Behind them stretched the hot, red high-road, with its group of humble cabins. In front of one of these a group of strange, wolfish-looking children had called a greeting to Pedro, the driver, who was of their kin. The narrow, weather-beaten bridge, with its shaky wooden piers, joined the highway over which they had come, to a forest road which hung over the stream and skirted the mountain's base. The gray ruin of what had once been a mill stood on the farther bank, with rusty, idle wheels and empty grain-bins. There was a small islet in the stream, between which and the near bank was a clear pool which reflected with perfect distinctness the trees and rocks, the very ferns and marsh flowers of the overhanging bank. Here the party paused for a few moments, enjoying the familiar beauty of the scene.

"You will paint this place one day for me, will you not? I care very much for it." Millicent was the speaker; and the artist close at her side laughed and answered,--

"Your will, of course, is my law, lady; but when you can teach the bird on yonder twig a new song, you can perhaps choose a spot where a painter shall see a picture. Much that is beautiful in nature cannot be portrayed in art."

For a moment longer they paused on the bank, little thinking how that scene would be graven on their memories in after days; and then Hal brandished his whip, and Sphinx started off at a brisk trot, the strong mules following at the top of their speed, while Graham led the way on his fleet mustang. It was not far from high noon when the party arrived at the place of destination, recognized by a flag floating above the low underbrush at the foot of a hill. In reply to Hal's l.u.s.ty hallooing, a young man emerged from the other side of the hill, and waving his hat in greeting, hurried to help Mrs. Deering descend from the wagon.

"How late you are, good people!" he cried in a pleasant voice. "The fellows thought you were going to disappoint us; but I had too much faith in your word, Mrs. Deering, to doubt you. Miss Deering, you were too quick for me; your agility is only excelled by your grace. Well, Graham, glad to see you; for once you are better than your word."

The young men shook hands with that punctilious politeness which gentlemen who do not quite like each other are apt to show in the presence of mutual lady friends. Deering presented their host to Miss Almsford, and at that moment the other two woodmen made their appearance,--Michael O'Neil, a jolly-looking young Irishman, and d.i.c.k Hartley, a dark-browed Englishman. The three men were intimates at the Ranch, and Millicent already knew O'Neil and Hartley; the latter was an old friend and travelling-companion of Graham. Leaving Deering and O'Neil to take care of the horses, Galbraith led the way to the camp, a sheltered spot on the south side of the protecting hill. Three small sleeping-tents here stood close together. Galbraith's was the central one; it was wonderfully luxurious, Millicent thought, with its comfortable rug and little iron bedstead, two chairs, and a writing-table. A small looking-gla.s.s had been brought from town "on purpose for the visit of the ladies," Hartley a.s.sured them; at which statement there was a general laugh at the young Englishman's expense, his personal vanity being well known. But it was of the greenwood drawing-room that the ladies expressed the highest approval. A square s.p.a.ce of ground had been cleared of the dense undergrowth, its smooth surface being thickly carpeted by soft piles of fresh, sweet ferns.

Close-growing shrubs and bushes served as walls, while the thick branches of the great trees made a roof close enough to keep out the heat of the sun. The flowers of the manzanita and the buckeye perfumed the air of this sylvan boudoir, wherein were ranged comfortable stools and camp-chairs. A wide hammock fitted with a red blanket swung between two straight tree stems. Here they sat for a while, resting from the long drive; and here it was that Millicent had time to observe more particularly the appearance of Mr. Maurice Galbraith, of whom she had heard so much. Galbraith was not, strictly speaking, a handsome man, though he had a good deal of beauty. He was tall and slender, with a finely shaped head, well set upon the shoulders. His bright, intelligent face was too thin for beauty; while the fine, brilliant eyes, with their heavy lashes, were hollow from over-work. His delicate chin and mouth were exquisitely modelled; while the nose seemed a trifle over-large through the extreme thinness of the face. The features in repose were almost stern in their look of concentrated thought; but when he laughed it was with the sudden merriment of a child, the mouth parting over the small white teeth, and the large, dark, hollow eyes flashing cheerily. Barely over thirty, he might have pa.s.sed for some years older, an unflagging attention to his arduous profession having told somewhat upon his strength. Among the lawyers on the Pacific coast, Galbraith was considered a rising man, his late appointment to a district attorneyship proving the confidence which he enjoyed.

