The San Rosario Ranch
the previous day. A wooden panel, on which was represented the ever-new
subject, fairest of themes to artist and poet,--two lovers, standing
together in the rosy dawn of love, ere the scorching sun of passion has
deepened their cool morning into a fervid midday. The man's figure was
strong and graceful, his attitude one of protection; the girl's rounded
and delicate body swayed toward her lover, whose arm enfolded her. His
face was turned away, the eyes looking far, as if into the future; while
her delicate features were turned toward him, her glance trustfully
fastened on his face. The color of the warm woodland background was
mellow and rich, bringing out the deeper tones of the figures. The
resemblance of the girl to Millicent Almsford could hardly have been
unintentional, one who knew her well would have said; and yet Graham was
only half-conscious that the face and figure recalled her chief traits.
He had thought of her as he worked; and beneath his brush her bronze
hair and luminous face had been shadowed out more distinctly every day.
A rare picture, full of beauty and sentiment; but thrown aside to-day
for the new inspiration which had seized upon the artist. The subject
to be treated was the entrance of the Poet to the abode of the Muses.
He sketched the Poet, mounted on his winged horse, just crossing the
narrow, defile which led to the sacred spot. With knit brows and earnest
face, Graham worked at the sketch all day; only leaving his tower when
the daylight failed him. As he wandered through the dim forest aisles,
he thought of Millicent for the first time, remembering that he had
agreed to ride with her in the afternoon at three o'clock; it was now
past six. Without the slightest feeling of remorse at his failure to
keep the engagement, he determined to ride over to the house and see
her. Millicent received him rather coolly, having spent the afternoon
crying with worry and disappointment at his non-appearance; and he, only
half noticing her mood, failed to understand it. He was dimly aware
that her society was not as agreeable as usual, and consequently he
devoted himself to Mrs. Deering during the evening. At first Miss
Almsford kept aloof from the conversation; but later, when her lover
began to talk brilliantly, she drew near to where he sat and listened to
his words with downcast eyes. Graham was in wonderful vein that night;
his every gesture spoke of a strong under-current of excitement. His
eyes shone, and his deep voice had a thrill of enthusiasm which stirred
the pulses of the calm-browed girl, sitting near by with softly folded
hands and parted, breathless lips. But it was neither for Millicent,
nor because of Millicent, that the young man talked so brilliantly. A
more stimulating influence than hers had touched him, and he was beyond
the reach of her sympathy; exalted by the wings of his genius to that
clear, cool, lonely communion with the immortals which only such as he
experience. Dismayed, and yet full of reverence for this new phase of
his nature, Millicent was filled with a great pain. She was left
behind; she could follow but not accompany the flight of his fancy; and
a sense of lonely desolation chilled the hot heart-blood with a
depression the like of which she had never before known. The ethereal
quality of her being recognized and did honor to his bold up-winging;
but the personal, selfish side rebelled at the neglect to which she was
subjected. The struggle in her breast was at that time unintelligible
to herself; in after days, when the baser nature had been overcome, she
realized it all, and knew that the long death-struggle of self began
that night when Graham's eyes looked beyond her for inspiration, up to
the blue-starred empyrean over both their heads.
More from habit than because he needed her society, her lover asked her
to step for a moment upon the piazza before he left. As they stood side
by side, he absently took her firm, small hand in his and kissed the
pink fingers one by one, as if she had been a child. All at once he
perceived that she was weeping, her slender form shaken by a storm of
sobs.
"Millicent, my child, what is it? Are you ill?" he asked, tenderly
stroking her hair.
"No, only unhappy. Graham, why did you not come for me to-day? I
waited for you all the afternoon."
"Did I not tell you, dear, that I was very busy? I have begun a new
picture. I quite forgot my engagement with you,--I am very sorry," he
answered, puzzled at her emotion.
"Then it is your picture that is my rival. I hate it, I hate it! I
never want to see it!
"Millicent, what do you mean?"
Her only answer was to lay her aching head upon his breast, to twine her
arms about him, and to sob out incoherent words of love and grief, all
of which puzzled and wearied him. He soothed her tenderly; and when they
parted there was a smile upon her lips, though her breast still trembled
with the slow after-waves of a grief which shook her whole being.
Graham, unnerved by the tempest which he had all unwittingly aroused,
reached his tower in an excited and irritable frame of mind. The first
thing that met his eyes was the picture of the lovers lying at the foot
of the easel. He picked it up, placed it on the table before him, and
long and critically surveyed his work.
"I painted better than I knew," he sighed. "Yes, thus it is that we
stand toward each other, man and woman, and ever shall stand,--the man
looking out beyond, above, the woman, and she finding her utmost limit
of self-projection in him. Alas and alas!" He placed the painting with
its face toward the wall, and with a moody brow turned to his new
sketch.
