The Blue Ridge

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19. See Yourself



At sound of Parker's familiar tones, Boomer and Mrs. Boomer barked joyously.

"Delighted to have you again In our midst - deelighted!" they seemed to say.

Vernaluska sprang to her feet and backed away. She watched the young man curiously as he sat up on the floor, cast a confused glance around, started to lift his right hand, then substituted the left with which to clasp his forehead.

"Win you give me a drink, please?"

A broken bit of the erstwhile container she pushed toward him with one toe of her clumsy, country shoes.

"YouVe done given yourself all the drinks that were."

"I mean water - a drink of cold water."

At the suffering note of this specification, she took a tin cup to the bucket outside and brought It to him brimming. Again he started to use his right hand, again substituted the left.

"Thank you," he said, both before and after draining the cup. Then: "Would you mind getting me another?"

This he accepted with the same confusion of impulse - thanked her, drained It, thanked her again. Later he lifted and examined his right hand and arm. The blanched, twisted look of his face showed that he was beginning to realize the pain of it. His next words showed, too, that he appreciated the nature of the dressing.

"Who was it told me," he puzzled, "that you have the healingest hands In the world?"

The girl made no reply, but that he did not seem to miss.

He was holding his forehead tightly with his left, his eyes staring from under at the mangled remains of a little, red, furry body nearby.

"Only a wretched squirrel, torn limb from limb," he said. "And I thought "

An urgent look came into his face. His left hand, lifted to the table top, helped him to his feet. He crossed the room to his easel.

"Thank God for His miracles!" he exclaimed on seeing the painting unharmed. Into a chair just behind he sat down suddenly. "Tell me, what do you think of It?" he asked the girl.

"What do I think?"

The fierce repetition shot like a bullet Into his dulled sensibilities. He turned to look at his picture's original. She had retreated to the fireplace. When his glance met hers, she covered her face with both hands.

"Do you reckon any nice girl would admire to be Insulted thataway?" she demanded in turn. "Did you count on my not recognizing It? You get a likeness too good for that - better than the last revenue sneak - than any of them."

The young man arose and approached her, his effort to get above the miseries of his mind and body apparent. The fact that she deliberately turned her back upon him brought increased force to his halting plea.

"Verne, you still think that of me? If I were not what I say I am, you might accuse me of insulting you, but think a minute. Lord knows I have no reason to be vain about myself, but does my work look like that of a pretender? I am a good many things I ought not to be, but I am not a revenuer. The best of me - the artist of me - painted you, not the man. I am happy - almost prayerful in my happiness that you see yourself in it. If my mother were living, Verne, I should want her to know you - to see the fine creature whom I - I "

He paused, confused over the delicate task of overcoming the outraged modesty of this girl so close, yet not close enough, to Nature.

She seemed not to have heard him. Her eyes were on the mantel shelf. He noted with her the hardened puddles of wax from last night's illumination. At one end stood the photograph of Sylvia in its purple leather frame.

Her attention settled upon the alluring, pictured face. She gazed upon the flower eyes, the gentle* lips, the cloud of ash-blond hair lighted by a master photographer into a haloesque effect, the depths of the decolletage which revealed more than It concealed the attraction of girlish curves.

To Parker the moment seemed long before Ver1 naluska turned and, for the first time since his stupor, really looked at her inebriate. The red of her outspoken resentment still mottled her cheeks, but her eyes held a question. Her lips opened, as If about to voice it, then closed in a stiff line.

"That," Parker answered, "is a picture of the woman I always have respected most in the world - that Is, most until I met you."

"Is she, then, a woman grown?" Vernaluska's surprise seemed genuine. "I calculated she was just a child."

He nodded. "Looking at it, I never notice that the subject isn't completely dressed. We think a whole lot more of the beauty in which God Himself clothes a woman - we artists - than of what her dressmaker supplies. You have artistic appreciation, too, Verne. Don't you agree with me?"

"I reckon a collar of any goods, even a flower, would spoil her," the girl of the mountains admitted.

Her glance swerved, from a guilty remembrance of the correction of his painting which she had been about to make when the first move of his return to consciousness had interrupted.

"Likely you don't mean any harm using my face and my" - she hesitated, then finished bravely enough - "my hair in your picture. Likely I'm too particular about myself. You see, I've never worn what you city folk would call a party dress. I had a graduation one, though - white organdy with a lavender sash. It cost several jugs of bumblings. The girls at the school over across the mountains said it was beautiful, but, at that, it wasn't what your kind would call a party dress."

