CHAPTER X.
To Ailsa, wading blissfully in the cool, clear water, with her skirt pinned just above her pink, dimpled knees, and a wary eye on the lookout for crabs, there came from the top of the bank a sound like escaping steam, followed by a humble and contrite voice that asked:
“May I come back? I found the spring.”
“Then you may come—if you don't mind my bare legs. I'm dying for a drink.”
Joshua slid down in an avalanche of sand, holding the luncheon pail skillfully aloft. Ailsa, tiptoeing gingerly up the pebby beach, took it from his hands, removed the tin cup, and drank the sweet spring water with ecstasy, then handed the pail and cup to Joshua with a smile.
“Am I forgiven?' he asked anxiously.
“Of course you are. I know that you would no more hurt Mac than I would. I was angry because I was thinking of—something else.”
“Somebody else?”
“Yes. There was a man—a beast—at the place I ran away from. He beat Mac unmercifully one day, and for nothing at all. That was the reason I stole him. Just now, when he yelped, it made me think of that.”
She seated herself in the shade, drawing her skirt down to the trim, round ankles, and leaving the small, pink feet to dry in the kiss of the warm breeze. Joshua, his eyes irresistibly drawn to them, greatly envied the breeze.
He dropped down beside her on the short, brine-burned sedge.
“Will you promise never to be angry with me again?” he asked.
“I'll try. There is really no excuse for being angry with so nice a brother. But, you see, Josh, I've got a horrid temper.”
Again the grampus. Perhaps it was the “brother,” a relationship now far less attractive than at the beginning of their comradeship. Or it may have been Ailsa's reference to her “horrid temper.” Joshua stole a glance at her as she sat placidly waiting for her feet to dry sufficiently to brush away the sand.
He looked at her with a sort of reverence and a great wonder. “Was there ever her like?” he asked himself; and answered “No” in the same breath. Always sweet, always cheerful, he had seen her face conditions that would have tried the courage and tact of any woman he had ever known. There was about her that indefinable quality peculiar to some feminine natures that seems to disarm evil through the utter unconsciousness that such a quality exists. Neither, for that matter, did the usual conventions say much to her, perhaps because conventions are, after all, intended for those who cannot trust themselves without, and of such clay Ailsa certainly was not.
Joshua wondered what could be the extent of her sentiment of affection toward himself. He knew that she liked and admired him; in fact, she had frankly told him so. But at times it had seemed to him that, catching her unawares, he had read something deeper than this. The chances are that another man, more self-assured, would have decided long since that the girl had grown really to care for him, and that not as a sister; but Joshua's was a nature of extreme self-depreciation.
It was his honest belief that he was, at best, a very uninspiring individual, and a good deal of a fool. He had carelessly frittered away a c0onsiderable fortune, and that in ways that did not particularly amuse him. He had entertained extravagantly people in whom he had no especial interest; gone in for motor racing in France, and horse-racing in England; spent a small fortune on a shooting expedition in Central Africa, though himself but a lukewarm sportsman when it came to killing things.
Getting bored with painting in Scotland, he had gone to Dundee, chartered one of the many auxiliary steam whalers, and made a voyage to the arctic after bear and walrus; and, returning from this, he had spent a gay winter in Paris, Switzerland, and the Riviera. Monte Carlo, whither he went with the idea of trying to recoup his shattered fortune, had put the finishing financial touches on him; when, realizing that his fortune was a negative quantity—or would be when his debts were paid—he had returned to America with the cheerfully confident idea of going to work, like lots of the other chaps he knew, and making another pile, just as they did.
The story of his disillusionment in this regard it is unnecessary to tell. Suffice it to say that he quickly found, rather to his surprise, that it was considerably harder to make money than to spend it. The best that can be said of him is once he fully realized his actual commercial value, he accepted the situation cheerfully, and, following the sneering suggestion of old Jeremiah, promptly hunted up a job as a painter of signs.
At the first, the work had appealed to his whimsical sense of humor, and he got as much satisfaction out of the absurd fact that he—Archie Loveday—had become a sign painter as he did from the fact that he was thus enabled to earn as much as any other skilled artisan.
