The San Rosario Ranch Part 9

He took the tool from the woodcutter, and, whirling the sharp edge in the air, laid it at the root of the tree with a ringing blow.

"It appears in truth that monsieur 'ave 'andled an axe before."

"Surely, John. I once spent a summer with some friends of mine, who lived in a forest in Brittany; they were _sabotiers_."

"Monsieur is jesting?"

"Not in the least. I not only can fell a tree,--clumsily enough, be it confessed,--but if I had the tools I could shape you a pair of _sabots_, as good ones as you could buy for ten sous at Quimper; that is your town, I think?"

He talked in short, jerky sentences between the strokes, while the white splinters flew about him like a hail-storm. After a few moments the knack which he seemed at first to have forgotten came back to him. The smell of the bruised bark was aromatic; the death-sigh of the young branches was musical as they trembled for the last time together, reaching out to touch their sister trees in solemn leave-taking. Their sigh was now drowned in the groan of the swaying tree.

"Take care, monsieur, take care; it is about to fall," cried the Frenchman.

His warning was a timely one. Graham, so long unused to the exercise of the craft, had not noticed how deeply he had cut into the stem. The straight tree seemed to hesitate, tossing its branches helplessly heavenward, and then with a creaking sound crashed through the surrounding underbrush, and with a dull thud measured its slender length upon the earth. For a moment its branches shook convulsively, and then all was quiet. It seemed as if all nature paused at the fall of so fair a thing: the birds were silent in the thicket; the babble of the water-fall grew faint; and the wood creatures stirred not in their burrows. A mighty breeze crept through the forest, rustling the surrounding trees, wailing through the open gap as if in requiem, and a light cloud floated over the face of the sun, throwing its shadowy pall on the spot.

"That was well done, monsieur."

And, at the sound of the man's voice, the cloud floated by and the sun shone out once more, the wood birds took up their song again, the squirrel in the hollow of the white oak went on cracking her nut, and the brief mourning was over.

That man must feel himself indeed beloved, who fancies that the world will pause as long beside his grave as does the forest at the fall of one of its children.

Not until the branches had been lopped off and the long stem cut into lengths, did Graham cease his labor. The exercise did him good, and gave him an appet.i.te for the breakfast which old John served him in the open air. He declared that the coffee was better than could be had at the _Cafe de Paris_; and a.s.sured John that neither Paris nor Vienna could produce such bread as that which the old man had baked in some mysterious manner in an oven of his own construction, made of flat stone sunk in the ground. Graham remembered that he had somewhere in the tower a bottle of rare old wine, which he sent John to fetch.

"Bring my gla.s.s and your tin cup, John."

He needed sympathy, he who had lived for years without asking man or woman to share his joys or sorrows; he felt a new need in himself for human companions.h.i.+p; and the silent old fellow who did his bidding was the only soul to whom he could look for it. The ice which had encased his heart was broken; and instead of sternly demanding from his fellow-men honor, truth, and sincerity, he embraced the whole world in a warm, unquestioning love and sympathy. Yesterday he was a man who labored for his kind; to-day he was content to love them. Yesterday he was a reformer; to-day he was a philanthropist. The henchman returning with the wine, Graham filled the crystal goblet and the humble cup to the brim, and together these two denizens of the balmy forest drank to the new day which had dawned on the young man's life. After the long, black night which for months obscures the face of nature in the far northern land, the first rising of the sun touches the hearts of men with a deeper, more profound joy than the dwellers in a temperate zone can well understand. So was the light of this new love more glorious a thousand-fold to the man in whose life there had so long been darkness, than if it had arisen in a heart unacquainted with grief. In the first flush of happiness, his whole nature rebelled against the joyless life he had been leading; his work lost its attraction for him, and he could not have painted a stroke that day if his whole future reputation had depended upon it. The new impulse had swung him far out of his accustomed orbit; that there might be a rebound, he never for an instant fancied.