"You child - you real girl!" Above his pity for himself, pity for her arose in Parker that she had missed the thousand-and-one soft perquisites of girlhood which her loveliness of looks and thoughts deserved. Returning to the table, he gazed across at her wistfully. "I am glad you believe that I feel no disrespect in painting you as Spring. There is nothing now, is there, to prevent our being friends?

"Triends?"

"Yes."

'"Friends!"

At her caustic repetition, he felt disturbed anew.

"Why not? You have shown yourself friendly in acts, if not in words. You must like me a little, or you wouldn't have been so kind to me ever since that first day."

"Like you? I despise you!"

Parker eased his right arm as best he could on the table-top and looked up at her, deeply distressed. "I don't wish to seem over-Insistent, but if you despise me, why did you come to see me to-day - why that other day when "

"Hasn't somebody got to keep watch over a revenue slick?" she snapped. "I persuaded my folks to appoint me for this particular job."

"But you took the cartridges out of the gun yesterday to save me."

"To save youl There's a nary thought in anything I've done except to save my pappy and my brother from the consequences of their foollshment. I want to get them out of danger from the law before the law gets them in. So you calculated I was keen about you - I, Verney Metcalf - because I'd taken notice of your existence, because I had my own reasons for toting you that jug of bumbllngs?"

"I promised - haven't I kept my promise?"

"For a day, yes. But you've done more than keep your promise. Whether you are a revenuer or not, you're a right poor excuse of a man. Look around at the cabin, at the floor, at yourself. Then look at that picture and think what you ought to be."

"You think my picture good?"

"Good? It is wonderful/ It is so wonderful that it, not you, has done wheedled me into forgiving you for imagining what no mortal man has ever seen of me. It is so wonderful that when I look at it, when I think "

Her voice faltered in a sob.

Surprised, the artist concentrated in his regard of her.

She was standing before the easel, her hands clasped against the rounded busts which he had dared to portray. Something sparkled down the crimson of her cheeks.

Peering more closely, he saw, to his joy and dismay, that two tears had stumbled from her eyes.

"Verne," he whispered over the wall which she was raising between them. "Verne."

"Oh, it ain't the looks of It that gets me - I don't admire myself enough for that. It's the - the "

Again she fumbled for expression.

"Inspiration - the promise of creation fulfilled - Spring," he supplied. "My picture must be good!"

She turned on him as if to slay him for his exultation.

"I reckon I can pity a good-for-nothing unfortunate as much as anybody, but you "

"Don't say that you despise me again, Verne. Don't be too hard on me."

"Too hard on you, when youVe been given everything - a body that ought to be strong, a mind that ought to be clean, education, talent, training? What right have you got to be bound up in yourself and your appetite?"

"Just what the Parker fossils have always argued I"

At her stare, he amplified: "My progenitors, you know. They were a pretty decent lot, I guess. One thing Is sure, they are more persevering dead than most people living. They never let up on me when I'm sober. That's one reason I drink - to get away from them. I won't let them or anybody else make up my mind for me."

"You mean you swiggle this way just from mule ornerlness?"

"That was it originally - from perversity. But now I've come to depend on It for excitement. You see, I've been sort of a sensational drinker."

"And proud of It?"

"Not any more. What you don't see is that I intended never to be this way again. Being a Parker, I always keep my word to other people, and I thought I could keep this word to myself. I didn't dream I had degenerated into such a puny thing. I am disappointed and - and ashamed. I want to grow strong. I must get back my self-respect and yours. I - I seem to need help, don't I?"

She glanced toward the photograph on the mantel. "I reckon nothing outside a man's self can help him much. If he don't pleasure in cleanness."

"But I do - from my heart I do." Parker's face showed emotion. Haltingly, he uplifted a sort of prayer: "You are so strong, Verne; won't you help me to grow strong? Last night, before I lost myself, you seemed to be bringing life. That's how I came to paint your picture. If you have trust enough, mercy enough, won't you befriend me? Won't you - can't you even pity me?"

Her eyes were now full on his, consideringly.

"I can pity, yes," she admitted, "and I, too, can keep my word to another - to you, if I give it I"

"Then, Verne, inspire me and give me your word! Yours is the spirit of the picture - Spring, that can make things grow up from the dead. You find me beaten to earth from my long winter of gluttony; won't you help me to lift myself, help me to grow?"