Millicent thought him decidedly the most attractive of their hosts; but her quick intuition had already told her that Graham felt little cordiality towards him, and she spoke chiefly to Hartley, the rather insignificant "beauty man" of the camp. From him she learned that for several years the trio of friends had pa.s.sed the summer months in camping out at some spot not far distant from the railroad, which carried them every morning to San Francisco, and which brought them back as early in the afternoon as might be. Their one henchman (of course a Chinaman) was left in charge of the camp during the day, and performed the household work necessary to so primitive a _menage_. Not far distant from the camp, the stream whose course they had followed spread out into a wide, deep pool, affording an opportunity for a refreshing plunge, with which the three friends were wont to begin the proceedings of the day. A breakfast eaten at the tent door was followed by a walk to the station, half a mile distant, when they bade good-by to their sylvan home. Four o'clock, or at latest five, saw them on their way from the city; and an hour or two of angling in the cool stream, wherein swam delicious trout, or a tramp through the woods with a gun, brought them to the dinner hour. Just at this point in Hartley's chronicle of their daily life, Ah Lam, who had been brought to a.s.sist the one servant of the camp in his preparations, announced that dinner was served.

Millicent never learned how the evenings were pa.s.sed in camp, for there was a general move towards the dining-room, another triumph of sylvan architecture. A few paces distant from the green parlor, but hidden from it by the thick intervening bushes, was a great fig-tree with wide-spreading branches laden with delicious purple fruit. At the foot of the tree stood a table laid with plates, knives and forks, and other appurtenances of civilized life. Millicent gave a little cry of delight at the prettily decorated board, which was wreathed with a garland of green leaves and covered with bright flowers. Barbara, who had been reading Dumas with that intense delight to which the first acquaintance with French romance gives rise, said that the banquet surpa.s.sed the one spread by Joseph Ba.s.sano for the Dauphine of France in the old Chateau.

Millicent found herself at the table between Graham and the good-natured Irishman, O'Neil. Her lover seemed to her handsomer to-day among this band of his contemporaries than ever before; and she looked at him with her whole soul in her eyes, forgetting all in the world beside or beyond him. O'Neil, who was the wit of the camp, told funny stories at which every one laughed; but when Graham spoke, the men all listened, like soldiers waiting the words of their superior. Before they had come to the table, the artist had twined a girdle for Millicent's slender waist of some feathery green creeper, a spray of which she had wreathed about her head. When the red wine was poured, Graham spilled from his gla.s.s, as if by accident, a few drops upon the earth, then, touching his goblet to hers, he said in an undertone,--

"We will drink the old toast, my nymph, to Pan, _evoe, evoe_!"

Galbraith devoted himself to Barbara; and after dinner, when all justice had been done to the woodland fare, and the great warm figs had been eaten with the sunshine in them, the party broke up into groups.

Graham, who had brought his colors, made a sketch of the view from the hilltops, Millicent sitting silently beside him, handing him the brushes as he required them, then squeezing the little tubes of paint with a childish delight. Barbara and Galbraith made their way to the pool, where Miss Deering angled successfully, landing four good-sized trout within the hour. Hal Deering and O'Neil employed the time in firing at an ace of hearts pinned to a tree; while Hartley and Mrs. Deering sat in the green parlor, where the thoughtful, motherly woman put a very necessary patch on one of Galbraith's coats, in which her quick glance had descried a rent, as it hung on a peg in his tent.

As the afternoon shadows lengthened, and his sketch drew near its completion, Graham found time occasionally to speak to his companion sitting so quietly and contentedly at his side. The absolute ignoring of self possible to this intelligent girl, with her strong mind and latent talents, was incomprehensible to him. She was perfectly happy to forget her individual existence in a sympathetic interest in his work.

