The San Rosario Ranch Part 8

"I suppose so," jestingly.

"Bah! talk seriously for a moment with me. Why do you not marry Ferrara?

The poor fellow is perfectly pathetic in his devotion to you. You know, Barbara, that matrimony would suit you delightfully; there is nothing so becoming to a woman of your type as the background of a home of her own.

There you would s.h.i.+ne like Jessica's candle in this naughty world."

"I have never thought about it in the way of a background."

"Of course you never did; but, Barbara, do you think you could fall in love again?"

"Who knows?"

"Then I know that you have never been in love at all, _ma belle_--oh, I forgot, and have broken my vow to speak English pure and simple. Well, never mind, now we will talk about my broth, for I am very hungry. I feel like little Rosalba in the 'Rose and the Ring,' when she went about crying, 'Dutess Tountess, my royal highness vely hungy.'"

Long confidences had followed this conversation; and Millicent listened to Barbara's account of a childish romance with that deep interest which women all feel in the heart experiences of their sisters. Such sympathy is born in the feminine breast before the power of loving awakes there, and dies not when experience has brought nothing to it but grief and bitterness. The veriest chit of a girl of ten will read a love-story if she be allowed, while her brothers are inventing ingenious instruments for the torture of cats and nurses. The deafest grandam will listen with keen interest to her favorite grand-daughter's confession of love, and will be careful not to chill young hopes with her own sad memories.

All those who have loved truly, with that love which outlasts grief, death, and human pa.s.sion, which smiles at the cruelest neglect, which, like the love of the Most High, pa.s.seth all understanding, have sympathy and kindly interest for those who are in love. That "all the world loves a lover," is the truest of all sayings.

As soon as they were alone, Millicent told Barbara that she was anxious to return to the Ranch the following day. Since her first meeting with John Graham, her life had danced away through bright hours pa.s.sed in his company, in remembering past interviews, in looking forward to future meetings. In the long days when she lay weak and helpless, slowly recovering from the terrible drain on forces, nervous and muscular, she had thought long and deeply; and now that she was well, she did not wish to meet Graham, and avoided his presence. She realized, as she had not done before, that she deeply and irrevocably loved this man, whose name six months ago had been unknown to her. Whether this understanding of what was in her own heart came upon her in one broad flash of quickened intelligence, when she lay half swallowed up by the jaws of death, still clasping him with feeble hands, or if, in the quiet hours of introspection which followed that awful moment, she gradually learned the truth, it would be hard to say, but that she now knew it, was indubitable. The fact that the man she loved should be indebted to her for his life was a distasteful one. Not through grat.i.tude did she wish to attract him; the very thought of it was galling to her. She loved him, and longed, with the deepest power in her soul, to arouse in his breast that answering pa.s.sion, which, like a deep ba.s.s chord, mingles with the sweet treble song of woman's love, their harmony making the one perfect note to which the keystone of the universe trembles sympathetically. Sweet as was the thought that her strength had sufficed for them both, she mourned the chance which had made her hand the rescuing one. Love that springs from grat.i.tude or from pity is earth-born and earth-bound; she would have none of it; it was as if she had a claim upon him for that gift, which if not freely given is valueless. So, with a shyness new to her, she avoided meeting Graham; and the night of his return she sought her room again and did not appear until the following morning. If Graham did not know all, he was ready enough to understand that she avoided his thanks.

Mrs. Shallop pa.s.sed the last evening of her guests' visit sitting with Miss Almsford, answering her many eager questions of the strange, wild days when law and order were not in the broad golden land. It seemed almost incredible to Millicent, and yet she felt it to be true, that the wife of the mining king regretted the past days of poverty and simplicity. The hard-earned crust, shared with a husband whose every thought was known to her, had tasted sweeter than the luxuries of a table at which she often sat alone, or with a partner absorbed in thoughts and enterprises in which she had no part. Her children had then been entirely hers; now they were far distant,--the boy at an English college, the girl in a French conventual school, whence they would both return grown too clever and proud to care for her simple-hearted companions.h.i.+p. What mattered it that she had toiled day and night to buy them food and clothing, had worn out her poor body and dulled her simple mind with anxious overstrain and grinding labor? Would they thank her for it now? When, a year before, she had visited these adored children, she had felt the distance between them and herself. If her son had not been ashamed of his poor mother, it was only because his heart was not quite weaned from hers. The girl was gentle and kind; but the pitying care with which she brought her conversation to the level of her mother's understanding was all too obvious to the sensitive woman, whose nervous strength had been shattered in the hard fight which she had made all those years ago, to keep the breath of life in their little bodies. Half her life had been pa.s.sed at the wash-tub, half in the drawing-room; the transition had been too sudden for a person of her temperament. The soapsuds, which used to flash the splintered rays of light from her hands, were more appropriate to them than the diamonds with which they now glittered. Poor woman, the extremes of fortune were both known to her.

