The San Rosario Ranch Part 21

"'E 'as not slept the night; 'e 'as nothing eat the day; I fear 'im _malade_. I follow him."

Galbraith continued his examination, and elicited from the witness the admission that he had remained outside the cabin that night, concealed in the bushes, and had only left it after Horton had taken his departure. He had then started to return, but after he had gone a mile he retraced his steps with the intention of cooking for his master's breakfast a brace of quail he had shot on the way. He found the cabin empty, and on the wall the portrait which he had seen sketched. It was where it would have been easily effaced, and so he had loosened the board on which the drawing was made, and carried it to his house.

Graham was now recalled and questioned.

"Mr. Graham, you have told the court that you are an artist by profession. Is it your habit to make drawings of persons of a striking appearance?"

"I have the habit of sketching any remarkable-looking people whom I happen to meet."

"On the night in question, were you impressed by anything uncommon in the appearance of the man who slept by the fire in the lodge?"

"I was."

"Did you make any notes of the impression made on you by the man?"

"I did. I sketched him as he crouched in the ashes of the fire."

"What materials did you use?"

"A charred piece of wood, and a smooth board in the side of the cabin."

"Would you recognize your work if you should see it?"

"Undoubtedly."

"By what means?"

"I should recognize it as you would your own handwriting; besides--"

"You have other means of knowing it?"

"My initials will be found in the upper right-hand corner of the sketch."

"Is this the sketch?"

"It is."

There was a craning of necks, and a murmur of recognition from those present who could obtain a glimpse of the strong drawing held up by Maurice Galbraith. Graham's words in answer to the last question were hardly necessary to prove the resemblance. Horton, sitting in his chair, his head thrown back, his hands clasping his knees, had all-unconsciously a.s.sumed the pose in which Graham had sketched him. The resemblance was indubitable, and the cheeks bore the b.l.o.o.d.y testimony of Ah Lam's hands.

This was evidence which there was no breaking down; and Horton, when the sketch was at last turned so that he could see it, gave an oath under his breath, which was not lost upon the jury. The twelve men with whom lay the decision of Horton's guilt or innocence were for the most part tradesmen and mechanics, the only exception being in the person of Mr.

Patrick Shallop, the mining king, who by some strange chance had been impanelled on this occasion. The voice of such a man would carry great weight in the decision. The case was evidently going against the prisoner. The evidence of the prosecution was very damaging, and Horton's friends in the crowd were greatly discouraged.

The trial occupied several hours, and ended in the conviction of Daniel Horton. Maurice Galbraith made a speech which has already become famous. He had induced a Californian jury to p.r.o.nounce a man who had killed a Chinaman guilty of voluntary manslaughter. He had obtained this almost unprecedented verdict, and a full sentence from the court of ten years' imprisonment. The efforts of the defending counsel to turn the main interest in the case from the chief feature, by endeavoring to implicate Graham in the attempted abduction, were useless. Horton's real confederate was found, and the truth of the matter arrived at.

Through the newspaper accounts of Millicent, published at the time of her rescue of Graham, these men had learned that she was a rich heiress, and had conceived the bold idea of carrying her off in order to extort a large sum of money for her ransom.

The flimsy tissue of lies which Pierson had woven was quickly unravelled by Galbraith. The fact that the jury had for a time been misled by the false evidence, made their verdict more immediately unanimous than it might otherwise have been; and the cloud which had for a moment overhung John Graham was dispelled as quickly as a noxious vapor is blown away by a brisk westerly wind. He was cleared of every suspicion. Galbraith had surpa.s.sed himself in his management of the case, even in the eyes of his warmest friends. Had he not been working for the woman he loved?

In exonerating his rival, he had done the only thing that in him lay to win Millicent's grat.i.tude. She had thanked him, and blessed him for his eloquence with tears and smiles. He had gained her friends.h.i.+p; and does not friends.h.i.+p soften into love more often than love crystallizes into friends.h.i.+p?

