Part 49 (1/2)
”He will never master her. She will go on and on, after we are dead, through the ages, wooing men to--destruction----”
Becky s.h.i.+vered. ”I hate to think of things--after we are dead.”
”Do you? I don't. I like to think way beyond the ages to the time when there shall be no more sea----”
He pulled himself up abruptly. ”I am talking rather dismally, I am afraid, about death and destruction. You won't want to walk with me again.”
”Oh, yes, I shall. And I want to see your pictures.”
”You may not care for them. Lots of people don't. But I have to work in my own way----”
As they walked back, he told her what he was trying to do. As she listened, Becky seemed to have two minds, one that caught his words, and answered them, and another which went back and back to the things which had happened since she had last walked this bluff with the wind in her face and the sound of the sea in her ears.
It seemed to her as if a lifetime had elapsed since last she had looked at the Sankaty light.
II
When Becky wrote to Randy, she had a great deal to say about Archibald Cope.
”He is trying to paint the moor. He wants to get its meaning, and then make other people see what it means. He doesn't look in the least like that, Randy--as if he were finding the spirit of things. He has red hair and wears correct clothes, and says the right things, and you feel as if he ought to be in Wall Street buying bonds. But here he is, refusing to believe that anything he has done is worth while until he does it to his own satisfaction.
”We walked to Tom Never's Head yesterday. It was one of those clear silver days, a little cloudy and without much color. The cranberries are ripe and the moor was carpeted with them. When we got to Tom Never's we sat on the edge of the bluff, and Mr. Cope told me what he meant about the moor. It has its moods, he said. On a quiet, cloudy morning, it is a Quaker lady. With the fog in, it is a White Spirit.
There are purple twilights when it is--Cleopatra, and windy nights with the sun going down blood-red, when it is--Medusa---- He says that the trouble with the average picture is that it is just--paint. I am not sure that I understand it all, but it is terribly interesting. And when he had talked a lot about that, he talked of the history of the island. He said that he should never be satisfied until somebody put a bronze statue of an Indian right where we stood, with his back to the sea. And when I said, 'Why with his back to it?' he said, 'Wasn't the sea cruel to the red man? It brought a conquering race in s.h.i.+ps.'
”I told him then about our Indians in Virginia, and that some of us had a bit of red blood in our veins, and I told him that you and I always used the old Indian war cry when we called to each other, and he asked, 'Who is Randy?' and I said that you were an old friend, and that we had spent much of our childhood together.”
As a matter of fact, Cope had been much interested in her account of young Paine. ”Do you mean to say that he is still living on all that land?”
”Yes.”
”Master of his own domain. I can't see it. The way I like to live is with a paint box, and a bag; and nothing to keep me from moving on.”
”We aren't like that in the South.”
”Do you like to stay in one place?”
”I never have. I have always been handed around.”
”Would you like a home of your own?”
”Of course--after I am married.”
”North, south, east or west?”
She put the question to him seriously. ”Do you think it would make any difference if you loved a man, where you lived?”
”Well, of course, there might be difficulties--on a desert island.”
”Not if you loved him.”