The San Rosario Ranch
have you not shut in; what hopes have you not seen pass out between your
time-rusted lintels!
It was the first letter Millicent had ever written him; he had but once
before seen her handwriting. The girlish, weak hand which had traced
the words in the little journal was greatly altered. It was now a
graceful, flowing chirography, full of that individuality which stamped
everything appertaining to her. Graham studied the superscription
carefully before he broke the golden seal, with its device of Psyche
with new-found wings. It ran as follows:--
BELOVED,--Forgive me! forgive me if you will, for I cannot forgive
myself. I was wrong to grudge you the time passed with your work. It
was weak and selfish of me; but now that I know my fault, be not afraid.
Believe that I am strong enough to overcome it. For the red roses at my
window I thank you; and for the fair picture and the graceful couplet,
for all the tender thoughts which prompted you to send me these tokens,
bless you a hundred times. But oh! my lover, come to me; and let me
read in your strange eyes, that are now bright and cold as ocean deeps,
and again burning with Promethean fire, that I am forgiven. Not rose
nor picture, not poem nor sweet garland, can tell me as can they that
you love me.
MILLICENT.
Graham read the letter through twice, and folded it away, with a sigh.
"Do I love her? Does she love me?" he queried; and all that day the
doubt tormented him. While he worked, while he took his afternoon
ramble through the woods, while he sat at his solitary supper, it
rankled in his mind. He could not solve it; could she? It were best at
least to ask her. It was only right that she should know of his doubts
of her and of himself. He found her flushed with pleasure at the sight
of him. She had anticipated his coming, and was dressed in soft colors
which he approved, and fair with a hundred little efforts of coquetry to
please him. Her bronze hair seemed to the man but a mesh to snare him.
He turned his eyes impatiently from the pretty, bare arms, and the cool,
snowy shoulders shining through transparent draperies. His judgment
should not be turned aside by her loveliness. He greeted her coolly,
barely touching her outstretched hand; and then stood looking gloomily
into the distance, not knowing what to say, uncertain of the truth,
doubting her. The woman, quick to see his trouble, spoke to him
tenderly, with a low, soothing voice, thanking him for coming to her,
telling him how long the time had seemed since they had met.
"And tell me all about your new picture."
"I cannot, Millicent; your letter spoiled my day's work. I have done
nothing since I read it."
"Dear, what can you mean?"
"This, Millicent,--that my work must always be first to me. I had
thought that you would help me in it, but it is not so." After a pause,
"Millicent, I think we have made a mistake, you and I. We cannot help
each other, and therefore we hinder one another. You dazzle me with
your beauty, and send me back to my work unfitted for it; while I only
make you unhappy, and fear I can never do anything else."
"Graham, you kill me." She looked indeed as if a blow had been planted
in her breast, as she reeled, all white and trembling, to a seat. Her
words seemed to deepen the nervous agitation which possessed him, for he
said impatiently,--
"What can I do? It is not my fault that you have neither the best love
to give me, nor the power to arouse it in me. I tell you, child, that
we have been mistaken, and that it is time for this thing to end."
"No, no, Graham; you are angry, you know not what you say. In mercy
speak no more." She had sunk upon her knees, her clasped hands
stretched toward him in an agony of fear.
"Do not kneel to me, but listen; for I am right. If things had been
different, it might have been; but as they are, we have been mad to
think of it. There is no help for it, my girl; we must kiss and part.
You never loved me as you should, Millicent, because you could not. A
woman can love but once, and that is the first time."
"It is not true. You, who are a man, say it. What woman ever said it?
It is a lie, a lie! You shall not say it, you must not think it. You
would make us creatures without souls indeed. Are they right, then, the
Easterns? If when we women are sold, or stolen, or entrapped, we must
love, and only then, you deny us other life than that of the earth. Of
what man would you hold this doctrine to be true? It is utterly false!
it is wicked! it is unworthy of you!" She moaned where she had fallen
on the ground, and tried to speak again; but the man continued with a
pitiless stream of words, sincere, earnest, spoken for her good as well
as his own.
"We have been loitering together for a time, child, on life's way, and
have chased the golden butterfly of pleasure which men oft mistake for
love. Before we are too deeply entangled in the briers, we must turn
from the chase, we must forget each other. We can be of no good, one to
the other; and I will be no more harm to you than I have been."
He could not see her face now; it was hidden on her arm as she crouched
where his words had thrown her. The pathos of the attitude touched him;
he gently lifted one of the tightly clinched hands, and loosened the
fingers which so fiercely bit the delicate palm. He was in a strange
mood, when heart and soul seemed absent from him, and only the clear,
strong brain prompted his words. Her passionate grief hardened rather
than softened the look in his eyes. This girl, who had been as wax in
his fingers,--glad when he smiled, weeping when he sighed, swayed
invariably by the mood which possessed him,--now denied by piteous word
and gesture the words which he was speaking. Her hand, unlocked by him,
would have clasped his stronger palm; but at the caress he dropped her
arm and turned his eyes from her.