He spent an hour in ransacking his tower to find the most beautiful thing he possessed to carry to Millicent. He wanted to go to her with something in his hand that might in some measure express the tide of generous feeling that flooded his whole nature. He still had a score of those treasures, souvenirs of his European residence, of which the greater part had found their way to the shelves and cabinets of his friends' houses. He spread them out before him on his one table, ruthlessly pus.h.i.+ng aside paints, brushes, books, and drawing chalks, in a hubbub of disorder. With an intense interest he looked them all through. He had almost decided upon a rare Etruscan coin which he had seen roll from the palm of an exhumed skeleton, when his eye was caught by a tiny Tanagrine figure. The exquisite modelling of this clay toy, instinct with the beauty which pervaded every detail of Greek life, made it a more appropriate gift. The miniature woman was as truly proportioned as the Milo herself, and as surely constructed according to that greatest law of art that the world has yet seen evolved, the Greek, wherein are welded together the real and the ideal. A third article now struck his fancy as more appropriate than either of these for his first gift to Millicent. It was a crown of olive leaves of the purest gold, which might have bound Helen's brow. It had lain amidst the dust of eons which covers Troy with its pall; and now, in the nineteenth century, it was to serve as the gift of a Californian lover to his mistress. Surely, never before had the precious leaves encircled so fair a head as that which they were now destined to adorn.

Among the many sins which had been laid at Graham's door by friend or foe, the vice of foppery was missing. That minute attention to every detail of dress, which is found as often in man as in woman, had no place in his busy life. He was, however, always neatly dressed; and the prosaic fas.h.i.+ons of our time were modified as much as possible in his wardrobe, especially while he inhabited the forest. On this occasion, instead of one absent look in his small mirror, merely to ascertain if his hair were properly parted and his cravat neatly tied, a full hour was given to the process of dressing. Every suit of clothes, and each possible combination of the garments which his wardrobe afforded, were carefully considered. When at last the decision was made, the vest needed a b.u.t.ton, which the artist laboriously attached to the garment.

Taking a coa.r.s.e linen thread strong enough for a halter, he made the b.u.t.ton fast, taking several turns of the thread about its eye, as if he were belaying a rope. His cravat occupied him fully a quarter of an hour. He must have brushed his hair at least half a dozen times. He caught sight of his anxious face in the mirror, just as he was settling his cravat for the last time, and burst into a peal of laughter at his own dandyism. At the foot of the tower his st.u.r.dy mustang Ta.s.so stood ready saddled. French John had given an extra polish to the sleek gray coat, bright enough to reflect the silver-studded Mexican bridle. A pair of red c.o.c.kades, set at the ears of the beast, were made from flowers yielded by the small garden patch behind the woodcutter's cabin, where he raised flowers and vegetables for his patron and himself. The tall c.o.c.k gave a condescending crow of approval as Graham mounted his horse; while the three cats sunning themselves near by hunched their backs at him, as if to express their disapproval of his idleness. It was still early in the afternoon, and it was not his wont to sally forth until the shadows were long. Where could he be going? they asked one of the other, purring inquisitively together like a group of women-folk over a cup of afternoon tea. Of all his brute friends, Ta.s.so alone knew whither his master was going; he snorted scornfully at cats and c.o.c.k, and, shaking his head playfully, sped over the bridle path with flying feet, as if conscious of the eyes that were watching for him, the ears that were strained to catch the first faint echo of his hoofs as they flashed over the stony orchard road.

Those sweet eyes had not closed since they had last looked into Graham's; that white form had known no rest since it had slipped from his arms. The night, which had brought to him such peaceful dreams, was fraught with bitter memories to Millicent. She had paced her room through the long hours. No longer a half-yielding, shrinking maiden, but a woman, full of tears, before whom some great sorrow, long stifled, had risen up again. Was her nature then two-fold? While she was with other people, Millicent seemed a strong, self-reliant woman, pure and cold, with quick intellectual sympathies, and strong opinions and convictions. When in the society of the man she loved, his influence unfolded the closed petals of her heart as the sun kisses back the white leaves of the daisy, and uncovers its great golden centre to the eyes of all men. A new warmth shone from her eyes, and softened her silver voice. An unwonted shyness made her shrinking and timid under his gaze.

A new life was born within her, so much stronger and more intense than any that she had ever known, that her past existence paled before it as the luminous circle of a night-lamp fades before the strong rays of morning. But when she was alone....

Whatever her sombre thoughts had been, they were banished before she next met her lover. When she learned that he had come, she longed to fly from him out into the dim reaches of the forest, where he had told her half in jest that they had lived and loved before man's time began; when nymphs and dryads danced together in the shade of the oak-trees; when Pan reigned, and the earth was young. If she could have seen him in her own sanctum, where the light was softened by the dull green hanging of the wall, where the air was warm from the ever-flaming fire, and sweet with the spices burning in a great sea-sh.e.l.l, she would not have greatly cared; but the stereotyped drawing-room, with its blank white walls, was no place for their greeting. She went down the stairway and stood a moment before Graham; then, as he advanced towards her as if about to speak, she glided swiftly from the room across the hall and out into the sunlight.