Just how long this happy-go-lucky state of content might have lasted it would be impossible to say. The chances are that it would not have been for any great while, and that once the novelty of the situation had worn off he would have joined the ranks of gentlemen adventurers of the cleaner class.
Then Ailsa had come to him, as if sent to show him what he had lost. At first he had accepted the girl in his characteristic spirit of happy-go-lucky whimsicality, finding much in the situation that was piquant. But as he began to discover that in Ailsa fate had sent him a feminine personality of such strength and sweetness as he had never thought existed, Joshua began to get thoughtful.
Next came the gradually growing conviction that the girl had the makings of a really great painter, for Joshua's critical ability was sound, though his work as a producer was not. This knowledge gave him further pause; and then, as if in bitter irony, it was destined that he should fall desperately and hopelessly in love with his charming and full-natured assistant.
It was here that the sighing state began. Joshua, like many other fatuous young men of his class, had been the careless recipient of many feminine favors, all of which had left him comparatively cold, and with the growing conviction that he was himself immune from the poison of invisible darts. But now it had come, and he asked himself miserably what he was to do about it.
Pride, honor, and a sense of fairness told him that even if he were man enough to win the girl's heart, he had absolutely no right to make the attempt. His natural modesty failed to tell him that he had won it almost from the very first, and that nothing could more firmly clinch what he had gained than his unconscious attitude of unselfish comradeship and strong, protective force.
And so he sighed and suffered, while Ailsa, who read him like a book, smiled softly to herself, and waited for the inevitable. It must also be admitted that both flourished on the régime.
So now he sat and sighed, covertly devouring her with his eyes from the top of her gorgeous hair to the tips of her pink little toes, and cursed inwardly the fate that had made him a fool and her a goddess who was destined one day to mount high in the achievement of art. He reflected that she was not for him, a sign painter, but that at any rate he might be the force to launch her upon a career. It was this thought which prompted him presently to say:
“I've been thinking it over, Rosa, and I've decided to stake you.”
“To what?” she asked, looking around in surprise.
“To set you up in business.”
“But I am in business—and a very congenial business, at that.”
“Nonsense! The time for joking has passed. Let's be serious for a bit. I've seen what you can do, and, believe it or not, I know. You've got to start painting. Real painting.”
His voice held a note almost of austerity that was quite new to her. Ailsa was not sure that she liked it.
“But how am I to start?” she asked. “It takes money, and a lot of time to build up a clientele. I'd rather paint signs with you, and be free to send back what I can spare to my people.”
“But suppose that in three or four years' time, instead of sending back, say, fifty dollars a month, you could send back two hundred and fifty? And you could do it, I am sure. You are a natural-born portrait painter. All you need is the start, and that I think I can get for you. I know a lot of good people, and most of the big dealers.”
“But it takes money to rent a studio and buy material.”
“I'll look after that end of it. That's what I meant when I said that I had decided to stake you.”
She turned to him a flushed, radiant face. The soft mist in her gray eyes was now almost rain.
“And do you think that I would be letting you do that?” she cried softly.
“Why not? You can keep track of what I advance you, and pay me back some day when you have arrived. No doubt I'll need it.”
“But what if I should not succeed?”
“No danger of that. I might even manage to get you some big orders for theaters and hotels and the like. You see, Rosa, before your dear brother”—he slightly accentuated the word—“was a sign painter, he used to fly pretty high. I've got lots of friends left, if I haven't much money. Fact is, I wouldn't have to paint signs if I could bring myself to take something for nothing. But you're not nothing, and I'll take what I can get for you.”
Ailsa was silent for a minute. She leaned over, and began to flick the dried grains of sand from her round ankles and rosy feet.
“But what will you be doing while I am getting my start?” she asked presently, in a very low voice.
“Painting signs. They won't be anything like what we've done together, of course, but I'm getting the swing of it now, and can always command the pay I was getting when you came to me. You see, sister, dear, it costs me next to nothing to live. I could easily let you have a hundred a month—probably a hundred and fifty. And I've got about five or six hundred saved from the wreck to start you in with.”