Though their visit had been a delightful one, Millicent was anxious to return to the Ranch; she longed for the quiet, refined atmosphere of the place, with its simple comforts, doubly attractive after this experience of the luxurious but inappropriate house of Mr. Patrick Shallop. There is a certain fitness in things; and the ex-miner, living in the palace of the railroad king, was less at home than England's monarch could have been in the cowherd's hovel. Millicent felt the social _malaise_ which arises from the incongruity of persons with their surroundings. Graham, interested in his portrait, which was coming on famously, was not easily affected by a personal atmosphere to which he was indifferent; while Barbara and Ferrara, used to a similar condition of things, accepted it without question.

The morning of the last day of their visit dawned bright and clear; and Millicent, standing on the terrace, thought the wide view had never seemed so beautiful before. She was taking farewell of that sea which had so nearly swallowed her young life with all its hopes and fears. The waves murmured with a gentle sound, as if quite oblivious of their late rapacity. She went out into the thick pine woods behind the house, and stood for the last time among the great redwoods, which to her were so wonderful, and which everybody else accepted as a matter of course. A well-known footstep behind her on the dry leaves caused the slight pink tinge which the morning breeze had brought to her cheek to fade suddenly; the blood seemed rus.h.i.+ng from every vein back to its source, and her heart stopped its pulsations for a moment. She did not turn her head, but stood quite silent, waiting for Graham's first word. When he was at her side, she felt her hand suddenly caught in a warm pressure which sent the blood rus.h.i.+ng through the arteries again, tingling painfully in every fibre of her body, and loosening the cold silence of the heart, which beat out a quick answer to the words of greeting. They were but few and very earnest, the words of a brave man glad to be beholden to so fair a woman for his life. Was it grat.i.tude that made his voice tremble, that lighted his grave eyes with a smile?

She answered him sweetly and seriously, with a steady voice and calm eyes, though the rose-flush flooded and ebbed from her cheek and brow.

The man did not trouble himself to a.n.a.lyze the feelings which gave rise to the fleeting blushes; he was too full of his own enthusiasm to notice how it affected its object. He spoke as he felt and thought of the woman standing there so full of life and beauty,--only in the light of his relation to her. He knew how he felt towards her, and told her so with admiring frankness; of her feelings towards himself he never stopped to think. His was an egotistic nature, as are those of all strong men whose personality stamps the age in which they live. Weaker men and women receive the imprint of their time; only the few strong ones leave their images impressed when the soft clay of the present is transmitted into the unmalleable granite of the past.

They walked together for a time, Graham full of anxious inquiry for her health, and Millicent happy in his anxiety. When the artist learned of the proposed departure, he strongly opposed it, urging a longer stay.

When he found that the young ladies had decided to leave San Real, he announced his intention of accompanying them. Mrs. Shallop shortly afterward joined the pair and handed Millicent a newspaper, at which the girl looked quite indifferently until her eyes caught her own name in large letters at the head of a column. She quickly read the article, which proved to be a highly sensational account of the rescue of Graham.

A FIGHT WITH DEATH!--Heroism of a Young Girl!--John Graham rescued from Drowning by Beautiful Millicent Almsford!--The Personal Appearance of the Heroine!--Early History of the Lucky Man!