"I cannot give you up," she murmured; "you must not leave me so. Oh, my
love, you wrong me, you wrong yourself! I love you, Graham, with all my
soul; I love you as I never thought to love before! Cruel--cruel! It
is not with lips and eyes that I have loved you, for you could lose
that, and yet miss nothing from your life. Turn not from me, if you
would not leave that which is best worth having by the roadside, and
press on to find that goal towards which your ambition spurs you, empty
and void without me at your side! It is your worse nature which doubts
mine. Graham, Graham! what matters it if hand and eyes have been
another's? My soul is only yours, wakened first when your strong spirit
called it from the sleep begun before it was vested in this body, ere it
was divided from your own."
The last words, faintly whispered, hardly reached his ears. To-day
their import could not have been felt by him. In other times he
understood, and sufferingly admitted the truth of those incoherent
words, which died on the air as soon as they were breathed, and yet
whose memory abode with him his life through. He had come to Millicent
not knowing what he should say, and the words seemed to have spoken
themselves. He was sorry, as is the surgeon for the pain which he
inflicts; but, like the physician, he felt that mercy lay in
mercilessness. As she lay weeping at his feet, a strong tide of emotion
swept over him, leaving him pale and trembling. He lifted her with
eager hands, and on shoulder, brow, and pallid mouth he pressed cruel,
parting kisses, which carried no balm to her broken heart, and brought
no ease to his fevered spirit. Then he broke from her with a mighty
effort, passion and pride wasting him with a terrible warring, and
fleeing through the night left her there cold and nerveless, like a
broken lily amidst the dews and damps.
In the days which followed, Barbara watched with tender solicitude
Millicent's changed face and nerveless step. Only through her
sympathetic perceptions did she know of the girl's trouble; of what
nature it was she surmised, not incorrectly. Lovers' quarrels are
usually looked upon with a tolerant amusement by intimate friends and
relatives; and when they are of short duration, it is usually considered
advisable to ignore them altogether. But as weeks passed, and Barbara
learned that Graham was in San Francisco, she redoubled her little
attentions, and shielded Millicent as best she could from her mother's
anxious questions.
Angry and rebellious was Millicent in these days, with that terrible
under-feeling of anguish which must outlive anger and rebellion; that
fainting of the soul, when all that has supported it seems to have sunk
away, and it is left absolutely without power to resist an all-devouring
despair. Her happiness had been so short-lived; her misery was so
terrible, so unending! Her young life, which had been balked of its
natural joyousness and youth, had suddenly been illumined with the pure
and perfect light of the love which passeth all understanding, and now
she was in darkness blacker than she had ever known. The anguish of
that great love was not wanting, and she suffered with a new sense of
her capacity for pain. In her dumb grief she knew that the agony was
not undeserved; this was the bitterest drop in the cup of tears. She
had not told him her sad secret; she had deceived him! She had meant to
tell him of the blot upon her name, before their lives had become
irrevocably joined; but she had put off the dreaded moment until it was
too late: he knew all now, and not by her confession. Would she ever
have had the courage to tell him? She almost doubted herself. Was she
deceitful by nature? she asked herself a hundred times, questioning her
deep eyes in the mirror's depth. No, she knew that her frank, sincere
character had been warped and distorted by the evil influence of the man
whose name she would have cursed, had not the grave closed over him,
burying his sins and her reproaches in the cold earth. Poor child, poor
women all, the weaker creatures in this remorseless world! When they
are bruised and broken by the force of their masters, is it strange, is
it unpardonable, that the weapon of the weak tempts them? Who forged
that weapon for them, who forced them to use it? If there were no
unjust oppression among men, no brutal abuse of a superior force, would
women be driven to deceit, that refuge of the weak?
In this sophistry she wrapped herself, but was not satisfied. She had
been tried and found wanting. This it was that had lost to her the
lover for whom she had faced death. He might not know it; he had never
said it; but she recognized what had driven him from her side,--the
fault was hers. Was it unpardonable? Could he never forgive her? Must
their lives be separated, now that spirit had kissed soul? Must the
long waiting last until time should be ended for them both, and Eternity
begun?
Of all cruel gifts, is not that which lingered in Pandora's box the one
through which men suffer most fiercely? O Hope! if thou hadst escaped
along with the rest of the heathen god's blessings, how many tortured
souls would now be at rest in a fixed and accepted grief which struggles
not, neither rebels at the decrees of destiny! Unquenchable art thou,
robbing sad mortals of all repose; even in death shall they not find
rest; thou troublest the dying with thy visions of a future! With
resolute hands sorrowing women seize upon thee, and would stifle thee in
their breasts; but though thou dost sometimes simulate death, when the
watchful hands loosen their hold thou springest up stronger and more
cruel than before, and tormentest the sufferer with thy struggles!
"If it would only die--if it would only die!" moaned Millicent, as she
paced her room, her hands crossed heavily upon her breast, as if to