Shadows of Coming Events
Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange were idling in their camp, after breakfast
the next morning, when Czar turned his head, quickly, in a listening
attitude. With a low growl that signified disapproval, he moved forward a
step or two and stood stiffly erect, gazing toward the lower end of the
orchard.
"Some one coming, Czar?" asked the artist.
The dog answered with another growl, while the hair on his neck bristled
in anger.
"Some one we don't like, heh!" commented the novelist. "Or"--he added as
if musing upon the animal's instinct--"some one we ought not to like."
A bark from Czar greeted James Rutlidge who at that moment appeared at the
foot of the slope leading up to their camp.
The two men--remembering the occasion of their visitor's last call at
their home in Fairlands, when he had seen Sibyl in the studio--received
the man with courtesy, but with little warmth. Czar continued to manifest
his sentiments until rebuked by his master. The coolness of the reception,
however, in no way disconcerted James Rutlidge; who, on his part, rather
overdid his assumption of pleasure at meeting them again.
Explaining that he had come with a party of friends on a hunting trip, he
told them how he had met Brian Oakley, and so had learned of their camp
hidden behind the old orchard. The rest of his party, he said, had gone on
up the canyon. They would stop at Burnt Pine on Laurel Creek, where he
could easily join them before night. He could not think, he declared, of
passing so near without greeting his friends.
"You two certainly are expert when it comes to finding snug,
out-of-the-way quarters," he commented, searching the camp and the
immediate surroundings with a careful and, ostensibly, an appreciative
eye. "A thousand people might pass this old, deserted place without ever
dreaming that you were so ideally hidden back here."
As he finished speaking, his roving eye came to rest upon a pair of gloves
that Sibyl--the last time she had called--had carelessly left lying upon a
stump close by a giant sycamore where, in camp fashion, the rods and
creels and guns were kept. The artist had intended to return the gloves
the day before, together with a book of trout-flies which the girl had
also forgotten; but, in his eagerness for the day's outing, he had gone
off without them.
The observing Conrad Lagrange did not fail to note that James Rutlidge had
seen the telltale gloves. Fixing his peculiar eyes upon the visitor, he
asked abruptly, with polite but purposeful interest, after the health of
Mr. and Mrs. Taine and Louise.
The faint shadow of a suggestive smile that crossed the heavy features of
James Rutlidge, as he turned his gaze from the gloves to meet the look of
the novelist was maddening.
"The old boy is steadily going down," he said without feeling. "The
doctors tell me that he can't last through the winter. It'll be a relief
to everybody when he goes. Mrs. Taine is well and beautiful, as
always--remarkable how she keeps up appearances, considering her husband's
serious condition. Louise is quite as usual. They will all be back in
Fairlands in another month. They sent regards to you both--in case I
should run across you."'
The two men made the usual conventional replies, adding that they were
returning to Fairlands the next day.
"So soon?" exclaimed their visitor, with another meaning smile. "I don't
see how you can think of leaving your really delightful retreat. I
understand you have such charming neighbors too. Perhaps though, they are
also returning to the orange groves and roses."
Aaron King's face flushed hotly, and he was about to reply with vigor to
the sneering words, when Conrad Lagrange silenced him with a quick look.
Ignoring the reference to their neighbors, the novelist replied suavely
that they felt they must return to civilization as some matters in
connection with the new edition of his last novel demanded his attention,
and the artist wished to get back to his studio and to his work.
"Really," urged Rutlidge, mockingly, "you ought not to go down now. The
deer season opens in two days. Why not join our party for a hunt? We would
be delighted to have you."
They were coolly thanking him for the invitation,--that, from the tone in
which it was given, was so evidently not meant,--when Czar, with a joyful
bark, dashed away through the grove. A moment, and a clear, girlish voice
called from among the trees that bordered the cienaga, "Whoo-ee." It was
the signal that Sibyl always gave when she approached their camp.
James Rutlidge broke into a low laugh while Sibyl's friends looked at each
other in angry consternation as the girl, following her hail and
accompanied by the delighted dog, appeared in full view; her fishing-rod
in hand, her creel swung over her shoulder.
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
Andrés' 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 Andrés. 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 Andrés 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.