The San Rosario Ranch Part 12

"And yet you threw a spell over that fellow Galbraith?"

"Dear, there is a difference; cannot you see?"

"No; upon my soul I can't."

"I do not want to command even your thought for an instant; you must think of me to please yourself, not because I will it."

"What a strange girl you are, Millicent! Do you really love me so very much?"

"I love you better than my own soul."

"A dangerous thing, child; do not ever say that to me again."

"Why?"

"It shocks me; I cannot tell you why."

For answer, she gave him a rose from her breast with a childish gesture, as if asking forgiveness. There was an awkwardness, born of an unwonted shyness, in the movement which was more attractive to the artist than the most graceful att.i.tude he had ever seen her a.s.sume. He caught the hand with the rose and crushed them both in his two strong palms, as if to hurt her. She smiled, though her wrist reddened from the sudden pressure. It is more sweet to bear pain from those we love, than to receive kindness from a hand which is not dear.

As Graham was taking his leave, he asked Millicent for two books which she had promised to lend him. Barbara had joined them, and offered to fetch them for him.

"Thank you, Barbara, but I know just where they are."

"Is it not the Petrarch and your ma.n.u.script translation of Dante that Mr. Graham wants?"

"Yes."

"You left them on your table. I saw them when I went up to shut the blinds. You had better let me go, you are so tired."

"Yes, let Miss Deering get them for you; you are quite worn out with your magnetizing." He wanted to say one last good-night to her.

His lightest wish was her law; she nodded gratefully to Barbara, who disappeared, while Graham told her once more how lovely she was that night. When Miss Deering came back, Graham had already mounted his horse and Millicent was feeding the animal with sugar.

"You are sure you have the right books, Barbara?"

"Quite sure; I know them perfectly."

"Many thanks to you both, and good-night."

Millicent was in a wakeful mood that night. She went to the piano and played for an hour or two, as she only played when alone. Her hands drifted dreamily over the key-board, drawing out fantastic melodies,--themes which were composed and forgotten within the hour. In an obscure corner of the room stood a head of Beethoven. Her eyes were fixed on the face of the master while she played, and as the notes grew strong and sweet she smiled; when the harmony changed to a tender minor strain, the smile faded from her face. The music expressed the thoughts which drifted through her mind. At first she played the quick movement of a march, through which rang out the measured beat of a horse's hoofs; then the strain changed to a pensive nocturne suggestive of the forest at night. A tender slumber-song followed, in which her voice took up the melody, chanting loving words in the language of Tuscany. The light, delicate thread of harmony now broadened into a full consonance of sound, the chords following each other tumultuously, as if in translating one supreme moment of leave-taking. As she was striking the closing strains of this emotional improvisation, her powerful voice trembling with a pa.s.sionate _addio_, the sweet symphony of sounds was interrupted by a cras.h.i.+ng discord. She sprang from the piano startled and trembling, to find that a heavy vase of flowers had fallen on the key-board from the shelf above the piano. The metal jar was uninjured, but about her feet were scattered the petals of a bunch of white roses which Graham had plucked for her that night. So rudely was her rhapsody interrupted! She closed the piano, and, after restlessly wandering through the silent house, went to her own room, where she sat looking out of her window at the moon-lit hills. She could not sleep, she was full of unrest.

The gray morning light was filtering into Barbara Deering's room when she was awakened by a light touch on the shoulder. Millicent stood before her, gray as the twilight; she held in her hand a small parchment book.

"Barbara, what books did you give Mr. Graham?"

"The Petrarch and your Dante. What is the matter, Millicent? Have n't you been in bed?"

"No, I could not sleep. Here is the little Dante; where did you find the book you mistook for it?"

Barbara sat up and rubbed her eyes confusedly.

"Why, it was not where I had last seen it. I found it somewhere, in your jewel-box, I think. I am so sorry I made a mistake; 't was just like the Dante. Does it matter much?"

"I only wanted to know, Barbara; go to sleep again."

She spoke in a low, constrained voice, and glided quietly from the room.

