Steele himself had not been a failure at his art. There was in him no
want of that sensitive temperament and dream-fire which gives the
artist, like the prophet, a better sight and deeper appreciation than
is accorded the generality. The only note missing was the necessity
for hard application, which might have made him the master where he
was satisfied to be the dilettante. The extreme cleverness of his
brush had at the outset been his handicap, lulling the hard sincerity
of effort with too facile results. Wealth, too, had drugged his
energies, but had not crippled his abilities. If he drifted, it was
because drifting in smooth seas is harmless and pleasant, not because
he was unseaworthy or fearful of stormier conditions. In Saxon, he had
not only recognized a greater genius, but found a friend, and with the
insouciance of a graceful philosophy he reasoned it out to his own
contentment. Each craft after its own uses! Saxon was meant for a
greater commerce. His genius was intended to be an argosy, bearing
rich cargo between the ports of the gods and those of men. If, in the
fulfillment of that destiny, the shallop of his own lesser talent and
influence might act as convoy and guide, luring the greater craft into
wider voyaging, he would be satisfied. Just now, that guidance ought
to be away from the Marston influence where lay ultimate danger and
limitation. He was glad that where people discussed Frederick Marston
they also discussed his foremost disciple. Marston himself had loomed
large in the star-chart of painting only a dozen years ago, and was
now the greatest of luminaries. His follower had been known less than
half that long. If he were to surpass the man he was now content to
follow, he must break away from Marston-worship and let his maturer
efforts be his own--his ultimate style his own. Prophets and artists
have from the beginning of time arisen from second place to a
preeminent first--pupils have surpassed their teachers. He had hoped
that these months in a new type of country and landscape would
slowly, almost insensibly, wean Saxon away from the influence that had
made his greatness and now in turn threatened to limit its scope.
The cabin to which he brought his guest was itself a reflection of
Steele's whim. Fashioned by its original and unimaginative builders
only as a shelter, with no thought of appearances, it remained, with
its dark logs and white "chinking," a thing of picturesque beauty. Its
generous stone chimneys and wide hearths were reminders of the ancient
days. Across its shingled roof, the sunlight was spotted with shadows
thrown down from beeches and oaks that had been old when the Indian
held the country and the buffalo gathered at the salt licks. Vines of
honeysuckle and morning-glory had partly preempted the walls. Inside
was the odd mingling of artistic junk that characterizes the den of
the painter.
Saxon's enthusiasm had been growing that morning since the automobile
had left the city behind and pointed its course toward the line of
knobs. The twenty-mile run had been a panorama sparkling with the life
of color, tempered with tones of richness and soft with haunting
splendor. Forest trees, ancient as Druids, were playing at being young
in the almost shrill greens of their leafage. There were youth and
opulence in the way they filtered the sun through their gnarled
branches with a splattering and splashing of golden light. Blossoming
dogwood spread clusters of white amid endless shades and conditions of
green, and, when the view was not focused into the thickness of
woodland interiors, it offered leagues of yellow fields and tender
meadows stretching off to soberer woods in the distance. Back of all
that were the hills, going up from the joyous sparkle of the middle
distance to veiled purple where they met the bluest of skies. Saxon's
fingers had been tingling for a brush to hold and his lids had been
unconsciously dropping, that his eyes might appraise the colors in
simplified tones and values.
At last, they had ensconced themselves, and a little later Saxon
emerged from the cabin disreputably clad in a flannel shirt and
briar-torn, paint-spotted trousers. In his teeth, he clamped a
battered briar pipe, and in his hand he carried an equally battered
sketching-easel and paint-box.
Steele, smoking a cigar in a hammock, looked up from an art journal at
the sound of a footstep on the boards.
"Did you see this?" he inquired, holding out the magazine. "It would
appear that your eccentric demi-god is painting in Southern Spain. He
continues to remain the recluse, avoiding the public gaze. His genius
seems to be of the shrinking type. Here's his latest sensation as it
looks to the camera."
Saxon took the magazine, and studied the half-tone reproduction.
"His miracle is his color," announced the first disciple, briefly.