CHAPTER XIX.

"Je me dis seulement; a cette heure en ce lieu, Un jour, je fus aime, j'aimais, elle etait belle.

J'enfouis ce tresor dans mon ame immortelle.

Et je l'emporte a Dieu!"

"A letter for you, Mr. Graham."

"Very well; lay it down."

The burly landlady placed the missive on the small, unpainted pine table which stood near the artist's easel, and with a last glance at the feminine superscription, and the device of the golden Psyche which sealed it, left the room. It was late in the afternoon,--there would be only an hour more of light in which he could paint. Graham did not glance at the letter. If it had been a telegram it would have waited till the tender gray of the sky had been laid on the canvas. At last it grew too dim for him to distinguish the tints on his palette, and, throwing down his brushes, the young man rose and stretched his cramped limbs. He had not moved from his stool for four hours. As he paced up and down his narrow room, the letter caught his eye. He had quite forgotten its existence.

It was from Millicent. He stepped close to the window, and by the waning light perused the words traced by a hand that surely had trembled in the writing. Twice he read it through, as if not understanding its import. Then, with a groan, he cast the letter upon the floor, and sank upon a low seat near by. His head supported by his hands, his elbows upon his knees, he sat, the picture of despair. With a sudden movement he grasped the missive and crushed it between his two hands, as if to avenge upon the senseless paper the pain which it brought to him.

He could not bear it in the cold, dark room; the streets would be full of people who might divert him. He soon found himself in a crowded thoroughfare. It was six o'clock, and the city was full of hurrying men, women, and children returning homeward after the long day's work.

The girl from the millinery establishment under his room, whose sweet, childish face he had painted from memory the very day before, was just leaving the shop as he stepped into the street. She was very poorly dressed, with a hat which would have disgraced anybody but a milliner's apprentice. Her dress fitted neatly, however, and she gave her close-cut jacket a tug to make it smooth about the shoulders before she reached the corner. A tall, pale, dyspeptic-looking youth joined her just outside the druggist's. Graham recognized him as the clerk in a dry-goods shop near by. Their greeting he could not but overhear.

"I am late, George--"

"Twenty minutes; I almost gave you up," in a surly tone.

"I am so sorry; don't be angry." The man hesitated a moment; then her pleading voice got the better of his ill-temper, and, taking her by the arm after the fas.h.i.+on of his kind, he led her across the street, and in a moment they were lost to Graham's sight. He next stopped at the cobbler's around the corner to call for a pair of boots which had needed repairing. The narrow stall was brightly lighted, and he saw through the window a little child holding up its face to be kissed. The cobbler's girl had just brought her father his supper. As Graham entered, the man pushed the little figure gently into the street. "Tell mother I 'll not be late," he said; and wiping his blackened hands upon his dirty ticking ap.r.o.n, he greeted the artist civilly, and proceeded to find his boots for him.

"They need re-soling, Mr. Graham, but I did not like to do the job without orders. The patches are all right."

Graham paid the man for his work, and went out. He had thought to find distraction in the street, but what he saw there only made him more desolate. He was alone, while all other men had some loving soul to greet them after their day's toil. The pair of lovers, the cobbler and his child, made him feel his loneliness more acutely, and emphasized painfully the news which the letter had brought to him,--Millicent was gone!

She had pa.s.sed as suddenly and unexpectedly out of his life as she had entered it. He had not seen her since that day in the court-room. And now she was gone, back to the Old World, to Venice the mysterious, the silent, to the old Palazzo Fortunio, with its lofty halls and marble corridors, back to the old home, which he knew could never be home to her again. All the color seemed to have faded out of his life; she had taken it with her. He suffered deeply, impatiently, angry at himself for suffering, yet powerless to forget the pain which the letter had given him. He picked it up again from the floor when he came back to the lonely studio, and marked that though the letter was crushed and torn, the device of the golden Psyche was still intact.

