Janet of the Dunes Part 7

For Janet had sunk down beside him, hid her head in her folded arms, and was sobbing as if her heart would break.

"What--in--I say! Miss--Miss--What shall I call you? For heaven's sake, tell me what I've done?"

"Oh! you've dashed every bit of hope I had to--to earn money--and--and fame--for Cap'n Daddy and me!"

The young artist laid his sketch tenderly aside to dry. It was too precious to endanger, even in this disturbed moment. Once it was safe, he stood his full height of six feet two, put his hands in his jacket pockets, looked down upon the heaving body of the Spirit of the Dunes, and said firmly:

"You've got to explain yourself, you know. I don't want to use force, but really you must look me in the face and try to make me understand."

Janet lowered her hands at once and gazed upward with her eyes full of distress and apology.

"I do not know what you will think of me! I'm ashamed, indeed I am. But, well, you cannot understand. I never minded so much when I saw the things--the others did! Their pictures didn't look like anything real--anything like our dunes and the Hills, and I thought I could learn, at least, to do such pictures as theirs, and get money! But you've shown me--another kind! I can never, never learn to make such pictures as that!" Her sorrowful gaze fell upon the sketch, drying near by. "And, you--you seem to be taking something away from us. Something that is ours, not yours at all! What right have you to take the Hills--and _me_, without paying well for the privilege?"

During this harangue the man had stood motionless, gazing in growing astonishment upon the radiant uplifted face which was swept by pa.s.sion's clouds, as the June sky was swept by softer ones.

"By Jove!" he muttered at last; and a smile broke upon his handsome, browned face. "You Quintonites make us pay well for all we get. You swoop down upon us like a cloud of vultures, or witnesses; but it's driving the bargain pretty hard, when you set a price upon what we see in it all, and what heaven meant should be free. As for you--" he paused, and threw himself full length upon the sand and laughed good humoredly, "I beg your pardon. I really had no right to put you in the picture without your permission. I thought, as true as heaven hears me, that you were like--well, the other girls of the place, and they coax to have themselves 'taken' as they call it. Now that I hear you speak, I see that you are different, and I beg your pardon, 'pon my word, I do.

And what's more, the sketch is yours, unless you give me the right to keep it. I'm afraid I cannot make you understand my position, but the temptation to put you in the picture was too much for mortal painter-man!"

Janet's face cleared slowly.

"If you mean I'm different from the other girls, because I speak differently," she said slowly, "I can tell you that it is simply because I've listened and read more. I hate to use words badly, when they sound so much better right. I practise, but I'm just a Quinton girl."

"Oh! I see. You have higher aspirations? That is why you wanted to learn to paint?"

"No! At least, that isn't the real reason. I want money!"

"Great Scott!"

There was mockery and a new pleasure in the man's voice now. He was open to revelation in regard to Quinton characteristics, and he sensed an original type before him.

"You to tell me in this brutally frank manner that you want money! You with _that_ face!"

A flush tinged the bronze of Janet's cheeks again.

"Yes: I want money!" she said defiantly. "Some get it by waiting on table. Some feed you and wash for you. I cannot do those things, I just cannot!"

"Heaven forbid!"

"But there must be some way?"

The frank, almost boyish tone disarmed the listener. His smile fled and when he spoke the mockery had departed. His better nature rose to meet the blind need in the girl's desire, and his artistic sense guided him to a possible path.

"I wish you would give me some name to call you by," he said. "You have mentioned Cap'n Daddy, am I to understand that your name is--is--"

"My Captain's name is Morgan: I'm Janet."

"Thank you, Miss Janet. I haven't a card, but Mr. Richard Thornly presents his compliments."

The humor of the situation began to dawn upon the girl.

"We are all captains down here," she explained, "we each have our captain. Mine is over at the Station on the beach. I'm staying just now with Captain David at the Light, while I'm looking for something to do."

"Miss Janet, I have a business proposition!" Thornly folded his arms.

