The San Rosario Ranch
It was very late, past twelve o'clock; but Barbara brought news of a
visitor, who would keep them both from their sleep an hour longer. Mr.
Galbraith was downstairs and must speak with her. Miss Almsford gave a
little tired sigh, and, folding her white wrapper about her shoulders,
caught the thick tangle of hair together with a silver arrow, and,
without glancing at the mirror, left the room and joined the young
lawyer in the library.
"I am so sorry to disturb you, Miss Almsford; I know you must be tired,
but I could not get here sooner. Miss Barbara, do not be offended, but
I must ask you to let me see Miss Almsford alone for a few minutes;
would you mind waiting in the next room?"
When they were alone, the young man seemed at a loss how to open the
interview which he had sought. Millicent, tired by the events of the
exciting day, did not seem inclined to help him. After a long and rather
awkward pause, she turned wearily to her visitor and said,--
"It is about the trial, of course?"
Galbraith bowed an assent.
"About the statement made by that man--" She shuddered, as if unable to
pronounce his name. The young man silently assented again.
"Well, there is nothing to be said by me beyond what I have already
said: it is an infamous lie! It is so apparent a fabrication that I
should hardly have thought it necessary for you to give yourself the
trouble to come so far, merely to hear me repeat what I asserted this
afternoon."
"It is your honest opinion, then, that Mr. Graham has been slandered?"
"My _honest_ opinion, Mr. Galbraith? I do not know how to give any
other. Are you come to make me angry? You had better not, for we
Italians are more easily roused to anger than soothed. I am so tired,
too; can you not spare me?"
Her voice dropped from the deep, indignant tone, to a pleading note like
that of a tired child. Maurice Galbraith, leaning quietly against the
mantel-shelf, with downcast eyes and calm face, seemed strangely moved
by the words of the woman who stood before him, so white and so
beautiful. He turned toward her; and when he next spoke, a tenderness
had crept all unawares into his face, which shone with a light whose
meaning she could not fail to understand. His very voice seemed a
caress addressed to her ear, so low and gentle was it.
"My child, you do not understand me. _I_ to make you angry, to add one
annoyance to your life, which is so sad? Ah! you little know how
gladly--" He stopped suddenly, warned, by the rising flush on her
cheek, that he was saying other words than those which he had come to
speak,--"you little know how gladly I would have spared you the question
which it was necessary for me to ask. I am now answered."
"But you do not believe me? I see that--"
"I would believe you if all the angels in heaven should deny your
truth."
She looked at him curiously; she was infinitely touched by his emotion.
He cared for her; he loved her with a passion which she could
understand. He would gladly--oh, how gladly!--have folded her life
about with a protecting care, keeping the very winds of heaven from her
face if they should blow too roughly; have taken her in his strong arms,
stood between her and all the world, given her all and been content with
the giving, asking for nought but the right to protect her. That she
did not love him he knew; that she cared for another he more than
imagined; and yet he would have been content to try and win her regard
by a life's devotion.
Of all this he spoke not one word, as he stood looking into her face
with burning, tender eyes. He did not speak, and yet he knew that he was
understood. The woman gave a little weary sigh; it was in vain! To her
there was but one man in all the world. He said no word, but stepped
toward her with outstretched, pleading hands, with tender love and pity,
asking nothing, giving all without questioning, without doubt. She, who
had befriended so many, and was yet without a friend, who had been
tempest-tossed and shipwrecked before her life-journey had fairly begun,
knew what it was that lay in Maurice Galbraith's outstretched
hands,--the love of a life, a haven of peace and quiet. He was about to
speak, to let the love which was troubling his heart pour itself out in
a flood of words at the portal of her ear; but with a movement she
checked him. The repellent gesture of her hand, her averted head and
downcast eyes, answered him. He understood her as well, better perhaps
than if he had spoken and she had answered. It left him another chance,
too; later, when he had shown her how faithfully he could wait, he might
speak the words which she now refused to hear. So both were glad that
they had spoken only with their eyes. She had been spared the pain of
putting into words that which it would have been hard for him to hear;
and he was glad that she had not spoken the cold truth which he read in
her face. When she spoke again, it was to ignore that silent prayer and
its denial. She took up the thread of the conversation where they had
dropped it:--
"I am glad that you are convinced of this truth; and I trust that you
will bring the others, Henry Deering most of all, to feel as you do."
The tender look of love died out from Maurice Galbraith's face. He
turned gloomily away from the fair woman whose beauty was not for him.
"I cannot tell, I do not know; what man can judge another? I said that
I believed you; did I imply that I trusted him?"