He felt sure that should it please him she would give up her music, her studies, every other interest in life and be content to sit always as now, watching his work, giving a word of intelligent criticism when asked to do so, stifling every thought which should cloud the mirror of her mind in which he might see himself ever reflected. To the sensitive man, who had pa.s.sed most of his life in solitude, this absolute, unreasoning devotion had something intensely painful about it. If he had known how to frame his thought he would have begged her to care less for him. He felt himself an ingrate, so poor a return could he make for this wealth of love poured out at his feet. Her presence was a pleasure to him; he loved to watch her graceful motions as she walked, and the beautiful poses which she all unconsciously took in sitting, standing, or moving. Her appreciation of his work, her understanding of himself, were truer than ever man or woman had shown before; and yet he sometimes was annoyed by the irksome feeling that what he had to give her was but a bankrupt's portion of love. Times there were when this feeling did not intrude itself upon him; and the day which was now drawing to its close was one of those precious ones wherein had been no slightest misunderstanding betwixt them. When Hal came to tell them that it was time to return, Graham put up his work with a sigh that it must be so soon finished, and the two lovers lingered for a moment, taking a last look over the little camp.

After bidding their hosts farewell the guests turned their horses toward home, the larger wagon with Mrs. Deering and Barbara leading the way.

Sphinx, whose best days were over, was tired; and Millicent soon lost sight of the swift mule team. Graham rode a little in advance of the carriage, leaving the place at Millicent's side to Mr. Galbraith, who had volunteered to accompany them for a part of the journey. She found him a most attractive person, and was much interested in his conversation. He told her anecdotes of the primitive justice which prevailed in certain remote districts of the State, and gave some personal reminiscences of his earliest cases, in which he had been called upon to defend or accuse criminals of the most desperate cla.s.s.

Galbraith talked with that sort of brilliancy which requires sympathetic attention from his hearers, and for the first three miles of the road he was able to win this from Miss Almsford. When, however, the girl's eyes wandered from his intelligent face to the man on horseback half a dozen rods in advance, and she mentally compared the strong, elastic figure of the distant horseman to the man at her side, Galbraith found that it was time to return to the camp and "leave them to their own fate."

Millicent's parting words were doubly gracious to the young lawyer, from the fact that she thought his departure would bring her lover to her.

In this hope she was however disappointed, for Graham was in one of those moods when silence was more attractive to him than Hal's amusing companionship. He would have liked to have Millicent all to himself on that pleasant homeward ride; but Millicent with the inevitable addition of Deering could not win him to her side. Suddenly the two in the carriage saw Graham's horse give a wild rear and plunge, after which he shied at some unseen object by the roadside with a force which would have unseated any ordinary horseman. The animal now stood for an instant trembling in every limb, and then seemed to fling himself and his rider in a perfect agony of terror down the high-road, his four feet beating out the startling measure of a break-neck gallop to Millicent's horrified ears. From the cloud of dust, and through the cadence of the mustang's hoofs, these words were shouted back to them,--

"Look out for rattlesnakes!"

They had by this time reached the spot where Graham's horse had taken fright; and old Sphinx shivered violently, tossing his head and snorting loudly. In a few moments, it seemed to Millicent an eternity, Graham rejoined them, having regained control over his fiery horse.

"Deering, stand by Sphinx's head and hold my horse, will you?"

As he spoke John Graham dismounted, pulled his high boots over his knees, and seizing the heavy whip from the carriage, advanced cautiously to the edge of the road, while Hal soothed the startled horses.

Millicent, left alone in the wagon, gave a low cry of terror. Graham was at her side in an instant.

"Dear one, you must help me with your courage; do not be afraid, there is really no danger," he murmured. She was silent, and tried to smile an answer.

