The San Rosario Ranch
It was Barbara who spoke, interrupting her mother brusquely, her voice
full of a reproach inexplicable to all but Graham. He looked at her
fixedly for a moment, and then O'Neil clapped him on the back, and held
up the empty cup.
"Too late, old fellow, as Miss Barbara says. Never mind," in a lower
key, "I have promised Deering to brew an Irish punch, after the ladies
withdraw."
The artist stared a moment at the goblet, and shivered as he took the
place which had been made for him beside his hostess. Soon the signal
was given for the ladies to leave the room; Graham's arrival having
precipitated the breaking up of the party. The new-comer did not long
remain in the dining-room, but presently followed his hostess into the
library, where he found Barbara at the piano. Mrs. Deering signalled
him to take a place at her side.
"I fear I took too great a liberty in coming unasked. O'Neil says I
stalked into the room like a stage ghost, and cast a gloom over the
party."
"You know you are always welcome here. You used to call the Ranch your
home."
"Have I still a right to do so? Things seem so changed, my lady."
"You will never find me changed while I can help you. I did not send
for you, knowing that you would come if it was best for you."
"And yet I came too late!"
"Graham, there are no such words as too late to those who know how to
wait. That phrase is only for the impatient, not for the steadfast. But
now tell me of yourself, of your work; it is so long since we have seen
you."
"Of myself, no! of my work, yes. I have finished my picture; it has
gone to Paris. It will now be judged by other men." He did not tell
her of his loss, or that he had sent The Lovers in the place of the
burned picture.
"May they prove kindly critics."
"No, I do not want that; I do not insist that they shall praise my work;
I only question, can they understand it?"
"But that is the least of it all, you have sometimes said."
"Ah! Madonna, I have been wrong. What use is there for me to speak if
there be no one to hear? If they do not understand, the fault must lie
in me. I must learn to speak the broad language of humanity. I cannot
ask men to puzzle themselves with my small vernacular." The man sighed
deeply, and his friend noticed that he was paler and thinner than she
had last seen him.
"You have been over-working, Graham; you lead an unnatural life when you
are in town, now that your people are away. Why not come back to the
tower again?"
"I think I will, Madonna."
He had been over-working, and for what? That the picture for which he
had sacrificed so much, should be seen one brief hour by a dozen men!
He now felt in what a strained condition his nerves had been. The
picture was gone, and with it the strong excitement which had kept him
alive and alert. The tension was relaxed, and an intense depression had
followed, which was in turn losing itself in a new feeling. A lonely
longing, a craving for a tender womanly sympathy, for the only human
being who had never misunderstood his many moods, who was always in
sympathy with him in joy or sorrow. She alone in all the world could
have helped him at this time; to her he could have confided all those
delicate shades of thought which drifted through his mind, too fragile
ever to be prisoned in words. She could have divined those half-formed
ideas and crystallized them into steadfast utterances. He was cold,
bitterly cold, and suffered for that loving human sympathy as the
parched hillsides had but now longed for the refreshing rain which had
made the earth green and fair after the long summer drought. He had
chosen Art for his mistress, and she had smiled upon him chastely and
coolly; and yet he was not content.
Barbara left the piano, and Graham joined her. The over-punctilious
courtesy with which he had always treated her was forgotten. He spoke
suddenly and sharply:--
"What did you mean by what you said to me,--why am I too late?"
"I meant too late for a draught from the loving-cup."
"You meant more than that."
"If you choose to fancy--"
"I cannot but choose to _know_."
By this time the gay group from the dining-room had flooded the library
with their ringing voices, their merry faces. Only these two were pale
and out of harmony with the scene. Barbara, with downcast eyes, stood by
the piano, tapping her fingers nervously on the polished case.
"I have interrupted your festivity; I have been a very skeleton at the
feast; forgive me,--I could not help coming,--forgive me and answer me
one question, and I will go and leave you in peace."
"I say, Bab, we are going into the drawing-room to tell ghost stories.
O'Neil has a splendid one,--a real Irish family banshee yarn. Come on,
you and Graham."
"In a moment, Hal, don't wait for us; we will join you before you are
all settled and Mr. O'Neil has begun."
The library was again empty. The voices of the holiday folk reached
their ears across the hall.
"Tell me what you have heard from her."
There was no need of speaking her name. Her face looked at them from its
place over the mantel-shelf,--a quick, strong sketch made by Graham.
From a leafy background white shoulders, and a fair face with deep eyes,
were shadowed forth. The firelight, falling restlessly upon the
picture, touched into light now the full red mouth, now the ivory
throat.
"I have not heard for some time. She was in Venice again, very ill from
the long journey, when she last wrote."
"You have not heard since?"
"No."
"Do you think she is well now, and--and at peace?"
"No."
"What reason have you to doubt her well-being?"
"I cannot tell you."
The man looked at her searchingly, as if he would read her very soul,
and then turned away with a word of leave-taking,--"Good-night."
