The San Rosario Ranch
had as much as he could do in controlling the two horses, congratulated
him on his success, and was about to resume his seat in the carriage.
Millicent had been perfectly quiet and composed during the time of
danger; her firm hand and voice had controlled the frightened horse; her
watchfulness had warned Graham of the approach of his second enemy. But
now the snakes were both dead, her lover was safe, and there was no
further need of her strength or composure. As Hal approached the
carriage, she dropped the reins, buried her face in her hands, and burst
into an uncontrollable fit of weeping. Hal, who had lifted one foot to
the step of the vehicle, dropped it to the ground, and retreated a few
paces with a frightened countenance. He would not have been afraid to
encounter a nest of rattlesnakes, but a weeping girl completely unnerved
him. He retreated behind the wagon, and, after a hurried conversation
with Graham, without more ado, mounted that gentleman's horse and rode
off as fast as the animal would carry him; while Graham quietly stepped
into the vehicle, and touching Millicent lightly on the shoulder, said,
"Millicent, it is I."
The passionate weeping grew more quiet; the sobs became less violent; a
slight tremor ran through her frame at the touch; at the words the tears
rolled back to their source; and presently a pale face was lifted from
the supporting hands, and the mouth quivered into a smile. And so they
rode home together, hand in hand, through the deepening shadows; and one
more day of the sweet summer-tide of love had passed, and each was
richer for that day, how often recalled by both of them when the shadows
of life had deepened into night.
CHAPTER X.
"Thereon comes what awakening! One grave sheet
Of cold implacable white about me drawn"--
John Graham was one of those men in whose nature there seems no trace of
feminality. Man and woman supplement each other, each bringing certain
qualities to the completion of humanity; and yet it is rare to find a
man whose character is not modified by some mother trait. Graham's
qualities and his faults were equally masculine; he was more strongly
attracted by women through this intense virility than are men who,
having some trace of the feminine in their nature, understand and
sympathize more perfectly with the opposite sex. The attraction was one
against which he rebelled, deeming it to belong to the weaker side of
his nature; and he had so ordered his life that it might not fall within
the influence of maid or matron. This antagonism to woman made itself
felt in his work; his successful pictures were of men, their high
exploits and successes. A noble painting of Saint Paul, which now hung
over the altar of a Roman Catholic church in San Francisco, had won him
his first reputation in Paris; he could understand and sympathize with
that great man as if he had known him. It was only the highest type of
man that attracted him,--the lovers of men, and not their conquerors.
He had never tried to paint Alexander, but had labored long and lovingly
over a picture of Socrates. The female subjects which he had treated
were not less powerful than these, but the force which they showed was
scornful and untender. A marvellous painting of Circe hung in his
studio; it was one of his most masterly works, and yet, though critics
had praised and connoisseurs had approved it, the picture was still
unsold. With black brows bound by red-gold serpents, the enchantress lay
upon a luxurious couch; her beautiful body was but half veiled, the arms
and bosom immodestly displayed; about her jewelled feet fawned the
creatures whose brute natures had conspired with the enchantress to
smother whatever was human in their beings; self-despair and scorn for
their abasement deformed her regular features to that moral ugliness
never so hideous as when seen in a youthful and beautiful face. A
terrible picture, full of wrath, but untempered by mercy. His Cressida,
purchased by a great European Academy, was another wonderful picture; a
picture which made men smile a little bitterly, and had brought an angry
flush to the cheek of more than one sensitive woman.
Over a man of this nature woman holds a more important influence than
with any other class; it may be a good influence or it may be a harmful
one, but it is the most potent one which touches his life. Had John
Graham loved happily at twenty-five, instead of most miserably, he would
have been a very different man at thirty from the hermit artist of San
Rosario. It would have been better for him if he could have learned the
lesson which all wise men learn if they live long enough,--that women
are neither angels who stand immeasurably above men, nor inferior beings
whose place is at their feet, but human like themselves, full of good
and faulty instincts, and, with all their imperfections, the God-given
helpmates of man. So justly should they be judged; and if a little
mercy be claimed for them, generosity should not deny it, so few are
their chances in life compared with those of their brothers. A woman
has but one possibility of happiness in this world. The stakes are high
on which she risks her whole fortune, which she may lose by one
unredeemable throw.
If Graham could have known all this, as, being what he was, he could
not, he would have gained that one element which his genius lacked to
make it superlative. Man and child he was by turns, but never for an
instant had he been able to look at life from the standpoint of a woman.
He had once loved the whole gentler sex with that chivalrous spirit
which made him unfit to live in the nineteenth century. No discourteous
or cruel word toward any woman had he to reproach himself with; he had
looked upon them as creatures so far removed from his sphere, that his
mind must be cleared of every base thought before it might dwell upon
them; they were mysterious angels which it was his happiness to worship.