Barbara, standing near by, scattering corn to a flock of tame doves which fluttered about her, laughed as the light figure flitted by, with bare head, and delicate silken draperies fit only to rustle over soft carpets. Barbara laughed pleasantly, cheerily calling over her shoulder to her mother, who sat indoors,--

"Look at Millicent racing with her own shadow."

"'T is a substantial shadow, Bab, but otherwise the simile 's good,"

said Hal, as he pa.s.sed by on his way to the dairy.

And Barbara looked again, and looking sighed. Another figure had sped by her, down the orchard road towards the wood,--the figure of a man, pursuing the flying girl, with kindled face and fleet steps. She threw her last handful of grain to the circling doves, went into the stiff drawing-room, mechanically set straight the disordered chairs and drew down a shade where the light fell too hotly upon a breadth of carpet.

She paused before a mirror and looked at her own pretty face clouded by a pain she would not explain. More than one lover had sued for her hand, earnestly and tenderly, but she had listened to no suit. No man had ever pursued her with fleet steps and sparkling eyes, no man had ever brought that expression of half-shamed happiness to her face which had made Millicent look just now like a child racing with her own shadow.

In the forest Graham found her standing breathless beneath an oak-tree, whose branches had caught her gown and forced her to stay her flight.

"Again under that terrible oak; but I shall not lose you this time. Say that you will not vanish in his jealous arms."

"He opens them to me no longer; he offers me no refuge now."

"And I stand waiting for you, and hold out my hand for yours. Not for a dance now do I ask it, but for a happy walk which shall end only with our lives. Will you put your hand in mine?"

For answer a little warm palm creeps into his broad fingers; and the oak-tree sighs a blessing on the betrothal of which he is the only witness.

CHAPTER IX.

"And in the forest delicate clerks, unbrowned, Sleep on the fragrant brush as on down-beds.

Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air That circled freshly in their forest dress Made them to boys again."

The life of John Graham had been one wherein the sorrowful days far outnumbered the joyous ones. His youth had been saddened by the reverses and griefs which had pursued his parents with a relentless persistence. His home life had not been a happy one. In the large family of brothers and sisters there had been a meeting and clas.h.i.+ng of strong, positive characters and opposing wills. An intense family pride was the one bond which united them. This sentiment, almost amounting to a pa.s.sion, made the members cling closely to one another when there was little of sympathy to make a sweeter bond. Graham's parents had moved to California, from the Eastern town where they were both born, while he was still an infant. The first sixteen years of his life had been spent on the Pacific coast. At this age he was sent eastward to pursue his studies. The youth had already determined on devoting himself to art.

The years pa.s.sed at the famous New England college were very busy ones.

The painful economies by which his beloved mother defrayed his college expenses were well known to the young man, and he held himself responsible to that dear and honored parent for every hour of his time.

His active mind eagerly grasped such fruits of knowledge as were offered by that garden of learning, and his career in the university fully repaid the sacrifices which it had entailed. During all this time he never for an instant relinquished his fixed determination to become a painter. In the leisure hours when his companions were amusing themselves according to their several tastes, Graham was always found at his easel. Some wiseacre once suggested to the young man that Greek and Latin were expensive acquirements, likely to prove useless to a painter.

"And if I were to be a shoemaker, I should make better shoes for having studied the cla.s.sics," was his reply to this admonition.

He had not been among the popular men of his cla.s.s, being very poor in leisure time, the currency which buys that most expensive commodity, popularity. He made few friends and no enemies. His strong, earnest nature commanded the respect of his fellows; and his studious example endeared him to a few of the most serious among them. At the age of twenty Graham went to Europe, where he pa.s.sed the next eight years of his life in study and hard work. The sketches which he sent home brought him money enough to live on in that quarter of Paris where the young art students congregate. Poor enough the living had sometimes been; hunger and cold were well known to the youth by actual experience.

When he lived at the rate of five francs a day he thought himself rich, and gave suppers in his studio, _au cinquieme, Rue d' Enfer_. Times there had been, while he was at work upon his great _Salon_ picture of St. Paul, when a loaf of bread and five sous' worth of the rough red wine of the people, had sufficed for his day's provender. Those days of earnest work among the gay companions, whose lives much resembled his own, were, perhaps, the happiest time in the life of the young artist.