Barbara, only half awake, gave a sigh, and settling her flaxen head among the pillows, again fell asleep and dreamed that she had stabbed Millicent with a knife, and that Graham was trying to stanch the wound with the leaves of a little parchment book.

When Graham arrived at his lonely tower, after making his horse comfortable for the night, he looked into French John's cabin to see whether all was well with the old fellow. The door was fast, and looking through the small window, the young man saw the wood-cutter lying on his hard couch, his gun beside him, his dog curled up at his feet. The creature growled at the sound of Graham's footsteps, but catching sight of a familiar face through the window, he gave a comfortable yawp, wagged his tail, and relapsed into slumber. The artist never slept without paying this last visit to his humble friend.

He stumbled up the steep tower stairs, and after fumbling with the clumsy lock, the door swung open and admitted him to his one room. After groping about in the dark for a moment he struck a light, and out of the embers on the hearth blew a little flame. He looked about the small room and laughed; this was a home, indeed, to which to bring a bride!

It sufficed for him; and he asked for nothing more commodious or luxurious than this old tower in the corner of the ruined church, with its grand north light and easy chair, its open fire and pallet-bed.

If he married,--when he married, he corrected himself, for he surely intended to marry Millicent,--there would have to be great changes in his life. He would be obliged to abandon his old tower, and live in a smug new house somewhere, with fuss and worry about servants, who would not please him half so well as did the old wood-cutter John. His work, ah, how that would suffer!--no more of the pleasant conscientious labor, the slow painting and study of that one supreme moment of the day when the golden copse was made tender by the light of the setting sun. He must hie him to the city and pa.s.s his life in painting fat, over-fed matrons in lace and diamonds, or expressionless minxes with costumes indicative of youth and ignorance. He would, perhaps, relapse into a mere mechanical portrait-painter, with as much imagination as a photographer; and his pictures would be ordered as theirs are, with the simple difference that the artist produces but one copy, while the photographer, with equal trouble, makes a dozen or ten dozen, or a single picture. He sighed aloud, and for consolation lit his pipe. He caught sight of the flower which had bloomed on a fair bosom and was now fastened to his coat, somewhat crushed but still fragrant. He carefully unpinned the rose and placed it in a small vase of water, and then proceeded to examine the books which Millicent had given him. Graham liked old books, and was delighted with the yellowed parchment copy of Petrarch. An inscription on the cover showed that it had once belonged to a monastery. On the fly-leaf was a slight sketch of a young monk's head seen in profile. It was a beautiful, clear-cut face, with delicate outlines and an earnest expression; beneath it was written, "Fra Antonio, Aetat 22."

"So this was brother Antonio, and he lived and died probably in the peaceful quiet of a Roman monastery. I wonder if he painted too, or whether he wrote hymns to all the pretty female saints in the calendar.

Brother Antonio must have lived and died without a helpmeet. I fancy he did none the worse work for that."

The thought struck him as ungrateful, and, as if to make amends for it, he took up the other little volume. It was a thin book bound in white vellum, with Millicent's name in illuminated text upon its cover. The covers of this small tome were closed with a gold clasp, which he finally succeeded in opening. It proved to be a diary in ma.n.u.script; he recognized the clear, delicate handwriting of the girl he loved. Yes, he loved her tenderly; why else should he press the senseless pages close to his lips, kissing the fair paper over which her fairer hand had pa.s.sed? He drew his lamp nearer to him and prepared to read the record.

It was written in Italian, and the first page bore a date five years back. He was somewhat puzzled, but supposed he had misunderstood what she had told him of the book. She could have been but a child then; she was now only just past her majority. How pretty she must have been at sixteen, before she had grown to the perfect womanhood which now became her so well! He fancied her in all the shyness and awkwardness of young maidenhood, with childhood reluctantly slipping from her, and girlhood anxiously leading her forward. Again he kissed the book, but reverently this time, and with a deep sigh as if it had been a holy one. If he could have known her then, before he had grown to feel so old, before she had learned that she was fair and young, how much easier it would have been for both of them. As he sat with unseeing eyes fixed on the faintly traced characters, beholding in fancy the little Millicent of half-grown figure and cool, loveless eyes stooping over the book, putting her white, childish thoughts into these words, it seemed to him that he heard a faint sound,--a sound that was deeper than the wind stirring the tops of the redwoods; a sound that made him s.h.i.+ver and turn the bright flame of the lamp a little higher. It was like a noise heard dimly in a dream, an echo of a woman's sob ringing faint and m.u.f.fled through a s.p.a.ce of years, was it, or of distance? It had grown quite cold; and he heaped an armful of brushwood on the dying fire, which soon shot up the little chimney with a cheery roar, and threw its bright light to the farthest corner of the room, touching the picture on the easel, bringing out the ugly little _netshukes_ from their shadowy corner, and s.h.i.+ning on the polished steel of the gun standing near the maulstick and fis.h.i.+ng-rod.

