of some honest dog, and which had been blown on by every storm-wind, beaten on by every summer sun, could have color, or shape, or aspect that could ever please him!

"Certainly I care. Go yonder and lie as you were lying a few moments ago--there in the shadow, under these G.o.ds."

She was used to give obedience--the dumb unquestioning obedience of the packhorse or the sheepdog, and she had no idea for an instant of refusal. It was a great terror to her to hear his voice and feel his eyes on her, and be so near to him; yet it was equally a joy sweeter and deeper than she had ever dreamed of as possible. He still seemed to her like a G.o.d, this man under whose hand flowers bloomed, and sunrays smiled, and waters flowed, and human forms arose, and the gracious shapes of a thousand dreams grew into substance. And yet, in herself, this man saw beauty!

He motioned her with a careless, gentle gesture, as a man motions a timid dog, to the spot over which the three brethren watched hand in hand; and she stretched herself down pa.s.sively and humbly, meekly as the dog stretches himself to rest at his master's command. Over all her body the blood was leaping; her limbs shuddered; her breath came and went in broken murmurs; her bright-hued skin grew dark and white by turns; she was filled with a pa.s.sionate delight that he had found anything in her to desire or deem fair; and she quivered with a tumultuous fear that made her nervous as any panting hare. Her heart beat as it had never done when the people had raged in their fury around her. One living creature had found beauty in her; one human voice had spoken to her gently and without a curse; one man had thought her a thing to be entreated and not scorned;--a change so marvelous in her fate transfigured all the world for her, as though the G.o.ds above had touched her lips with fire.

But she was mute and motionless; the habit of silence and of repression had become her second nature; no statue of marble could have been stiller, or in semblance more lifeless, than she was where she rested on the stones.

Arslan noticed nothing of this; he was intent upon his work. The sun was very near its setting, and every second of its light was precious to him. The world indeed he knew would in all likelihood never be the wiser or the richer for anything he did; in all likelihood he knew all these things that he created were destined to moulder away undisturbed save by the rats that might gnaw, and the newts that might traverse, them. He was buried here in the grave of a hopeless penury, of an endless oblivion. They were buried with him; and the world wanted neither him nor them. Still, having the madness of genius, he was as much the slave of his art as though an universal fame had waited his lowliest and lightest effort.

With a deep breath that had half a sigh in it he threw down his brushes when the darkness fell. While he wrought, he forgot the abject bitterness of his life; when he ceased work, he remembered how hateful a thing it is to live when life means only deprivation, obscurity, and failure.

He thanked her with a few words of grat.i.tude to her for her patience, and released her from the strain of the att.i.tude. She rose slowly with an odd dazzled look upon her face, like one coming out of great darkness into the full blaze of day. Her eyes sought the portrait of her own form, which was still hazy and unformed, amidst a mist of varying hues: that she should be elected to have a part with those glorious things which were the companions of his loneliness seemed to her a wonder so strange and so immeasurable that her mind still could not grasp it.

For it was greatness to her: a greatness absolute and incredible. The men had stoned, the women cursed, the children hooted her; but he selected her--and her alone--for that supreme honor which his hand could give.

Not noticing the look upon her face he placed before her on the rude bench, which served in that place for a table, some score of small studies in color, trifles brilliant as the rainbow, birds, flowers, insects, a leaf of fern, an orchid in full bloom, a nest with a blue warbler in it, a few peasants by a wayside cross, a child at a well, a mule laden with autumn fruit--anything which in the district had caught his sight or stirred his fancy. He bade her choose from them.

"There is nothing else here," he added. "But since you care for such things, take as many of them as you will as recompense."

Her face flushed up to the fringes of her hair; her eyes looked at the sketches in thirsty longing. Except the scarlet scarf of Marcellin, this was the only gift she had ever had offered her. And all these reproductions of the world around her were to her like so much sorcery.

Owning one, she would have worshiped it, revered it, caressed it, treasured it; her life was so desolate and barren that such a gift seemed to her as handfuls of gold and silver would seem to a beggar were he bidden to take them and be rich.

She stretched her arms out in one quick longing gesture; then as suddenly withdrew them, folding them on her chest, whilst her face grew very pale. Something of its old dark proud ferocity gathered on it.

"I want no payment," she said, huskily, and she turned to the threshold and crossed it.

He stayed her with his hand.

"Wait. I did not mean to hurt you. Will you not take them as reward?"

"No."

She spoke almost sullenly; there was a certain sharpness and dullness of disappointment at her heart. She wanted, she wished, she knew not what.

But not that he should offer her payment.

"Can you return to-morrow? or any other day?" he asked her, thinking of the sketch unfinished on the sheet of pinewood. He did not notice the beating of her heart under her folded arms, the quick gasp of her breath, the change of the rich color in her face.

"If you wish," she answered him below her breath.

"I do wish, surely. The sketch is all unfinished yet."

"I will come, then."

She moved away from him across the threshold as she spoke; she was not afraid of the people, but she was afraid of this strange, pa.s.sionate sweetness, which seemed to fill her veins with fire and make her drunk and blind.

"Shall I go with you homeward?"

She shook her head.

"But the people who struck you?--they may attack you again?"

She laughed a little; low in her throat.

"I showed them a knife!--they are timid as hares."

"You are always by yourself?"

"Always."

She drew herself with a rapid movement from him and sprang into her boat where it rocked amidst the rushes against the steps; in another instant she had thrust it from its entanglement in the reeds, and pulled with swift, steady strokes down the stream into the falling shadows of the night.

"You will come back?" he called to her, as the first stroke parted the water.

"Yes," she answered him; and the boat shot forward into the shadow.