Success had not been wanting to crown his efforts. The picture on which he toiled for weary days and months received "honorable mention" from the judges of the _Salon_; and to the pa.s.sing fame which this success brought him, he owed his introduction to the woman who had so spoiled the happiness of his youth. She was his compatriot, the daughter of a rich Parisian American, who desired to make the acquaintance of the artist hero of the hour. The young woman was beautiful, heartless, and slightly emotional. While in the society of the handsome, spiritual painter, she yielded to the charm his strong spirit exercised over her; and it was not long before their names were linked together by the small world which knew them both. But Graham's happiness was short-lived; and a few months served to show him the cold, shallow nature of the woman who had aroused his first pa.s.sion. After he had been jilted and disillusioned, he turned his back upon the city where he had learned and suffered so much, and became a wanderer on the face of Europe. One year found him painting the beauties of Southern Spain; the next saw him sketching the wonderful scenery which lies about Stockholm.

About two years before the opening of our story he had returned to San Francisco, with a portfolio of sketches, a few hundred dollars, and a prodigious store of canvases, paints, and brushes. He was welcomed by the many friends who had followed his career with interest, and soon received more orders for portraits than he could well fill. His taste led him to prefer another branch of painting; and it was for the purpose of studying the very beautiful scenery in the neighborhood of San Rosario that he had established himself in the tower of the old Spanish Mission. He was also partly induced to take this step, because he found that home life, always irksome to him, had become, after his long emanc.i.p.ation from domestic rules and regulations, wellnigh intolerable.

Graham's character was a peculiar one, full of contradictory traits; it might be compared to a ma.s.s of white quartz, through which ran deep veins of the purest gold. In some respects it was a hard nature, with certain tender qualities; and nowhere was there to be found an ounce of base metal; a pitiless nature, which knew not how to forgive either its own faults or those of his fellow-men. If his judgments of others were harsh, his self-despair was sometimes fanatical. His ideal of manhood was as pure and n.o.ble as was that of the perfect King Arthur; that he failed a hundred times a day in living up to it, had not the effect of lowering that ideal one hair's-breadth. His highest duty was towards his own soul and its struggle to reach the perfection he held it to be capable of attaining. With the mind of an ascetic, he was endowed with a warm, sensuous temperament, having a pa.s.sionate delight in beauty, light, and color, and capable of living through the senses with the keen enjoyment of a Sybarite. A strain of music, a beautiful flower, or a fair child moved him to a degree of pleasure that to any nature save an artistic one was incomprehensible. Filled with pity at the sight of distress, he would unhesitatingly give his last dollar to a needy rascal; but if appealed to for sympathy by the same sinner, the scorching contempt by which he would blast the shameful deeds for which, to him, there was no palliation, would leave the wrong-doer a sadder if not a wiser man. Because he expected so much of men, their short-comings outraged him. To a man of this character it was easier, if not better, to avoid the paths of his fellows; and his life had often been that of a hermit, even when he dwelt in the busiest cities of the world. Not willing that one shadow from the burden of his life should fall upon the paths of those who cared for him, his voice and face were always cheery when in their company. He wanted not the sympathy of man or woman, and endured what griefs were given him to bear in silence and alone. That divine mandate, "Bear ye one another's burdens," was meaningless to him; for he had ever borne his burden unsupported and unhelped. The struggle between the two sides of his nature, the ascetic and the poetic, seemed sometimes like to rend soul and body apart; at other times both contending forces seemed asleep, and the current of his life flowed peacefully on. There were periods when the tender golden veins seemed to overlap and hide the flinty quartz; then he felt alive, with thrilling pulses and lips breaking into song; then he painted rapidly, painlessly, achieving quick successes, sometimes making brilliant failures. At other periods hyper-criticism of himself seemed to weight his brush and dim his vision, to take the color from the warm earth and tender sky; then the life-blood pulsed slowly through his veins, and he forgot to sing.

Into the existence of this self-centred being, with its extremes of cold and warmth, few personal influences had crept; and now, for the first time in many years, he felt his life to have become entangled, for good or ill, with that of another human creature. Since his first meeting with Millicent, on that memorable night when he had found her the central figure of a picture of warmth and comfort, his frozen existence had been thawed and made happy by the subtle influence which she wielded over him. Without reasoning with himself, he had yielded to the pleasurable charm, only amazed, and perhaps a little glad, to find that there was a woman who could rob him of his well-earned sleep, and dance through his dreams at night with a wilful persistence. If he had been obliged to characterize the influence which the girl held over him, he would probably have said that she made his life vivid, and reminded him that his nature was human and not mechanical. Day by day her presence became more necessary to him; and his work was slighted, or hastily performed, in order that he might be free the sooner to reach her side.