It must have been the wind, that faint sound which had seemed to find an echo in the beating of his heart. He drew aside the heavy window-curtains. Outside in the cool moonlight he saw the arms of the great trees swaying to and fro; below these the desolate ruins of the old church; all was quiet and deserted. There was the dismantled altar,--it was surely a trick of the moonlight and the trees, that shadowy semblance of a woman kneeling out there in the night, with wild hair, and arms cast about the broken cross, overturned this half century? Yes, it was a shadow surely; for a cloud pa.s.sed before the silver face of the half-moon, and when it had floated by, the shadow of a female figure had vanished. He dropped the curtain and turned with a sigh of relief from the mysterious half-light, with its revelations of deserted chapels and uncared-for altars, its shattered cross and phantom penitent. Inside his small domicile was warmth and light; and to drive away the cold, nervous feeling which had crept about him like an invisible network, he again took up the little parchment journal. Again he seated himself, and turned the first leaf. As he read he smiled, and occasionally turned over the sheets to see how many more pages remained to be perused. Presently the smile faded from his face; and the flames on the hearth burnt low and finally died, choked by the gray ashes. And still Graham turned the pages of the little journal with cold fingers.

The lamp grew dim, and the moon paled and sank beneath the horizon; the chill morning twilight crept betwixt the hangings, and showed him sitting cold and motionless to the slow-coming dawn. The last page of the journal had been turned long since; but he still held the book open, his eyes fixed on the final words.

CHAPTER XI.

"Dearer than woman's love Is yonder sunset fading in the sky!"

After that night's vigil, Graham took his gun, and packing a blanket and a few camping utensils in his saddle-bag, mounted his horse and rode away toward a hunting-lodge some twenty miles distant, where he sometimes pa.s.sed the night. His way led through the woods, where the bracing air, the light footsteps of the invisible animals, the fluttering of the birds in the trees, served to turn his mind from the painful thoughts of the past night. He had a part in this woodland life, and owned a kins.h.i.+p to the four-footed and feathered creatures who made the forest their home. His spirit was lifted to that close and intimate communion with Nature which is only possible to man when unfettered by human companions.h.i.+p. The cool, spicy air was sweeter than the kiss of maiden; the leaf.a.ge of the restless trees more tender than that of the gold-bronze hair he had so often praised. It seemed to him that the only real thing in all the fair sunny earth was himself; that the people whom he had known were but pictures seen in a dream. He lived, and breathed the scent of the pine-trees; he lived, and heard the cry of the blue-jays in their branches; he lived, and his eyes were filled with the glorious beauty of his world,--all his, with nothing to come between him and the fragrant Mother Earth. All that day he rode and walked through the tangled paths and trackless thickets, holding communion with sky and earth, content to live without retrospection or antic.i.p.ation. Just before sunset he shot a brace of quail for his supper; and when dark shadows had crept through the wooded places he built a fire on the hearth of the little cabin where he proposed spending the night. It was a rude lodge, a trifle less comfortable than French John's house, with wooden bunks around the walls, and trunks of trees roughly fas.h.i.+oned into seats. Under a certain board in the floor, known to him, was a hiding-place wherein were stored half a dozen tallow candles, with a bottle to serve as candle-stick, a pack of cards, an iron pot and spoon, a rusty jack-knife with a corkscrew, and, last of all, a flask of brandy, which it was a matter of honor always to leave half full. The shed had been built by himself and Henry Deering, and was occasionally used by them and their friends when on hunting expeditions. As there were no means of securely fastening so slight a building, there was neither lock nor bar to door or window. Over the fireplace was tacked a notice written in Deering's bold hand, which read as follows:--

"Gentlemen are requested to put out the fire and latch the door before leaving this shanty. Water to be found three rods beyond this spot to the north."

