The girl's embarrassment, when, too late, she saw and recognized their visitor, was pitiful. As she came slowly forward, too confused to retreat, Rutlidge started to laugh again, but Aaron King, with an emphasis that checked the man's mirth, said in a low tone, "Stop that! Be careful!"
As he spoke, the artist arose and with Conrad Lagrange went forward to greet Sibyl in--as nearly as they could--their customary manner.
Formally, Rutlidge was presented to the girl; and, under the threatening eyes of the painter, greeted her with no hint of rudeness in his voice or manner; saying courteously, with a smile, "I have had the pleasure of Miss Andres' acquaintance for--let me see--three years now, is it not?" he appealed to her directly.
"It was three years ago that I first saw you, sir," she returned coolly.
"It was my first trip into the mountains, I remember," said Rutlidge, easily. "I met you at Brian Oakley's home."
Without replying, she turned to Aaron King appealingly. "I--I left my gloves and fly-book. I was going fishing and called to get them."
The artist gave her the articles with a word of regret for having so carelessly forgotten to return them to her. With a simple "good-by" to her two friends but without even a glance toward their caller, she went back up the canyon, in the direction from which she had come.
When the girl had disappeared among the trees, James Rutlidge said, with his meaning smile, "Really, I owe you an apology for dropping in so unexpectedly. I--"
Conrad Lagrange interrupted him, curtly. "No apology is due, sir."
"No?" returned Rutlidge, with a rising inflection and a drawling note in his voice that was almost too much for the others. "I really must be going, anyway," he continued. "My party will be some distance ahead. Sure you wouldn't care to join us?"
"Thanks! Sorry! but we cannot this time. Good of you to ask us," came from Aaron King and the novelist.
"Can't say that I blame you," their caller returned. "The fishing used to be fine in this neighborhood. You must have had some delightful sport.
Don't blame you in the least for not joining our stag party. Delightful young woman, that Miss Andres. Charming companion--either in the mountains or in civilization Good-by--see you in Fairlands, later."
When he was out of hearing the two men relieved their feelings in language that perhaps it would be better not to put in print.
"And the worst of it is," remarked the novelist, "it's so damned dangerous to deny something that does not exist or make explanations in answer to charges that are not put into words."
"I could scarcely refrain from kicking the beast down the hill," said Aaron King, savagely.
"Which"--the other returned--"would have complicated matters exceedingly, and would have accomplished nothing at all. For the girl's sake, store your wrath against the day of judgment which, if I read the signs aright, is sure to come."
When Sibyl Andres went down the canyon to the camp in the sycamores, that morning, the world, to her, was very bright. Her heart sang with joyous freedom amid the scenes that she so loved. Care-free and happy, as when, in the days of her girlhood, she had gone to visit the spring glade, she still was conscious of a deeper joy than in her girlhood she had ever known.
When she returned again up the canyon, all the brightness of her day was gone. Her heart was heavy with foreboding fear. She was oppressed with a dread of some impending evil which she could not understand. At every sound in the mountain wild-wood, she started. Time and again, as if expecting pursuit, she looked over her shoulder--poised like a creature of the woods ready for instant panic-stricken flight. So, without pausing to cast for trout, or even to go down to the stream, she returned home; where Myra Willard, seeing her come so early and empty handed, wondered. But to the woman's question, the girl only answered that she had changed her mind--that, after recovering her gloves and fly-book at the camp of their friends, she had decided to come home. The woman with the disfigured face, knowing that Aaron King was leaving the hills the next day, thought that she understood the girl's mood, and wisely made no comment.
The artist and Conrad Lagrange went to spend their last evening in the hills with their friends. Brian Oakley, too, dropped in. But neither of the three men mentioned the name of James Rutlidge in the presence of the women; while Sibyl was, apparently, again her own bright and happy self--carrying on a fanciful play of words with the novelist, singing with the artist, and making music for them all with her violin. But before the evening was over, Conrad Lagrange found an opportunity to tell the Ranger of the incident of the morning, and of the construction that James Rutlidge had evidently put upon Sibyl's call at the camp. Brian Oakley,--thinking of the night before, and how the man must have seen the artist and the girl coming down the Oak Knoll trail in the twilight,--swore softly under his breath.
Chapter XXIII
Outside the Canyon Gates Again
Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange determined to go back from the mountains, the way they had come. Said the novelist, "It is as unseemly to rush pell-mell from an audience with the gods as it is to enter their presence irreverently."
To which the artist answered, laughing, "Even criminals under sentence have, at least, the privilege of going to their prisons reluctantly."
So they went down from the mountains, reverently and reluctantly.
Yee Kee, with the more elaborate equipment of the camp, was sent on ahead by wagon. The two men, with Croesus packed for a one night halt, and Czar, would follow. When all was ready, and they could neither of them invent any more excuses for lingering, Conrad Lagrange gave the word to the burro and they set out--down the little slope of grassy land; across the tiny stream from the cienaga; around the lower end of the old orchard, by the ancient weed-grown road--even Czar went slowly, with low-hung head, as if regretful at leaving the mountains that he, too, in his dog way, loved.