On the following day he found some consolation in his picture. He came back to it after his vigil with an uncherished grief, with less enthusiasm than before; but from that hour until he had laid the last stroke of paint on the canvas, his hand faltered not, if his imagination sometimes flagged. He could not serve both love and art. He had chosen his mistress, and would be faithful to his choice. He dared not think, while he painted, of the woman whose influence had so warmed his frozen existence. To do so seemed an infidelity to his Art,--a breach of faith which would not escape its merited punishment. So he resolutely put her from his mind, and labored day and night upon his great picture.

Summer and autumn were past, and the first month of winter was drawing to its close, when Graham finished his picture. He had painted it as he always did his best works, without interruption. From the morning on which he had made the first rough chalk sketch, until the day when he reluctantly drew the fine veil of varnish over his work, he had hardly looked at any other canvas. He was not satisfied with it,--what true artist ever is satisfied with his work?--and yet he was convinced that it was the best he had yet accomplished. He had sometimes realized what he had sacrificed for this picture; and as he touched in the crimson line of sunset, the fancy came to him, that the sky was stained with heart's-blood.

His few brother artists--there was but a handful of them in the city--and his pupils requested him to set a day for them to see the new picture, and Graham had consented. The young sculptor, who had the next room, threw open the door which separated the two studios, and both rooms were in holiday trim. Northcote had been in the country all the previous day, gathering flowers and ferns with which to deck the bare apartment. He placed a jar of roses before the picture with a reverent face; he loved the artist whose light purse had for the last two years kept a roof over his head and life in his body.

Graham was greatly admired by the knot of artists who lived, or starved, in San Francisco. They were the pioneers of art in the new Western land; and their work, if crude and untutored, was not wanting in certain strong qualities. Several of them were men of promise; and they were all wise enough to feel that in Graham's genius lay the brightest hope for a new school of art which should combine the knowledge of the Old World with the fresh vigor and hope of the New. They looked up to him as a leader, and he earnestly wrought and thought for their advancement.

It was for this that he had left Europe and his many agreeable a.s.sociates there, and returned to his own country, that whatever power for good there in him lay should redound to her glory. His fellow artists all revered him, and they would gladly have loved him; but the sensitive man shrank from that familiarity which popularity entails. In their work he was always interested; and in whatever touched the art they all served, he was active and ready to labor endlessly without recompense or recognition. But in their lives and personalities he felt no wish to mix; and so it was that he who labored most for them as an artist was farthest removed from them as a man.

There was but one verdict rendered by the men who stood grouped about the easel. It was a masterly picture, they all said. For an hour or more, one or another of them discussed certain technical points with Graham, who with kindled face listened and talked with his a.s.sociates, more himself than he had been since the night when he had first dreamed of the picture. The young sculptor was less loud in his praise than were the others; in his eyes the cla.s.sic subject was a trifle labored and cold. After having praised, the men felt at liberty to criticise; and if Graham had followed one half the advice offered to him, there would have been little suggestion of the original picture left.

Standing in a corner, with its face to the wall, was a panel which, as the little circle was about to break up, Northcote asked Graham's permission to show. The new picture was taken from the easel, and the neglected canvas put in its place. Its surface was dusty, and the young man wiped it with his silk handkerchief. There was a minute's silence, broken by the oldest of the party, a disappointed painter whose life had been one long series of calamities.

"My boy, this is worth a dozen of the other. It is the biggest thing you have done yet."

The younger men all chimed in, echoing the opinion of their senior.

Graham looked incredulously from one to the other; there was no doubting their sincerity. Like many another before him, he knew not how to distinguish his successes from his failures. The old artist, who had all his life been on the eve of painting his great picture, underrated the value of the new picture, but he was not mistaken in placing The Lovers far above it. Graham looked at it for the first time in many weeks, with that impersonal criticism of his own work which is only possible to an artist when a certain period has elapsed after its creation, and the mind has been occupied with other interests.