These headings preceded the two-column article at which Graham laughed contemptuously, and which drew hot tears from Millicent's eyes. She had never before seen her own name in print, and the freedom with which the Anglo-Saxon press deals with the affairs of ladies who have no claim on the public interest was unknown to her. She only felt that her name was being spoken by people who never had heard of her; that the most sacred and awful hour of her life was revealed to the world; and that the event of which she had hardly spoken, and of which she barely dared to think, was now familiar to thousands of indifferent readers. The news had in fact been telegraphed to one of the large New York papers, and in the course of a week filtered down through the smaller organs of that city to the suburban press, and was read and forgotten by the careless public throughout the length and breadth of this enlightened land. To Mrs.

Shallop and Barbara, accustomed to the vagaries of American journalism, the state of mind into which Millicent was thrown by the article in the San Francisco "Roarer," was entirely surprising. It was without doubt annoying, but they had both become so accustomed to seeing their own names and those of their friends in the columns of the daily journals, that Millicent's horror and indignation seemed disproportionate to the cause. This utter disrespect of the privacy of life which is the right of all men and women leading peaceable lives, breaking no law of the civil or social statutes, is the crying sin of modern journalism. When they are charged with this, the journals very tritely retort that "social news" pays better than any other cla.s.s of matter; that its insertion is more often prized and sought after by the individuals mentioned than resented by them; that much of the personal news is actually furnished by the individuals whom it most concerns; and that they but supply the demand of their readers. It would be well for them to remember that to pander to the public taste is not the highest object open to journalism; to elevate that taste were a task more deserving of commendation, and less unworthy of good printer's ink and paper.

The next mail brought two letters for Millicent; one from a well-known photographer asking her for an early sitting, and begging that he might have the sole privilege of photographing her. The other communication was a civil letter from the editor of a weekly journal, asking for a slight autobiographical sketch from the hand of the heroine of San Real.

In the course of the morning a reporter from the California "Bugle," a rival sheet, arrived and requested an interview with Miss Almsford and Mr. Graham, from which to compile an article on "The Rescuer and the Rescued." Millicent's eyes flashed angrily when the import of the small printed visiting-card bearing the name of this nineteenth-century inquisitor was explained to her. She was heard to murmur, beneath her breath, some Italian words highly inimical to the smart young person who was taking the opportunity to examine Mrs. Shallop's drawing-room with an eye to future "notes." She was astonished when Graham quietly lighted a cigarette, and asking that the gentleman might be shown into the smoking-room, joined him there.

"Why does he not beat him?" she cried. "If I were a man I should thrust him from the house."

"And be held up to the public as a brutal a.s.sa.s.sin?" laughed Barbara.

"No, no, my dear, let Mr. Graham alone; he knows best how to manage the visitor. It never does to insult those gentlemen; they are dangerous enemies, and have the public's ear into which to pour all their grievances. Our friend will draw the fire on himself, I fancy, in order to spare you. News the news-fiend must have; he will make it himself if it be not provided for him. Poor thing! he must live, after all, as well as you or I. It is not his fault that he is obliged to interview people; it must be a very disagreeable profession."

Thus kindly and with wide sympathy did Barbara Deering judge all men and women; ay, and reporters too, together with babies, Chinamen, and other unfortunate works of G.o.d. Graham returned in a quarter of an hour, having appeased his visitor with the aid of a good cigar and a champagne c.o.c.ktail, compounded by the careful hand of the solemn-faced butler.

Millicent was still flushed and excited, all Barbara's arguments having failed to soothe her nerves. Graham, with one sentence, banished the angry dint from her white forehead and brought a smile back to her face.

The hour of the last good-bys had arrived; and the guests took leave of their kind hostess, with promises to repeat their visit before long.

Little Mrs. Shallop really cried at parting with Millicent, to whom she had become greatly attached. She sighed as the carriage disappeared from view, bearing its freight of young people with their vivid lives and strong interests. When she went back to her great lonely drawing-room, with its splendid furnis.h.i.+ngs, she realized what a fitting frame it had made for the two pretty young guests, and how unsuitable it was to her simple tastes. The house was dreary without their joyous voices and quick footsteps.

Just after sundown the travellers reached the San Rosario station, where Hal was awaiting them in the great red-painted wagon. The two st.u.r.dy mules were supplemented by old Sphinx harnessed before them, making what is known as a spiked team.