Of all cruel griefs endured by Millicent Almsford, this was the most
bitter,--that her lover, through her fault, should be misjudged; that in
the eyes of others he should suffer. She realized now in what a light
he had appeared to Galbraith, to Hal and Barbara, to all the small
circle who had seen their friendship flower into love, and that flower
tossed to the earth before it had ripened to its fruition. His sudden
disappearance, her own too obvious grief, to what could they attribute
it but to his faithlessness? And now that this base slander had been
cast upon him, they believed it. He was compromised, dishonored in
their eyes; and the fault was hers. As the full significance of all
this struck her, she groaned aloud, clasping her hands together over her
grieved heart as if in mortal agony. How could she right him in their
eyes? How could she dissipate the cloud which darkened his stainless
honor?
There was but one way,--to tell them all the sad truth. Her honor
against his! How could she hesitate, loving him as she did? And yet
there was a moment of awful suspense. Her proud spirit, which had borne
unaided and alone the burden which would have crushed a feebler soul,
revolted at the thought of a new humiliation. A man's honor is writ on a
strong shield that can be easily cleansed. It may receive many a hard
blow, and show many a dint, and yet be as good as those carried by his
mates. It can be burnished bright again, and held up for all men to
see, its very scars proving through what battles it has been worn, and
adding, rather than detracting, from its present lustre. If all else be
lost, let him but give his life to expiate his sin, and the blot is
washed out from the shield. But with a woman it is not so. Her honor
must be maintained by a shield of crystal, on which the faintest breath
of slander leaves its foul impress; which one blow dealt by a man's hand
shatters irrevocably. This is man's code of honor; and as man's voice
is strongest in the world, it is the world's code of honor. Only the
greatest men set it aside as unjust; only the strongest refuse to
recognize it.
All this Millicent knew. It was not wonderful that she hesitated, that
she was silent, or answered the searching questions put to her by the
young lawyer slowly and evasively. She was putting off the moment in
which she must decide between his honor and her own. She remembered the
indignant look Deering had cast upon Graham in the court-room, the cool
manner in which Barbara had spoken of him, Mrs. Deering's grieved
silence respecting the man who had been so valued a friend to her, and,
worst of all, Galbraith's openly expressed doubt of his innocence. A
woman of a smaller nature who had endured Millicent's cruel experience
might, too, have doubted Graham; but she had fathomed his nature more
truly in a few months than had his lifelong friends. She knew that in
it there was no room for one ignoble thought. His faults she recognized
more clearly than if she had loved him less. She knew him to be
selfish, with the selfishness of genius; hard of heart, with the
indifference to human pain common to those men who are capable of
enduring the most terrible suffering; intolerant of those who differed
from him, with the steadfast knowledge that his thoughts and opinions
had been moulded from no contact with other minds, but attained with
pain and weariness of spirit, built up from his inner consciousness, the
result of thought and experience, not of the study of other men's minds
and actions.
As Galbraith continued to question her, she answered clearly all that he
said, while her mind, with a dual consciousness, carried on its separate
train of thought. She realized that if Maurice Galbraith were not
himself convinced of Graham's innocence, his efforts to disprove
Horton's accusation would be half-hearted, perfunctory, and without the
moral weight of honest conviction. If he were to learn the true reason
of the breach between Graham and herself, he must know it
immediately,--that very night. That her confession would clear the man
she loved from every suspicion she never doubted, and yet--she did not
speak. It was so hard to tell the story of her broken life; she was not
strong enough. To any other it would have been easier to bare her
secret than to this man who reverenced her, who had told her, with look
and deed and tender thought, that he loved her.
Barbara, weary of waiting till the long conversation should come to an
end, had taken her place at the piano in the adjoining room; and after
playing for some time she struck the chords of a song full of tender
associations to Millicent. A wild, passionate melody of Rubinstein,
full of love and hope and youth. Millicent had sung it on that night
when Graham had found her waiting for him in the firelight, with his
name upon her lips, though they were still strangers. She had sung it
then with an intensity which had brought the grave artist close to her
side, full of enthusiasm for the song, of admiration for the singer.
She remembered how he had thanked her silently with a look, while the
others, whose presence she had forgotten, had been full of warm praises.
A mist of tears rose to her eyes and gathered itself into crystal drops
of pain. Moved by the flood of memories which rushed about her with the
tumultuous waves of sound, she rose, her pride swept away, her love
triumphant; and, with a brow peaceful with its victory, she spoke. She
told them all her sad story; while Barbara, summoned to her side, wept
softly at the piteous tale, and Galbraith, strong man that he was,
trembled with emotion at the words of passionate grief. Without reserve
was the revelation made; the tragedy of her young life, her meeting with
Graham, her love for him, and the deceit to which it led,--all were
told. No word of anger had she for the false friend and dead lover, and
no thought of condemnation of Graham's action. He was right; he could
not have acted otherwise; he had been frank and true and honest with
her; and she had deceived him! He had left the San Rosario Ranch to
spare her the pain of seeing him, and because it was best for them both
that he should go. The bar between them was of her forging; the breach
was inevitable; it was her fault, all her fault. His thoughts of her