The San Rosario Ranch
"And if I could not come sooner?"
"Well, you have come at last to keep the tryst. Will you finish that
dance which was begun so many eons ago?"
"Ay me! and can we now dance the same measure, you and I? Would not our
feet tread inharmonious steps?"
"Which of us can say? Shall we try?"
"If you say my word was given, I know not how to break it."
The room had grown dim, and Barbara and Ferrara in the recess of the
window were speaking together, while Millicent sat gazing dreamily into
the glowing heart of the low-burning fire, conscious that Graham was
looking intently on her face. She dared not lift her eyes to his, and
veiled them with the downcast lids. Not what she might read daunted
her, but what might be revealed to the man who sat leaning forward in
the quaintly-carven oak chair.
"It is understood then that you admit my claim to your hand,--for one
dance at least? You acknowledge the promise made so many dim years back?
You have come across wide, tossing seas and over broad, sun-parched
fields to keep the tryst you made with me, a smile upon your face, a
shadow in your eyes?"
For answer the girl bowed her head.
"Nay, I must hear it from your very own lips. Is it for this that you
have come?"
"Yes." The word came soft as twilight shadows, sweet as Nature's
harmony. A long pause preceded the low-breathed monosyllable, the word
which fond women love best to speak and which listening lovers thrill,
half cold, half hot, at hearing. And when it was spoken and heard came
a second silence, even longer than the first; and yet what they had said
was begun in badinage, and was finished without serious thought by
either man or woman. Dangerous words! dangerous silence! happy time,
how oft remembered in later days!
"Did I hear you asking Miss Almsford for a dance, Graham? What ball are
you contemplating? I have heard of none unless you mean to invite us all
to your tower for a frolic. Be sure you do not leave me out; I have
long wished to visit your hermitage."
"If the ladies would so highly honor a lonely dweller in the woods as to
allow him the felicity of being their host, be sure, my dear Ferrara,
that you shall escort them to my humble abode."
"Really, are you in earnest? I have always wished to see your tower.
When shall we come?"
"That is for you to say, Miss Deering. Any day which will suit your
convenience will be agreeable to me."
"We will settle it after we return to the Ranch."
Soon after this Mrs. Shallop joined the group, and they all went out and
walked on the wide terrace till dinner was served. Here Millicent met
Mr. Shallop for the first time. He was a heavy-featured Irishman, with
light-blue eyes, overhanging brows, and thick, coarse brown hair. His
badly modelled nose had a decided upward tendency, and the broad mouth
disclosed sharp, long teeth, like those of an inferior animal. When he
smiled he showed the whole set, which gave him a rather ferocious
aspect. His face was clean shaven, save for a fringe of whisker
stretching from the lobe of the ear to the lower jaw. With a pipe and a
shillelah he would have been an excellent specimen of a patron of
Donnybrook Fair. On this occasion he wore irreproachable evening dress.
His linen was finer than Graham's, and the cut of his collar and pattern
of his studs were of a later fashion than those worn by Ferrara. A
valet's care had smoothed the rough hair and cared for the ugly hands.
One of his peculiarities was to address all ladies as "Marm." His
conversation was not unintelligent, and betrayed a keen, sharp mind,
which clearly understood those things which came in close contact with
it, but whose mental vision was bounded by the physical one. Those
things which he had learned by experience he knew absolutely, and he
never questioned or theorized on subjects which did not directly touch
himself or his own interests. California had been to him a place which
held a gold mine, nothing more or less. His history, which he made no
effort to conceal, was not an uncommon one. He had come out in '49,
among the fevered crowd of gold-seekers drawn from every country, from
every station in life, by the loadstone which had been discovered on the
banks, of the American River, by James Marshall. He had come to San
Francisco in those early days when law and order were not, save when the
conscience of the public, stronger and purer in its united power than in
the individuals which compose it, was awakened, and hastened to punish a
crime by a rude and swift justice. Shallop had built a cabin in which he
lived, and in which he sold, when he was networking in the gulches, any
articles of food which he was able to procure. When there were no
potatoes or bread, he closed the door of his shanty and started off with
pick and washing-pan for the gulches. When these staple edibles were to
be had, he made a brisk trade in catering to the half-starved miners.
