The San Rosario Ranch
have passed your life among a race of people most unlike them, and you
have been taught to ignore the country and the race to which you belong.
You consider the matter of your birth as a misfortune, and you have
learned to look down on your country, from below. I have had some
experience of life in the various American colonies in Europe, and I
think it a great misfortune to be one of those expatriated Americans.
They are people without a country. They feel no responsibility toward
any larger society than their own small household circle. Unless he is
called by the exigencies of his profession to Europe, the American
European is very apt to deteriorate greatly. He is in antagonism with
the country which he has abandoned, and his foothold in foreign society
is too much on tolerance to be fortunate in its effects on his
character."
By this time the strong horses had reached the summit of the foot-hill,
and stood breathing heavily. The riders dropped their conversation,
which was drawing near to a discussion, and Millicent looked with wide
eyes out over the grand scene. Far off stretched the line of the
Sierras, the mountain barrier which severs the land of gold from the
surrounding country. The sky was faintly flushed with a forewarning of
the sunset, and a soft breeze rustled the tree tops, and blew into their
faces.
"Are you rewarded for the long ascent, maiden from afar?"
"Yes," answered Millicent softly.
As they made the steep descent together Graham talked, in his strong,
sweet voice, of his life in the old tower, of his work, of the pictures
he had painted, and those which he dreamed of making some day. The
self-dependent and contained young man was much attracted by the girl
with the strange ideas and exquisite manners. On the night when they
had first met, he had been drawn towards her by an attraction which
seemed irresistible. It was not her beauty nor her intelligence which
so much affected him, as a nameless charm like the warmth of a bright
fire on a cool day, which seemed to wrap him about with a sense of
comfort. When he left her this glow was still about him, but as hours
passed it seemed to fade away and leave him strangely cold. He felt for
the first time how desolate was his life; and he remembered her in his
lonely tower as a traveller in the African desert recalls the green
oasis where his last draught of water has been drained. Yet sometimes,
when they talked together, came a strange antagonism between them like
an impalpable mist, chilling the warmth which at meeting always kindled
in her eyes and in his own bosom. That the discordance came from himself
he often felt, and yet he was helpless in the face of it. The
conversation of that afternoon was a type of their interviews, which
were often marred by discussions not far removed from disputes. Whose
fault was it? Wherein lay the incompatibility? Did it arise from either
of their characters, or from the circumstances and surroundings in which
they met? He asked himself the question a score of times and left it
always unanswered. Graham had not been without experience of women. In
his early youth he had had the misfortune to fall deeply in love with a
frivolous and heartless girl. His nature was of a complex character,
passionate to an unusual degree, yet guided by an intelligence stronger
than passion. He had been deceived and outraged in every feeling by the
heartless coquette, whose worst characteristic was her entire incapacity
for affection. After breaking her faith with him, she had tried to win
him back again, and had sued for the love which she had so lightly won
and refused. But though he still loved her with the full force of his
being, he had repulsed the woman whom he could no longer respect. Then
came the long death-agony of deceived love, leaving its unmistakable
traces on heart and brain and body. It was graven on the white brow; it
was painted in the deep eyes, with their unfathomable look of doubt; it
strengthened the fibres of the strong brain with the greater power which
great suffering brings to intelligence of a high order; and alas!
saddest of all, it chilled the hot heart-blood and left it cooler and
more sluggish in its flow. Sorrowful was the man for the sorrow in the
world, but pity for the grief of those about him was not so strong in
him as it had been before. The bitterness which follows the spoiling of
the rose-sweetness of love was happily modified by the broad
humanitarian character of the man. It failed to make him bitter towards
the world for its treatment of himself. He accepted manfully the
knockdown blow which fate had dealt him; and if he mourned it was in
secret,--he burdened no other soul with his misery. But as it was a
woman who had darkened his life and drawn the veil of grief about his
young soul, the whole rage of grief and bitterness which wore his heart
went out toward her sex. As he had loved all women for her sweet sake,
so now did he distrust them all because she had proved false. Evil to
him appeared abstractly as a feminine element in the world; and the
great qualities of nobility, abnegation, and heroism in his eyes were
masculine attributes only. Too chivalrous by nature to think of himself
as in opposition to the gentler sex, his position was in point of fact
antagonistic to them. He was courteous in their company, but he always
avoided it. In deed, as in word, he treated them with reverence,
speaking no lightlier of them behind their backs than to their faces.
The bitterness never broke the barriers of his vexed heart in noxious
word or jest, but it lay there always embittering his life. He had
finally ceased to remember his crushed hopes and spoiled youth; and then
had succeeded a long time wherein he seemed to feel not at all. There
was left him always his pious devotion to his mother, touching in its
pathetic constancy, as to the one creature given him to love. For the
gentle Mrs. Deering, whose face recalled that of his only living parent,
he felt a real sentiment of friendship. Barbara, with her sweet,
wholesome nature, he esteemed more highly than other young women; but
since his intimacy with the family he had always emphasized his regard
for the son and mother of the house; and Barbara had felt the difference
in his voice when he addressed her. It grew colder, and his manner
became formal, if by chance they were thrown together alone.