Without retrospection or introspection he had lived through the pleasant days at San Real, when Millicent's heroic behavior had made him feel doubly grateful to her: he now owed her his life, as well as the new pleasure in that life. When the happy visit had come to an end, and he had parted with her after the return to the Ranch, it had seemed as if he could not leave her as a friend only. That one swift, silent embrace had broken the peaceful contract of friends.h.i.+p; and he had sealed the tumultuous untried bond of love upon her lips.

Since that white night with its unspoken protestation, Time seemed to have taken unto himself new, strong wings, on which he bore the lovers through the bright weeks of the spring-tide of love all too swiftly.

Few words of explanation had been necessary; each understood the other, except when that chill, impalpable something seemed to come between them like a cloud, as it had done in the first days of their acquaintance.

The one note which was never absolutely in tune in their love harmony, at these times made a discord, and disagreements which grieved them both sprang up between them; but these were rare, and the pale face of the artist was less shadowy than in other days; while Millicent seemed transformed from a statue to a living being, with a heart tender and full of love towards all her kind. But her cheek grew less round than it had been in the days before this new life was poured into her veins, and long, sleepless vigils told upon her strength. She was happy with a joy of which she had never before dreamed, and yet weary nights of weeping traced dark circles about her eyes. What struggle could it be that left her pale and broken, and drew pitiful sighs from her white lips when she found herself between the four walls of her own room? One word from Graham, the sound of his horse's hoofs as he drew near the house, would banish the pained look, call back the color to the lips and cheek, and give the old brightness to her deep eyes; but when he was gone, the painful thoughts winged swiftly back to torture her.

To the sweet, open-hearted Barbara, Millicent's state of mind was incomprehensible. The cool, indifferent, somewhat scornful girl had been transformed into an excitable, impulsive creature, always in one of the extremes of spirits, by turns gay with a gayety contagious, irresistible, committing every sort of extravagance; and again serious with a tragic sadness, more pathetic than the wildest weeping. Mrs.

Deering, with that sublime unconsciousness which sympathetic women know how to a.s.sume at will, saw nothing.

The happy summer weeks slipped all too rapidly away, and the last days of August were come. It was at this time that a long-planned excursion took place, and the family of the San Rosario Ranch went to pa.s.s the day with some friends who were camping out at a distance of fifteen miles from the house. Ever since her arrival in California, Millicent had heard of Maurice Galbraith, a friend of the family, whom a combination of circ.u.mstances had prevented her from meeting. It was to his camp that they were wending their way when Graham joined them on horseback, as they drove down the shaded road which pa.s.ses through the great grove of redwoods, and leads to the dusty highway. Millicent was driving in the light phaeton with young Deering; Barbara and her mother following in the large wagon driven by Pedro, one of the Mexican helpers.

Crouching on the floor of the wagon behind the seats sat Ah Lam, with his spotless linen and s.h.i.+ning coppery countenance. He could not sit beside the "Greaser," or Mexican, and this lowly place was allotted him.

His round, placid face, with its clear brown skin and oblique eyes, was not an unpleasing one. His hands and arms were finely modelled, and his st.u.r.dy figure was of a much more solid type than is usual with his race.

From his position it was possible for him to hold a parasol over Mrs.

Deering, which he did without varying the angle of the rather heavy umbrella one degree during the whole long journey. He had been taught that hardest of lessons for the Chinaman,--that obedience and respect to the ladies of the family are even more necessary than submission to the master. On his arrival at the Ranch he had coolly and placidly ignored all orders given him by the female members of the household as unworthy of notice. When he finally had learned the lesson that "Melican woman boss too," he had never failed in respect to the ladies.

The drive was a beautiful one. The road led through deep valleys, still wet with the night dew; sometimes it curled around the side of a mountain which barred its progress, and again it plunged down to the level of a swift stream. There was a certain spot where Millicent, who was familiar with the first five miles of the route, always stopped for a few moments. Sphinx had grown accustomed to bring his sleepy gait to a standstill just at the brink of the bridge which spanned the rus.h.i.+ng forest river, grown boisterous at this place. All about the spot stood the great hills, some green with the never-fading redwoods and madrone trees, others, stripped by the woodman's craft, naked and unsightly.