Graham found the candles, which he finally succeeded in lighting; and after making a meal of hard-tack and roasted quail, he filled his pipe and sat down on one of the bunks, tired out by his long day's ride. The painful thoughts which he had banished during the hours of daylight now took possession of him; and the brow, which had been calm all day, showed the three deep dints which trouble more than time had furrowed upon its n.o.ble expanse. He was alone again!--no more friendly sounds and sights to divert his mind and fill his eyes with beauty. Only his sad thoughts and the one great problem which was set before him to solve. His changeful, melancholy eyes were fixed vacantly on the floor.

They saw nothing but the shadowy vision of the night,--the figure of a woman amidst the broken altars of the old Mission church. The words which he had read in the little journal came thronging back to him in riotous haste,--those pitiful words of pa.s.sionate grief traced by the slender white fingers, which so lately had lingered tremblingly in his own strong brown hands. Could he forgive her? Poor child, poor child!

What was he, that he had a right to withhold his forgiveness for an instant? Let their lives be laid side by side, with every act and every thought bared to his view, and how did his life's record compare with hers?

Ah, if she had but told him the story, and not left it to accident to reveal the secret! She had deceived him! And the angry blood surged from his heart to his brow and settled there dully red. The stern lines of his face grew harder than the mask of a stone statue, and the expression of the chiselled mouth was terribly relentless. He would never see her again, never, never! What he had felt for her was not that highest pa.s.sion which melts heart and soul and body in one pure flame; for, without a perfect faith, such love is not. So he reasoned, pity and anger sweeping across his soul; and then, forgetting both in a great pain, he cried, stretching out his arms, "Millicent, Millicent, come to me!" At last the wearied muscles and tired brain and heart slowly, half-consciously yielded to a warm, close-folding influence which straightened out the lines on the brow, loosened the tight-drawn muscles, stole the fire from the deep eyes and the anger from the curved mouth. The grand head, with its thousand schemes and theories, fell back upon the couch; the skilful hand, with its nervous, delicate fingers, relaxed; a long, s.h.i.+vering sigh shook the body; and, with the fire-light s.h.i.+ning upon his stern beauty, Graham slept. The fire burned low upon the hearth and finally flickered out, leaving a bed of glowing ashes. The quiet of the night was broken by the long shrill wail of the coyote, but Graham stirred not. A light footstep sounded near the cabin, and a scratching noise might have been heard as the head of a great bear was raised to the level of the window. The sleeper's breath never quickened; and Bruin, after a long look and a vain attempt to push the door open, gave a growl and trotted off through the underbrush toward his own cosey cave under the rocky hillside near by. A young owlet, flying aimlessly through the night, flapped itself through an opening in the roof intended to let out the smoke; and finding it difficult to escape by the place where it had entered, settled itself comfortably near the sleeper, standing on one foot, and meditatively regarding the strange creature on the bed. To all these noises Graham was deaf; but when the clatter of a horse's hoofs broke the silence, that strange half-consciousness which gives warning of an unaccustomed sound called his slumbering senses to awaken. In a moment he was perfectly conscious, and, after feeling for his pistol, lay quietly down again upon the hard couch. The rider might not pause at the shanty, and as he was in no mood for company, he would give no sign of his presence there until it was necessary. The hope was a vain one; he heard the rider call to his horse with an oath to stop. After a slight pause, the door, which he had secured with a wooden bar, was roughly shaken. The new-comer, finding the portal fast, now showed himself at the little window and peered into the room. Seeing a rec.u.mbent figure, he cried out,--

"Who the ---- is in this shanty?"

"John Graham; and who is outside?"

After a pause the voice answered,--

"A man as wants a night's rest bad, and has got as good a right to it as anybody."