The charm by which Millicent swayed him, he said to himself, was not
love. He looked back into the black and stormy past, and compared his
feelings for this girl with those which had once torn his breast. She
charmed him, but he surely did not love her. He felt a sense of cold
discomfort on leaving her, but it was very different from the passionate
grief which he once had suffered. This was what he thought when he
contemplated the subject at all, which was not very often. For the most
part he let himself drift down the pleasant summer tide. Skies were
blue and roses sweet. If Millicent made the sky seem bluer, if the
roses took on a more perfect hue when she wore them in her bosom, it was
because she was like the skies and roses, tender and full of warmth and
color. Did not the buds blush into flowers for all the world as well as
for him? Did not the white clouds dip and dance across the sky for
other men's pleasure as well as his own? Was not the whole small world
of the San Rosario Ranch made more blithe and happily alive by the
advent of Millicent Almsford, the maiden from afar? Barbara had been
stimulated by the new atmosphere to do more thinking, and had found less
time for fancy-work and more leisure for reading. Mrs. Deering,
gentlest of women, found a companionship in the stranger which she had
at first thought impossible; and Hal, poor Hal, was vainly fighting
against the witching spell which was fast making him the slave of the
girl, who he had prophesied was too cold to interest him.
Had Graham known the change which his companionship had wrought upon
Millicent, he would have felt that if there was no danger for him in
those swift fleeting hours passed together, there might be for her. The
boredom which she had experienced at first was now dissipated, and every
phase of the novel life at the Ranch had a charm for her.
The loud summons of the supper-bell struck the ears of the young people
as they drew near the house; and the family stood waiting on the piazza
as they reined in their horses before the door.
"Are you tired, Millicent?" was the anxious question of Mrs. Deering.
"Did you get a clear view of the mountains?" asked Barbara.
"How did Sphinx go?" said Hal.
"I cannot answer you all at once," cried Millicent, breathless from the
rapid gallop which had brought them to the house; "but it was perfectly
delightful. Sphinx behaved beautifully, and Mr. Graham almost as well.
The view is wonderful, and I think the country of California very fine.
There is a compliment for you all; do not pretend I never say anything
nice about it."
"My dear, we have an invitation to go down to San Real to visit the
Shallops. Mamma thinks we had better start to-morrow. Mr. Graham, here
is a note for you which came enclosed in my letter. I fancy it carries
the same invitation to you. It will be so nice at the seashore. You
will like it, Millicent, won't you?"
"I like it here," Millicent answered, as she walked slowly up the steps;
"but if you all want to go, I am willing. Who are the Shallops? Where
is San Real?"
Graham had torn open his letter, which he quickly perused. Millicent
looked inquiringly at him, and he answered her unspoken query:
"Yes, Mrs. Shallop asks me to join your party for a week at her pleasant
house. Very kind of her, I am sure; but I never do that sort of thing.
I--"
"Now, Graham," interrupted Mrs. Deering, "say nothing about it till I
have talked it over with you. I have a particular reason for advising
you to go. We will telegraph the answer in the morning, and can make up
our minds in the course of the evening."
"I am yours to command in this and all things, Madame," said Graham,
offering his arm to his hostess; "and there stands Ah Lam ready to weep
because the muffins are growing cold; and I am famously hungry after our
ride."
Tea being ended, Mrs. Deering and Graham paced the gravel path around
the house for half an hour. It was evident to the group on the piazza
that a discussion was going on between them. They spoke in low, earnest
voices, whose tones did not escape Millicent's sensitive hearing, though
she failed to catch the import of the words.
"For my sake," she finally heard Mrs. Deering say in a pleading voice.
"Dear my lady, is it just to put it on that ground?"
"But if you will hear to it on no other," she argued.
"Think what it is you ask of me. To leave my tower and my man Friday
for a luxurious household with plethoric master and servants; to
stagnate for a week among those ridiculous people who fill San Real in
the summer; and all this not because it will do me or any one else any
good, but to the end that I may begin the portraits I have already
refused to paint. You know that I am not suited to that sort of hack
work. How can I make a picture of that over-fed Shallop or his pinched,
good little wife?"
"But our work cannot all be that which is best suited to us--"
"It should be--"
"Remember, Graham, that in three weeks the payment for the studio is
due--"
"Ah, kindest one! you never forget me; bless you for your sweetness and
thoughtfulness. Yes, I will go and do my best to make Shallop look like
something other than an ex-blacksmith, but it is indeed bitter."
"You will find that there will be compensations," said Mrs. Deering, her