"The black and white gives no idea. As to his personality, it seems to
be that of the _poseur_--almost of the snob. His very penchant for
frequent wanderings incognito and revealing himself only through his
work is in itself a bid for publicity. He arrogates to himself the
attributes of traveling royalty. For my master as the man, I have
small patience. It's the same affectation that causes him to sign
nothing. The arrogant confidence that no one can counterfeit his
stroke, that signature is superfluous."
Steele laughed.
"Why not show him that some one can do it?" he suggested. "Why not
send over an unsigned canvas as a Marston, and drag him out of his
hiding place to assert himself and denounce the impostor?"
"Let him have his vanities," Saxon said, almost contemptuously. "So
long as the world has his art, what does it matter?" He turned and
stepped from the low porch, whistling as he went.
The stranger strolled along with a free stride and confident bearing,
tempted by each vista, yet always lured on by other vistas beyond.
At last, he halted near a cluster of huge boulders. Below him, the
creek reflected in rippled counterpart the shimmer of overhanging
greenery. Out of a tangle of undergrowth beyond reared two slender
poplars. The middle distance was bright with young barley, and in the
background stretched the hills in misty purple.
There, he set up his easel, and, while his eyes wandered, his fingers
were selecting the color tubes with the deft accuracy of the pianist's
touch on the keys.
For a time, he saw only the thing he was to paint; then, there rose
before his eyes the face of a girl, and beyond it the sinister visage
of the South American. His brow darkened. Always, there had lurked in
the background of his thoughts a specter, some Nemesis who might at
any moment come forward, bearing black reminders--possible
accusations. At last, it seemed the specter had come out of the
shadow, and taken the center of the stage, and in the spotlight he
wore the features of Senor Ribero. He had intended questioning Ribero,
but had hesitated. The thing had been sudden, and it is humiliating to
go to a man one has never met before to learn something of one's self,
when that man has assumed an attitude almost brutally hostile from the
outset. The method must first be considered, and, when early that
morning he had inquired about the diplomat, it had been to learn that
a night train had taken the man to his legation in Washington. He
must give the problem in its new guise reflection, and, meanwhile, he
must live in the shadow of its possible tragedy.
There was no element of the coward's procrastination in Saxon's
thoughts. Even his own speculation as to what the other man might have
been, had never suggested the possibility that he was a craven.
He held up his hand, and studied the scar. The bared forearm, under
the uprolled sleeve, was as brown and steady as a sculptor's work in
bronze.
Suddenly, he heard a laugh at his back, a tuneful laugh like a trill
struck from a xylophone, and came to his feet with a realization of a
blue gingham dress, a girlish figure, a sunbonnet and a huge cluster
of dogwood blossoms. The sunbonnet and dogwood branches seemed
conspiring to hide all the face except the violet eyes that looked out
from them. Near by stood a fox terrier, silently and alertly regarding
him, its head cocked jauntily to the side.
But, even before she had lowered the dogwood blossoms enough to reveal
her face, the lancelike uprightness of her carriage brought
recognition and astonishment.
"Do you mind my staring at you?" she demanded, innocently. "Isn't
turn-about fair play?"
"But, Miss Filson," he stammered, "I--I thought you lived in town!"
"Then, George didn't tell you that we were to be the closest sort of
neighbors?" The merriment of her laugh was spontaneous. She did not
confide to Saxon just why Steele's silence struck her as highly
humorous. She knew, however, that the place had originally recommended
itself to its purchaser by reason of just that exact circumstance--its
proximity.
The man took a hasty step forward, and spoke with the brusqueness of a
cross-examiner:
"No. Why didn't he tell me? He should have told me! He--" He halted
abruptly, conscious that his manner was one of resentment for being
led, unwarned, into displeasing surroundings, which was not at all
what he meant. Then, as the radiant smile on the girl's face--the
smile such as a very little girl might have worn in the delight of
perpetrating an innocent surprise--suddenly faded into a pained
wonderment, he realized the depth of his crudeness. Of course, she
could not know that he had come there to run away, to seek asylum. She
could not guess, that, in the isolation of such a life as his
uncertainty entailed, associates like herself were the most hazardous;
that, because she seemed to him altogether wonderful, he distrusted
his power to quarantine his heart against her artless magnetism. As he
stood abashed at his own crassness, he wanted to tell her that he
developed these crude strains only when he was thrown into touch with
so fine grained a nature as her own; that it was the very sense of his
own pariah-like circumstance. Then, before she had time to speak, came
a swift artistic leaping at his heart. He should have known that she
would be here! It was her rightful environment! She belonged as
inherently under blossoming dogwood branches as the stars belong
beyond the taint of earth-smoke. She was a dryad, and these were her
woods. After all, how could it matter? He had run away bravely. Now,
she was here also, and the burden of responsibility might rest on the
woodsprites or the gods or his horoscope or wherever it belonged. As
for himself, he would enjoy the present. The future was with destiny.