Then came a change, and the love which had turned to grief darkened his
soul. As his heart had been filled with a love so great that it
embraced all the sisters of his idol, his contempt went out towards
them, as his love had done before. His revenge had been terrible: he
had struck at womankind; he had pictured it in its debasement for all
the world to see.
The few women for whom he cared were elderly people, whose life-battles
had been fought and won; who sat enthroned in the calm of that peaceful
period when youth is no longer regretted nor old age feared. Such women
he could paint without bitterness; and his portrait of his mother was a
masterpiece of exquisite sentiment. No woman that he had ever met
disliked John Graham; if he was distant and cold, he was honest and
courteous, and a gentleman in the deepest sense of the word. He was too
chivalrous to revenge himself on any individual; his grief was too great
to stoop to anything so mean. More than one woman would gladly have
loved him, but he avoided them as if they had been poison-nurtured.
Men, as a rule, respected and feared Graham; a few of his heart-friends
would have given their lives for him with a smile. To those who
understood and loved him, there was something more than human about the
man,--a quality to which the highest part of their nature did homage.
Fools laughed at him for his quixotism; the critics had worn themselves
out in shrieking abuse of his work which affected him in nowise. He
cared little for men's praise or blame; he would have died to help them
to a new truth. He was of the stuff which made martyrs in the old time,
crusaders in the dark ages, and artists in the Renaissance. His
pictures were beautiful as works of art, but they were great because
they embodied living truths. At twenty his friends said that he had
great talent; at thirty his enemies ceased to deny his force; at forty,
if he lived so long, the world would crown him with its laurel as a man
of genius. If haply that bitterness which lay like a blight on all his
work, on all his life, might be made sweet! What a chance was here for
the woman whose love was now breaking over his frozen life with warmth,
fragrance, and beauty! How grand an opportunity to sweeten by truth and
faith all that had grown bitter from untruth and faithlessness! If she
could only have known him as he was, have understood him and his past,
before she had loved him, what could not Millicent have accomplished!
Alas! poor child, she knew nothing of all this. Her own past was black
with a grief and wrong greater than that which he had borne. She, too,
was waking, and for the first time, from a trance of soul and sleep of
heart; she was all engrossed in her own growth and development. She was
like a little dungeon-born plant, which has at last climbed through the
iron bars, and under the light and warmth of the glorious day runs
riotous and unthinking across the wall, up, down, on every side, content
to live and grow in the sun and air. But the taint of the old wrong and
the lie it had entailed, were not yet left behind. He had taken her for
a pure white lily; and how could she tell him that there had been a time
when she lived in darkness and despair before her life flowered into its
one perfect white blossom under the warmth of his love?
Life is very pleasant at the San Rosario Ranch with its bordering of
peaceful hills. Here all are happy, be they of high or low degree; from
the gentle-voiced _chatelaine_ to the stranger within her gates, the
potent charm extends. The fair daughter and tall son have lived
peaceful, uneventful lives; and though their young eyes may sometimes
turn a little wearily toward the mountain barrier, beyond which lies the
great busy world, known more to them by hearsay than by actual
experience, they are happy, far happier than are most of the men and
women in the crowded thoroughfare of the world's cities. The Ranch does
not lie in the belt of gold, nor in the silver girdle which crosses the
Pacific coast. The rude mining towns are far distant from this portion
of the dairy lands of California. The trains which leave the station in
this neighborhood are laden indeed with a golden freight; but no armed
men are found necessary to guard the boxes filled with their rolls of
fragrant yellow. The product of the dairy lands is of a smaller, surer
value than that for which men toil and drudge in the gulches or mines.
Far away to the southward, where the orange groves are white and golden
with their double burden of blossom and fruit, is a climate milder than
that of San Rosario; and there Hal had set his heart upon one day
establishing himself. In that vine country the air is heavy with the
spicy odor of the grape, and the harvest is blood-red with its
life-juices; and yet to Millicent the fairest garden in this world's
garden lay between the circled hills of San Rosario.
Millicent, having learned the earliest stage of butter-making under
Hal's direction, wished to be initiated into the mysteries which follow
the skimming of the cream. Hal gave one of his boisterous guffaws of
laughter when she one morning gravely informed him that she was going to
help in that day's churning. She had donned the prettiest chintz
morning gown imaginable, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and a
fresh white apron. Her skirt was kilted up half way to the knee,
showing a scarlet petticoat, which in turn exposed the pretty, small
feet, and possibly two inches more of the round ankle than is usually
shown by ladies of her degree. Tying one of the great picturesque hats
which they had brought home from San Real, under her chin, the energetic
young woman started for the dairy. Hal, giving a knowing wink to his