At the gate, Aaron King asked the novelist to go on, saying that he would soon overtake him. It was possible, he said, that he might have left something in the spring glade. He thought he had better make sure. Conrad Lagrange, assenting, went through the gate and down the road, with the four-footed members of the party; and Czar must have thought that there was something very funny about old Croesus that morning, from the way his master laughed; when they were safely around the first turn.
There was, of course, no material thing in the spring glade that the artist wanted. _He_ knew that--quite as well as his laughing friend. Under the mistletoe oak, at the top of the bank, he paused, hesitating--as one will often pause when about to enter a sacred building. Softly, he pushed open the old gate, as he might have pushed open the door of a church.
Slowly, reverently, he went down the path; baring his head as he went. He did not search for anything that he might have left. He simply stood for a few minutes under the gray-trunked alders that were so marked by the loving hands of long ago men and maidens--beside the mint bordered spring with the scattered stones of that old foundation--where, through the screen of boughs and vines and virgin's-bower the sunlight fell as through the traceries of a cathedral window, and the low, deep tones of the mountain waters came like the music of a great organ.
It is likely that Aaron King, himself, could not, at that time, have told why, as he was leaving the hills, he had paused to visit once more the spot where Sibyl Andres had brought to him her three gifts from the mountains--where, in her pure innocence, she had danced before him the dance of the mating butterflies--and where, with the music of her violin, she had saved their friendship from the perils that threatened it--lifting their intimate comradeship into the pure atmosphere of the higher levels, even as she had shown him the trails that lead from the lower canyon to the summits and peaks of the encircling mountain walls. But when he rejoined his friend there was something in his face that prevented the novelist from making any comment in a laughing vein.
As the two men passed outward through the canyon gates and, looking backward as they went, saw those mighty doors close silently behind them, the artist was moved by emotions that were strange and new to the man who, two months before, had watched those gates open to receive him. This, too, is true; as that man, then, knew, but did not know, the mountains; so this man, now, knew, yet still did not know, himself.
Where the road crosses, for the last time, the tumbling stream from the heart of the hills, they halted; and for one night slept again at the foot of the mountains. The next day they arrived at their little home in the orange grove. To Aaron King, it seemed that they had been away for years.
When the traces of their days upon the road had been removed, and they were garbed again in the conventional costume of the world; when their outfit had been put away, and a home found for patient Croesus; the artist went to his studio. The afternoon passed and Yee Kee called dinner; but Aaron King did not come. Then Conrad Lagrange went to find him. Softly, the older man pushed open the studio door to see the painter sitting before the portrait of Mrs. Taine, with the package of his mother's letters in his hand.
Without a sound, the novelist withdrew, leaving the door ajar. Going to the corner of the house, he whistled low, and in answer, Czar come bounding to him from the porch. "Go find Aaron, Czar," said the man, pointing toward the studio. "Go find Aaron."
Obediently, with waving tail, the dog trotted off, and pushing open the door entered the room; followed a few moments later by his master.
Conrad Lagrange smiled as he saw that the easel was without a canvas. The portrait of Mrs. Taine was turned to the wall.
Chapter XXIV
James Rutlidge Makes a Mistake
When Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange had said, "good-by," to their friends, at Sibyl Andres' home, that evening; and had returned to spend their last night at the camp in the sycamores; the girl's mood was again the mood of one oppressed by a haunting, foreboding fear.
Sibyl could not have expressed, or even to herself defined, her fear. She only knew that in the presence of James Rutlidge she was frightened. She had tried many times to overcome her strange antipathy; for Rutlidge, until that day in the studio, had never been other than kind and courteous in his persistent efforts to win her friendship. Perhaps it was the impression left by the memory of Myra Willard's manner at the time of their first meeting with him, three years before, in Brian Oakley's home; perhaps it was because the woman with the disfigured face had so often warned her against permitting her slight acquaintance with Rutlidge to develop; perhaps it was something else--some instinct, possible, only, to one of her pure, unspoiled nature--whatever it was, the mountain girl who was so naturally unafraid, feared this man who, in his own world, was an acknowledged authority upon matters of the highest spiritual and moral significance.
That night, she slept but little. With the morning, every nerve demanded action, action. She felt as though if she could not spend herself in physical exertion she would go mad. Taking her lunch, and telling her companion that she was going for a good, full day with the trout; she was starting off, when the woman called her back.
"You have forgotten Mr. Oakley's warning, dear. You are not to go unarmed, you know."
"Oh, bother that old convict, Brian Oakley is so worried about," cried the girl. "I don't like to carry a gun when I am fishing. It's only an extra load." But, never-the-less, as she spoke, she went back to the porch; where Myra Willard handed her a belt of cartridges, with a serviceable Colt revolver in the holster. There was no hint of awkwardness when the girl buckled the belt about her waist and settled the holster in its place at her hip.
"You will be careful, won't you, dear," said the woman, earnestly.
Lifting her face for another good-by kiss, the girl answered, "Of course, dear mother heart." Then, with a laugh--"I'll agree to shoot the first man I meet, and identify him afterwards--if it will make you easier in your mind. You won't worry, will you?"