Of course, friendship is safe so long as love is barred, and of course
it would be only friendship! Does the sun shine anywhere on trellised
vines with a more golden light than where the slopes of Vesuvius bask
just below the smoking sands? He, too, would enjoy the radiance, and
risk the crater.
She stood, not angry, but a trifle bewildered, a trifle proud in her
attitude of uptilted chin. In all her little autocratic world, her
gracious friendliness had never before met anything so like rebuff.
Then, having resolved, the man felt an almost boyish reaction to
light-hearted gayety. It was much the same gay abandonment that comes
to a man who, having faced ruin until his heart and brain are sick,
suddenly decides to squander in extravagant and riotous pleasure the
few dollars left in his pocket.
"Of course, George should have told me," he declared. "Why, Miss
Filson, I come from the world where things are commonplace, and here
it all seems a sequence of wonders: this glorious country, the miracle
of meeting you again--after--" he paused, then smilingly added--"after
Babylon and Macedonia."
"From the way you greeted me," she naively observed, "one might have
fancied that you'd been running away ever since we parted in Babylon
and Macedon. You must be very tired."
"I _am_ afraid of you," he avowed.
She laughed.
"I know you are a woman-hater. But I was a boy myself until I was
seventeen. I've never quite got used to being a woman, so you needn't
mind."
"Miss Filson," he hazarded gravely, "when I saw you yesterday, I
wanted to be friends with you so much that--that I ran away. Some day,
I'll tell you why."
For a moment, she looked at him with a puzzled interest. The light of
a smile dies slowly from most faces. It went out of his eyes as
suddenly as an electric bulb switched off, leaving the features those
of a much older man. She caught the look, and in her wisdom said
nothing--but wondered what he meant.
Her eyes fell on the empty canvas. "How did you happen to begin art?"
she inquired. "Did you always feel it calling you?"
He shook his head, then the smile came back.
"A freezing cow started me," he announced.
"A what?" Her eyes were once more puzzled.
"You see," he elucidated, "I was a cow-puncher in Montana, without
money. One winter, the snow covered the prairies so long that the
cattle were starving at their grazing places. Usually, the breeze from
the Japanese current blows off the snow from time to time, and we can
graze the steers all winter on the range. This time, the Japanese
current seemed to have been switched off, and they were dying on the
snow-bound pastures."
"Yes," she prompted. "But how did that--?"
"You see," he went on, "the boss wrote from Helena to know how things
were going. I drew a picture of a freezing, starving cow, and wrote
back, 'This is how.' The boss showed that picture around, and some
folk thought it bore so much family resemblance to a starving cow that
on the strength of it they gambled on me. They staked me to an
education in illustrating and painting."
"And you made good!" she concluded, enthusiastically.
"I hope to make good," he smiled.
After a pause, she said:
"If you were not busy, I'd guide you to some places along the creek
where there are wonderful things to see."
The man reached for his discarded hat.
"Take me there," he begged.
"Where?" she demanded. "I spoke of several places."
"To any of them," he promptly replied; "better yet, to all of them."
She shook her head dubiously.
"I ought not to begin as an interruption," she demurred.
"On the contrary," he argued confidently, "the good general first
acquaints himself with his field."
An hour later, standing at a gap in a tangle of briar, where the
paw-paw trees grew thick, he watched her crossing the meadow toward
the roof of her house which topped the foliage not far away. Then, he
held up his right hand, and scrutinized the scar, almost invisible
under the tan. It seemed to him to grow larger as he looked.