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 Andrés 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.