It had been said that though Shallop's bread was heavy, it cost nearly
its weight in gold. In those days he had wooed and married the widow of
a brother miner, one of the few women whose sad lot brought them to the
land of disorder and bloodshed. A few weeks only elapsed, before the
widowed woman gladly changed her state for the protection of the strong
arm of Patrick Shallop, to whom she became deeply attached, with a
pathetic love resembling that of a dog for a kind master. The bread
grew lighter then, and sometimes the potatoes fed pitiful pale youths
who brought no store of gold-dust to pay for them. Patrick Shallop,
living in the most magnificent dwelling in the whole length and breadth
of California, was sometimes moved to tell of the little cabin where he
had brought home his bride on a wet night, borrowing an umbrella to
place over the bed to keep the rain from wetting her to the skin. There
had been times when things had gone badly with the inmates of the little
cabin, and days had passed when the mother's ears were torn with the
cries of children hungry for bread. It was at this time that Barbara's
father had known the Shallops. Mr. Deering was a delicately bred,
handsome young man, who had come with the eager crowd of men all pushing
ruthlessly forward to the golden goal, sometimes trampling to death the
weaker brothers who fell by the wayside. Sick of a fever, faint and
dying, he was plundered of his hard-earned store of gold-dust, and would
have been murdered by his robber but for the interposition of Shallop,
who stood by to see fair play, and carried the sick man home to his
shanty, where the tender nursing of the busy wife saved his life a
second time. Adversity makes strange companionships between men; and
the friendship between the saloon-keeper and the delicately nurtured
youth with the blood of a Puritan ancestry in his veins, was one which
lasted through both their lives. By some mining exploits which would
hardly bear the light of day, but which were, alas! not more uncommon at
that time than at the present day, the Irishman had made a colossal
fortune which placed him among the richest men in the world. There
could be little sympathy between the two men whom the chances of that
wild time had thrown together for the moment, but a cordiality was
always felt; and after Mr. Deering's death frequent visits were
exchanged between the dwellers of the San Rosario Ranch and the inmates
of the most celebrated house on the borders of the Pacific Ocean.
The dinner was a long one, served with all the tedious formalities which
the fierce butler chose to inflict. It was not until the servants had
withdrawn that the host and hostess, who stood in mortal dread of their
chief functionary, their oracle on all matters of etiquette, seemed to
feel themselves at home at their own table. The removal of this
restraint, and the excellent wine, served to make the last quarter of an
hour spent over the dessert the pleasantest part of the repast.
Millicent, sitting at the right hand of her host, at last succeeded in
making him tell some anecdotes of his early Californian experiences, to
which she listened with breathless interest. Her feelings were
undergoing a radical change; and if the country which she at first
detested had not yet become dear to her, she certainly felt the greatest
interest and curiosity to learn more of it. In the old dreamy life of
Venice, her days had been spent in golden visions of a vanished
grandeur. She was now awaking to the stirring reality of the present,
and felt dimly that to be an heir to the glories of the past was but a
part of living,--an inheritance which affects us less than the actual
doing and striving of our own times.
The party sat together in the library, with its comfortable chairs and
rows of undisturbed books sleeping between their gilded covers, until
late in the evening. The conversation was general, and the quick mind
of the stranger guest learned from it much that roused her attention.
"If I only had four ears instead of two!" she cried at last, after a
vain endeavor to follow at the same time a discussion between Ferrara
and Mr. Shallop on the best method of vine culture, and a conversation
between Graham and Mrs. Shallop on the subject of the public schools.
Soon after this, the ladies left the room; and Millicent, her pulses all
a-tremble with the various new experiences of the day, was slow in
falling asleep. That night her lips forgot to give their wonted
homesick sigh for Italy, for Venice.
CHAPTER VI.
"Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in
May?
When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow do you say?"
The week's visit at the Shallops' slipped quickly away, each pleasant
day passing too hastily into to-morrow, Millicent thought. The ordering
of each day had something of a routine, beginning invariably with a
gallop on horseback. The way sometimes led across wet, hard beaches
where the horses' hoofs crushed, with a crisp sound, the tiny sea-shells
left by the receding waves. The tall roan which Millicent rode was a
young thoroughbred, with slender legs, a proud, arching neck, and
unclipped mane and tail. Mrs. Shallop had given the fine animal to her
guest; and Millicent, who had a magnetic influence over all animals,
easily controlled the horse by word or touch. The young people usually
paired off; Millicent riding beside Graham, Barbara and Ferrara
following, while Mr. Shallop brought up the rear on a sturdy cob whose
character and strength were well calculated to bear up the portly
magnate. Sometimes they rode through the odorous woods, where the air
was heavy with spices, and melodious with sweet bird-notes foreign to
Millicent's ears. The tall and stately redwoods standing straight and
unbending in their close serried ranks, seemed to her a noble symbol of
the life of an upright man, who looks fearlessly into the wide heavens,
raised far above the briers which grow about his lesser brethren.
On their return from their ride, glowing with the splendid exercise,
breakfast was served; sometimes in the pretty morning room, oftener in a
sheltered part of the wide veranda, from whence they might look out upon
the shadowy woods stretching behind the house. After this meal, Mr.
Shallop and Ferrara took the train for San Francisco; and the hostess
and Graham disappeared into the temporary studio which had been arranged
for the artist. The two girls were left to amuse themselves.
Millicent, who had brought her usual store of books, did not open one of
them, but moused about in the library, finding many works quite new to
her and full of interest. If her knowledge of Italian and French
literature was remarkable, her ignorance of the English classics was