"Bah, I can do nothing, see nothing in that picture; I have been too
rudely summoned back to earth, to the little griefs of humanity, by a
woman's tears. I was never meant for it, I cannot bear it." So ran his
thoughts impatiently. He had been living in the passionless perfection
of art, and had been suddenly recalled by a little creature, full of
small human feelings, to this narrow world. Nettled and unstrung, he
threw himself upon his hard bed, to dream of Millicent,--a happy dream,
in which she knelt before him, acknowledging her fault, pleading his
forgiveness; a dream of sweet reconciliation, wherein was memory of that
hour among the redwoods, of that mystic soul-embrace but once known to
him his whole life through. He awoke refreshed and strengthened, with a
love-song on his lips tender as that of the mourning dove. Sundown
showed him again at his easel after a long day's work; but that evening
Millicent listened in vain for the patter of Tasso's hoofs among the
softly rustling autumn leaves.
In the week which followed Graham did not venture to see Millicent
again, fearing her disturbing influence on his work. He sent her every
day by his faithful henchman some little memento. One morning it was a
quick sketch of the sunset of the previous night. Another day it was a
bunch of pretty brown quails, the result of an hour's shooting. Once
she found hung upon her window-ledge a garland of dewy red roses; and
easily guessed what strong, light figure had swung itself up the piazza
post, and over the trellis-work, to lay this offering before her
curtained window.
Henry Deering, passing by the piazza on the night the lovers had parted,
heard the sound of weeping. In the days that followed, he noticed
Millicent's reddened eyes and restless mood. He felt sure that some
misunderstanding had arisen between them; and as the days passed, and
Graham failed to appear, he began to believe that the breach was a
serious one. In the old days he had loved Graham as a brother; but in
the last months his affection had grown cold, and held a weak place in
his heart, from whence jealousy was fast banishing it. Now that he
believed his old friend to have grieved the woman they both loved, a
feeling of antipathy and an undefined distrust possessed him.
After the long day's work it was his custom to sit for an hour or so
upon the piazza beneath Millicent's window, watching the beam of light
which shone through her closed blinds until it was extinguished. One
night, as he sat alone, the drowsy humming of the insects soothed him
into a light sleep. When he awoke with a start, the moon, which had not
before been visible, was high in the heavens. As he was about to go
in-doors he heard a footstep on the path outside the house. He remained
motionless in his chair, resolved to see who was abroad so late. The
footsteps were uncertain and stealthy. The person first approached the
house, and then retreated to the turf, where the steps were hardly
audible. Deering stepped lightly to the edge of the piazza and peered
through the honeysuckle screen. At a distance of twenty feet from him
stood a man looking up at the house, at Millicent's window. His face
was hidden by a muffler and a broad hat pulled low over the brows.
Deering drew his revolver and cocked it. The click of the lock
evidently reached the intruder's ears, for he turned and fled toward the
orchard. Deering sprang from the piazza, and shouting, "Who are you?
Stop, or I 'll fire!" ran down the path. The fugitive neither answered
nor slackened his pace. Deering fired, aiming low down; but the ball
whistled by the man and buried itself in the heart of a peach-tree. In
the close shrubbery which surrounded the orchard Deering missed his man;
and three minutes later he heard the swift tramp of a pair of horses on
the path which led to the high-road. He ran to the stable. Nothing
there but the mules and old Sphinx; his own fleet mare and Millicent's
thorough-bred were grazing in the pasture. He slipped a bridle over the
old mustang's head, and sprang on his back without waiting for a saddle.
By the time he reached the highway the riders were out of sight, and the
echo of the distant hoof-beats reached his ears. Pursuit was useless;
they were well mounted; and Sphinx had gone dead lame the day before.
The young man listened to the faint sound of the hoofs until it died in
the silent night. Then he dismounted and examined the road. There were
the traces of two horses. As he looked closely at the impressions left
on the thick dust, he saw that only one of the horses had carried a
rider; the other had been led.
When he returned to the house he found the family aroused. Barbara met
him on the piazza, asking anxiously what had happened. The report of
the revolver had awakened her.
"It was a bear, Barbara," said her brother. "It is a shame to have
roused you all, and for nothing, too. I thought I had a sure shot, and
that we should have bear-steak for dinner to-morrow."
"A bear, Hal? How strange! Why, this is the first time one ever came
so near the house, is n't it?"
"No; Ralph killed two long ago, before you can remember. Go to bed now,
and get the house quiet, for heaven's sake!"
The young man kept his own counsel, and the next morning made a careful
examination of the grounds near the house. On the farther side of the
orchard there were traces of a pair of horses having been tethered.
Two more days went by, and still Graham did not come. Millicent was
distressed and puzzled at his long absence; and finally, after
thoughtful deliberation, she decided to write to him, telling him how
grieved she was at her own unreasonable behavior.
Graham found a letter early one morning folded in an embroidered
kerchief, and laid before the door of his tower. That heavy unpainted
barrier could have told a tale like that of Tennyson's talking oak, had
it been given the power of speech. Trembling lips had pressed timid
kisses upon its weather-beaten panels. Strange old door of the tower,
roughly fashioned by the Mission priests a century ago, what secrets