"Hail! the conquering Heroine comes! sound the trumpets, beat the drums!" cried the irrepressible young rancher. "How is our most heroic Princess, and will she deign to enter the triumphal car which her humble slave has prepared for her?"

They all laughed; but, through all the lively nonsense which he reeled off to them on the way to the house, Millicent felt that he had been really moved by what had occurred. The grip which he gave her hand spoke a volume of approval; and the loud clap on the shoulder with which he greeted Graham expressed more than a dozen sentences of rhetorical eloquence could have done. The antics of the unicorn team were extremely diverting; and these, with the absurdities which Hal perpetrated at every step of the road, brought the quartette to the house door "in a state of merriment bordering on idiocy," as he expressed it. Mrs. Deering, with her sweet motherly greeting, made their return seem a home-coming to Millicent and Graham, as well as to Barbara, the tall daughter of the house. Her hospitality was so genuinely of the heart that the recipient of it was made to feel that it was simply his due, and that his presence was as great a favor to the hostess as her kindness was to him.

Graham was warmly urged to stay over night, but he resisted the temptation of remaining. Neither Millicent's voice nor Millicent's eyes had supplemented the invitation.

As they paced the path together, her hand lying on his arm, Graham told Mrs. Deering, in a low voice, of all that had happened since their departure,--of the pleasant days with their excursions; of the new impressions made on Millicent by all that she saw; of the friends whom he had met, remembering all the kind messages which had been sent to the gentle _chatelaine_ of San Rosario; of Barbara's sweetness and Mrs.

Shallop's hospitality; of the progress he had made on the portrait of his hostess; of the thousand-and-one little items of news so welcome to people leading a life of quiet isolation. Then in graver tones he spoke of his great peril and Millicent's bravery, of the strange thoughts which had crossed his mind in that last moment of consciousness, how her face as well as his mother's had been revealed to him as in a vision.

All this was listened to with that perfect sympathy that is always ready to receive confidences, and which forbears to claim them when they are not spontaneously given. Blessed among women are these rare ones to whom motherless sons can confide every hope and disappointment, sure of a quick sympathy, and in whom the mighty instinct of maternity is not satisfied in ministering to their own flesh and blood, but springs forth to succor all who are suffering for the gentle mother love.

It was late when these two said good-night, and Graham went to find the others to take farewell. Barbara and Hal were singing duets. They had neither of them seen Millicent, and fancied that she must have gone to her room. With a sense of cold disappointment and injury the young man left the house. As he pa.s.sed by the corner of the piazza he fancied he saw a figure standing close in the shadow of an angle. He stopped; the figure remained motionless; through the heavy drapery of the vines he could not tell whether it was a person or merely a shadow.

"Who is it?" he asked in a low voice. No answer came, but through the stillness of the night he thought he heard the sound of a quick-drawn breath. Putting the honeysuckle aside he stepped on the piazza, and found that his eyes had not deceived him. Millicent stood beneath the rose vines. When she saw that she was discovered she spoke with a light laugh:

"I did not want you to see me, for I have been unsociable this evening, and hoped you would all think I had gone to bed."

"Is it not damp for you to be sitting out-of-doors?" he asked, with a voice grown deep and tender.

"Oh, no! I am quite used to it. What a wonderful night! I think I never saw the stars so brilliant."

The girl seated herself on the edge of the piazza, Graham placing a cus.h.i.+on under her feet and taking his place at her side. It was a perfectly still evening, the only sound being the far-away tinkle of a sheep bell. There was a moment of dangerous silence, which Millicent broke a little nervously, speaking of Italy, of Mrs. Shallop and their late visit, of Hal's irresistible wit, of any one of the subjects which danced through her brain. She was afraid to be silent, and feared yet longed for what might be said if she left too long a pause. The spell which kept Graham at her side when he should have been half way to his lonely tower, began to a.s.sert itself over the woman, always the last to yield. The man had long since abandoned himself to that mysterious state of being in which every nerve of brain and every pulse of heart yearns for sympathy and reaches out toward its counterpart. At last she was silent, the last commonplace dying half spoken on her trembling lips. Silence now in all the land; only the sound of heart-beats which each felt must reach the other's ears. Stars more tender than those of heaven shone close to Graham through the blue-black night; a breath sweeter than the wind stirring the honeysuckle touched his cheek. At length that silence, more musical than sweetest harmony, was broken by a low, deep voice.