Ailsa began slowly to pull on one stocking, with no apparent regard for the proprieties so far as regarded a limb that might have aroused the envy of Latona, a goddess famed for the perfection of those members. Ailsa was not thinking of her legs at that particular moment. We cannot answer for Joshua.
“And then,” said the girl, talking apparently to her unwrinkled hose, “when I shall be arrived, as you say, and beginning to sell my pictures?”
“Then?” He looked a little puzzled. “Why, then you'll grow famous, I suppose, and the joke will simmer out of the name I christened you.”
“And how about you?” she asked softly.
“About me? Oh, I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that I helped to develop a celebrity.”
“I don't mean that. What will you do?”
Joshua shrugged. “Quit painting signs. You can pay me back, and I'll go to Alaska, or out to the South Sea Islands, or blow in my wad and join the Foreign Legion. I always thought I'd like to be a Chasseur d'Afrique. Devilish hot and dirty and heroic.”
“And do you really mean,” said Ailsa, trying her best to steady her voice, “that you have enough faith in my ability, and—and—affection for—me to slave away for the next three or four years to start me as a painter?” She snatched up the other stocking, and drew it on with a jerk that threatened to make it entirely, instead of partially, openwork.
“My faith in you as an artist is only equaled by my affection for you—as a sister,” said Joshua evenly.
Ailsa seemed struggling for breath as well as for her shoe. She secured both, and turned a rather pale face to Joshua, who was staring out across the placid waters of the Sound.
“And when would you wish me to begin?” she asked, with a tremor in her voice.
“As soon as we get back to New York. We'll look around for a studio to-morrow.”
“But who would look after me all this time?”
“You might get some other girl or woman to go in with you. And then I'll look you up from time to time, and see that you're all right, and beat the head off any loose joker that may have got fresh. My work won't take me far from town, and I'll always be within call at an hour's notice.”
“But—but” Ailsa turned away her head. The mist was rapidly precipitating into rain. “I don't want you to go to Alaska, or the South Islands, or the horrid Foreign Legion.” She choked a little.
“Well, but don't you see,” he answered lightly, “if I go to Alaska, I might dig up some large chunks of gold. Then I'd come back, and—and maybe forget that I was your brother.” His breath seemed to strangle him, and he stopped abruptly.
Ailsa turned to him suddenly, flinging out both her arms. Her face pale, except for her lips, which were carmine and trembling. The tears were pouring down her cheeks.
“I want you to forget it now!” she cried passionately. “I'm not your sister. I don't want to be your sister! I want you—you—just only you!”
And the next instant she was in his arms, her own clinging about his neck, and her tear-stained face crushed against his.
One can scarcely blame Joshua for behaving as he did for the next few seconds. Indeed, had he acted otherwise his history would be scarcely worth describing. There are limits to nobility. But for all of that, he held himself in hand most admirably, and when his famishing thirst for the hot lips crushed to his had been in some slight measure assuaged, he loosed her gently, and drew slightly away, his face pale, and his big chest heaving.
“There, there, sweetheart!” said he gently. “That sort of thing is strictly outside the contract.”
“But I love you!” sobbed Ailsa. “Don't you love me—just the least, wee bit?”
This appeal was too much for Joshua. He gathered her in his arms again, and the sacred rites were repeated with a frenzy by no means characteristic of coldness. Then, holding her closely to him, he spoke manfully what was in his mind, while Ailsa listened, sobbing the harder for the fact that she knew in her heart there was no appeal.
“Listen to me, my own darling,” he said. “I love you with every drop of blood in my body, and every fiber in my heart. But because I love you so much I am not going to let you throw yourself away on a wretched sign painter. We shall do what I have proposed, and then some day, if I can manage to do something worthy of you, I shall come to claim you for my own darling wife. So now, if you love me as you say, don't make it any harder for me than it is. Come, dear, dry your pretty eyes and we'll talk about the studio.”
“But I don't want the studio! I want to stay with you and paint signs, and b-be happy. Why won't you marry me now? What do I care if you're a sign p-painter? I'm one myself.” She clung to him desperately. “Think how happy we could be—just one long honeymoon, Josh—and, oh, mercy!—I don't even know your right name, n-nor you mine! Isn't it p-p-pathetic?”