"Stay a moment. I have something to tell you. I do not know why I am
forced to speak to you of the last interview she had in this room, but I
must do so. Before she left,--on the night when she cried out in the
court-room,--you remember?"
Did he remember? Ah, Heaven! only too well he remembered the last words
she had ever spoken to him,--valiant words, full of love and protection.
"That night Mr. Galbraith came to see her. It was very late, and they
had a long conversation. I could only hear their voices from the next
room; and then she called me to her, and told us both all her sad
story,--all that had passed between you and her. She took all blame
upon herself, and would have made us both acknowledge that you had been
right and just in acting as you did."
"And was I not just?"
"Just, perhaps; but how ungenerous! What have you to do with justice?
You, who never painted till you painted her; you, who were so cold and
unfeeling till her smile made you human for a little time. Then your
own selfish egotism froze you again."
"Thank you for what you have told me, and good-by. I shall not see you
soon again. You were very good to her; bless you for it! Every one was
good to her,--every one but me, it seems."
"You speak as if she were dead."
He did not hear her last words. He was already out of earshot, taking
leave of his hostess.
When he was alone with the stars he could think better than in that
heated room, with that dear vine-crowned face before his eyes, with
Barbara's voice in his ears. He saw how Barbara misjudged him. He knew
that most men and women would have held him as she did; and yet he had
thought that he was right. He had fought the good fight, and he had
conquered. What mattered it if all the world saw in him a monster of
selfishness? He had chosen poverty, hard work, and loneliness, when
wealth, worldly success, and a painless love might have been his.
Sybaris had been open to him; and he had turned his back upon the
perfumed island for an attic, a crust, and a mistress who demanded all,
and had yielded nothing but hope.
But now things were altered. He felt angry and outraged at the thought
that others knew her story, that she was pitied by them because of her
great love for him. He longed to protect her, to suffer for her, to
make her forget in his love and care the cruel lot which had been hers.
He yearned for her sympathy, for her love, for that sense of peace which
had come upon him as he sat by her side. The tide of love, which not
once in a million years is at the full in two human hearts at once,
rushed over him, sweeping away pride, reason, selfishness,
ambition,--all, all routed and o'erset by that warm, delicious flood of
emotion. He had fought against love so long, that at last the overthrow
of will brought him an ecstasy of delight. He ran like one crazed
through the cool, starry night, singing a love-song strange and tender,
a song of submission, of hope and passionate love. Through the orchard
he passed, startling the birds with his wonderful song. The prisoned
love-mates heard it in their little nest, and folded their snowy wings
closer together; the white roses heard it, and trembled at the sound;
the six tall redwoods listened and whispered gravely together as he came
among them and sank upon his knees at their feet, on the very spot where
she had sat that day. That day! How could he have forgotten it, and
all that it had meant to them both? What mist had risen again between
them and hidden its memory from his sight? Before, it had been her want
of faith in him, her fault, her only fault. Her atonement for that sin
against her own soul, against him, had been bitter indeed. And
afterwards what veil had blinded him to the great truth that they loved
each other absolutely, that their two beings were each incomplete
without the other? His pride! It had been his pride which had kept
them so long apart! But now it was over. He would go to her, and tell
her all.
"Millicent, Millicent, I love you!" he cried aloud, his eager voice
surging from his breast as if to relieve its weight of love. His cry
was joyous, bounding, full of life and love and hope. The night wind
bore back to his ears a tender, mournful cadence,--"love you."
"Millicent, my love, I am coming; wait for me!"
"Wait for me!" sighed the echo.
And the young moon, pale and shrinking, dropped behind the high
tree-tops from his sight; while the redwoods swayed tremulously, shaken
by a sudden blast, and the echo again sighed its faint response,--
"Wait for me!"
And the tide on the Pacific was at the flood.
CHAPTER XX.
"Malheureux! cet instant ou votre ame engourdie
A secoue les fers qu' elle traine ici-bas,
Ce fugitif instant fut toute votre vie;
Ne le regrettez pas."
It was a wonderful morning which saw the birth of the new year in
Venice,--one of those clear, bright days on which Winter lays aside all
his severity and assumes the smiles of the Spring still asleep in the
bosom of the stiffened earth. The _piazza_ was filled with a motley
crowd of holiday folk, and the lagoons swarmed with a fleet of gondolas
and _sandalos_.
Before a mighty marble house which stands where one of the smaller
thoroughfares sweeps its waters into the Grand Canal, a gondola has
paused. A young man, a foreigner evidently, steps from the boat and
passes under the fretted archway, with an admiring glance at the
beautiful carving. He is pressed for time, but he stops for a moment to
glance into the square cortile, with its group of almond-trees and its
playing fountain. He is met at the wide doorway by a servant, of whom
he asks, in the best Italian he can muster, for the Signorina Almsford.
The black-browed menial politely replies that it will be impossible for
him to see the signorina; she is not at home to visitors. No further
answer can the stranger obtain to his eager inquiries. A gold piece