"May I kiss you?" said the voice.

What was the faint sound which the night wind wafted to his ear? Was it the whirring of the humming birds whose nest hung close by? Was it the far-off silver ripple of the brooklet, or the cadence of the distant sheep-bell? Was it that sweeter sound than note of mating bird, of falling water, or of faint bell-chime,--was it a loving woman's "Yes"?

CHAPTER VIII.

"Oui, les premiers baisers, oui, les premiers serments Que deux etres mortels echangerent sur terre Ce fut au pied d' un arbre effeuille par les vents, Sur un roc en poussiere."

When he awoke the next morning, John Graham gave a deep sigh. His dreams had been so sweet that no reality could equal their happiness.

As he sat on the edge of his narrow bed disentangling what was real from what was dream-born in his thoughts, his eye fell upon the knot of roses which he had taken from Millicent's hair the night before, and had clasped to his lips as he fell asleep. They were faded now, but they still gave out a strong perfume. His cheek had been wounded by a thorn, but he kissed the wilted posies, for all that, placed the little bouquet tenderly in an exquisite Venetian vase, and then bounded down the stairway of his tower and across the narrow s.p.a.ce which led to a clear deep pool where a crystal stream fell in a white cataract to a rocky basin. The foam-bubbles danced joyously in the clear dark waters, and the plas.h.i.+ng of the fall had a sound of a sweet deep voice which had grown very dear to him. A mossy bank, shaded by two drooping trees, sloped to the edge of this natural bath, refres.h.i.+ng enough to have tempted Diana from the chase. As Graham plunged into the cool waters he shouted out a verse of a song he had learned long ago. Attracted by the sound of his voice, French John laid down his axe beside the young tree he was about to fell, and came down to the pool where Graham was vigorously tossing about the bright water. The old wood-cutter looked at the young man as if the sight did him good. He responded to the uproarious greeting which the artist shouted to him, by his usual silent nod of the head. Had words been worth their weight in diamond dust, the old soldier could not have been more chary of wasting them, but the look in his faded blue eyes was gentle and full of admiration. He had had a son of whom he had lost all trace since its infancy. If the boy had lived he would have been about Graham's age, and it was the man's fancy that he would have resembled his patron. He imagined he could trace in the splendidly modelled arms and legs and the strong, perfectly proportioned torso of the bather the shape into which the baby contours he remembered so well must have developed. Graham had by this time gained the green turf and stood shaking the water out of his thick hair, drawing quick panting breaths, meanwhile, and springing about to warm himself, with the grace and strength of a leopard. The old Frenchman gave a deep sigh as he looked at him.

"Yes; Hector certainly must resemble this young man," he murmured, as he wetted his hard hands, and, grasping the handle of his axe, smote heavily at the stem of a young pine-tree. Graham rapidly made his toilet in the open air. The plunge in the clear cold water had rather stimulated than expended the electric, nervous force which ran through his veins, quickening the life-blood in its flow. He felt ten years younger since yesterday morning. His thirty years and the gravity they had brought to him had shrunk to twenty. As he looked up at his tower he sang aloud a s.n.a.t.c.h of an old song which had been often on his lips in those happy, careless days in the _Rue d' Enfer_,--words which he had painted over the tiny grate in the cramped apartment under the leads, where he had suffered from heat all summer, and s.h.i.+vered all winter:

Dans un grenier qu' on est bien A vingt ans, a vingt ans!

He would have liked to dance. Had his years in truth been but twenty, he would have yielded to the temptation. He would gladly have thrown his arms about the old Frenchman, for lack of another confidant, and have told him the cause of his happiness. But, after all, this reflex of youth could not entirely melt the reserve of manhood from him; he wore his thirty years lightly indeed, but could not shake them off.

"Give me your axe, John; I know something of your woodman's craft; let me show you how easily I can fell this young tree."