"I've had an inspiration. During the three-quarters of an hour that you lay upon the sands, I saw you, not only as I saw you then and caught you, but I saw you flitting through several pictures. I even named the pictures, Spirit of the Dunes. I advise you for your own good, Miss Janet, do not struggle to learn to make daubs! It never pays. It's hard enough to make the best go. But you can help me, and together we'll create some pictures that will set the town gaping. What do you say?"

"I do not understand."

"Well, sit for me; be my model! Let me put you in my pictures. I'll pay you well, and if I sell the pictures, you'll have a kind of fame to offer your Cap'n Daddy that no girl need be ashamed of. Have you caught my meaning?"

"You mean, if I sit here upon the Hills--"

"Sit, stand, or lie among them," Thornly explained.

"You'll paint me, and pay me, and then take your pictures to the city and sell them?"

"Try to," Thornly laughed easily. "I'm one of the few fortunate devils who has sold a picture or two. My hopes for the future are good."

"I'll do it!" cried Janet. "It's about the easiest way to get the boarders' money I've heard of yet!" The laugh that rang out made Thornly stare.

"I did not know any one could laugh in quite that way," he said. "It sounded--well, it sounded like part of the air and place. Miss Janet,"--he spoke slower, feeling his way as he went,--"I'm going to ask you to keep this business arrangement private. The other artists would be quick enough to filch my prize if they could."

"No one else shall paint me," Janet a.s.sured him. "If I see a little wagon, I'll pull down my bonnet."

"Thank you. And those on your side, too, Miss Janet! Your Cap'n Daddy, and that Captain of the Light, I'd like to surprise them by and by. Is it a go?"

"Oh! yes!" The frank innocence in the girl's face again stirred Thornly.

"It's a go, if my watchers do not interfere."

"Your watchers?"

"Yes. I'm considered rather a--well, something like a s.h.i.+p that's likely to be wrecked. I don't know why folks are always thinking I may go on the bar, but they do. And several of them have an eye on me. I can almost feel Daddy's eye way over from the Station; and there's Davy! I shouldn't wonder now, if he were looking at me as he hauls the oil up to the lamp; and Susan Jane, chair-ridden as she is, has eyes that go out like a devilfish's feelers; and then there is Mark Tapkins! I'm afraid you'll have trouble with Mark's eyes!"

Thornly was laughing uproariously. "You open a vista of human possibilities that makes me about crazy," he said. "Your a.s.sociates must all be Arguses; but I like not Mark! Just where does Tapkins come in?"

"'Most everywhere!" Janet joined in the care-free laugh. She felt perfectly at her ease with this stranger now. Born and reared where equality and good-fellows.h.i.+p existed, she knew no need of caution. To dislike a person was the only ground for suspicion. To like him was an open sesame to heart and confidence. And Janet liked the stranger immensely.

"Mark comes in 'most everywhere," she repeated. "You'll have to look out for Mark."

"He loves you, I suppose?" Thornly forbore to laugh, and he searched the frank face near him.

"Now whatever made you guess that? He is not quite sure himself. He's never sure of anything, and I never suspected it until lately--you're rather keen."

"Well, we'll escape Tapkins's eagle eye. Forewarned is forearmed. Now see here, partner, can you blow this whistle?" Thornly took a small golden watch charm from his fob. It seemed a toy, but when Janet placed it to her lips and blew, it emitted a shrill, far-reaching call that startled her.

"I'll prowl in these parts every day, when it doesn't pour cats and dogs," Thornly explained; "and when you can escape the watch,--come to the Hills, blow the whistle and presto! change! I'll be on the scene before you can count twenty. Miss Janet, fame and fortune yawn before us--actually yawn. And now may I keep this?"

He picked up the sketch and came close to the girl, his shoulder touching hers, as they looked at the picture together. "Yes!" Janet said softly, the beauty of the thing holding her anew, "yes! You've made them your very own, the Hills, and me, and the sky and the water! It's very wonderful. I never saw anything like it. If you only forget, it is easy to imagine that this is a reflection!"