Graham now walked slowly along the road, looking intently into the gra.s.s which lined the highway. Suddenly the dread sound of the rattle was heard, awful alike to man and beast. Sphinx started again, but was soon quieted, while Ta.s.so reared and gave a shriek of terror. Graham, raising his heavy whip, brought the thong with a tremendous force across the snake's body. The creature reared itself with blazing eyes and sprang towards its pursuer, who dealt it another blow; and before it could coil itself for a second spring, Graham ran forward, and with his iron boot-heel crushed the reptile's head into the dust. He soon despatched the writhing creature, and was stooping to cut the rattles from its lifeless body, when a warning cry from Millicent told him that the battle was not over. The mate of the dead snake was close beside him, ready to spring upon his stooping body. He straightened himself, and ran backwards, firing his revolver as he went. The shot missed the snake, whose rattle rang out a very death-knell. It leaped savagely towards him. Graham had dropped his whip, most efficient of weapons with which to meet these dangerous animals, and hastily tearing off his coat he threw it over the snake. He sprang upon the garment and stamped in every direction; finally pinning the creature low down in the body, the bristled head, with its awful tongue, reared itself from beneath the folds of the coat, wounded but furious to avenge its mate. The horrible hiss chilled Millicent's blood. She saw the forked tongue dart out and strike Graham's leg. Mercifully it struck below the knee, the fang failing to penetrate the thick leather of the boot. The creature wreathed another coil of its length from beneath the iron heel, and again made ready to strike. Graham c.o.c.ked his revolver, and while the angry red throat, with its death-dealing jaws, yawned before him, he poured a volley of hot lead into the writhing body. One, two, three shots Millicent counted; and then after a pause Graham's voice rang out brisk and clear: "All right, my girl, if there are no more of the beasts." The still quivering bodies of the snakes lay in the dust of the road, and Graham, recovering his whip, carefully examined the locality from which they had emerged, to see if by chance a nest of eggs or young ones was to be found. His search was unsuccessful; and after securing the second rattle, which was a long one, proving how powerful the reptile had been, he measured the bodies of the dead snakes, and rejoined Millicent. She held out her hand to him; and Deering, who had had as much as he could do in controlling the two horses, congratulated him on his success, and was about to resume his seat in the carriage.

Millicent had been perfectly quiet and composed during the time of danger; her firm hand and voice had controlled the frightened horse; her watchfulness had warned Graham of the approach of his second enemy. But now the snakes were both dead, her lover was safe, and there was no further need of her strength or composure. As Hal approached the carriage, she dropped the reins, buried her face in her hands, and burst into an uncontrollable fit of weeping. Hal, who had lifted one foot to the step of the vehicle, dropped it to the ground, and retreated a few paces with a frightened countenance. He would not have been afraid to encounter a nest of rattlesnakes, but a weeping girl completely unnerved him. He retreated behind the wagon, and, after a hurried conversation with Graham, without more ado, mounted that gentleman's horse and rode off as fast as the animal would carry him; while Graham quietly stepped into the vehicle, and touching Millicent lightly on the shoulder, said, "Millicent, it is I."

The pa.s.sionate weeping grew more quiet; the sobs became less violent; a slight tremor ran through her frame at the touch; at the words the tears rolled back to their source; and presently a pale face was lifted from the supporting hands, and the mouth quivered into a smile. And so they rode home together, hand in hand, through the deepening shadows; and one more day of the sweet summer-tide of love had pa.s.sed, and each was richer for that day, how often recalled by both of them when the shadows of life had deepened into night.

CHAPTER X.

"Thereon comes what awakening! One grave sheet Of cold implacable white about me drawn"--

John Graham was one of those men in whose nature there seems no trace of feminality. Man and woman supplement each other, each bringing certain qualities to the completion of humanity; and yet it is rare to find a man whose character is not modified by some mother trait. Graham's qualities and his faults were equally masculine; he was more strongly attracted by women through this intense virility than are men who, having some trace of the feminine in their nature, understand and sympathize more perfectly with the opposite s.e.x. The attraction was one against which he rebelled, deeming it to belong to the weaker side of his nature; and he had so ordered his life that it might not fall within the influence of maid or matron. This antagonism to woman made itself felt in his work; his successful pictures were of men, their high exploits and successes. A n.o.ble painting of Saint Paul, which now hung over the altar of a Roman Catholic church in San Francisco, had won him his first reputation in Paris; he could understand and sympathize with that great man as if he had known him. It was only the highest type of man that attracted him,--the lovers of men, and not their conquerors.

He had never tried to paint Alexander, but had labored long and lovingly over a picture of Socrates. The female subjects which he had treated were not less powerful than these, but the force which they showed was scornful and untender. A marvellous painting of Circe hung in his studio; it was one of his most masterly works, and yet, though critics had praised and connoisseurs had approved it, the picture was still unsold. With black brows bound by red-gold serpents, the enchantress lay upon a luxurious couch; her beautiful body was but half veiled, the arms and bosom immodestly displayed; about her jewelled feet fawned the creatures whose brute natures had conspired with the enchantress to smother whatever was human in their beings; self-despair and scorn for their abas.e.m.e.nt deformed her regular features to that moral ugliness never so hideous as when seen in a youthful and beautiful face. A terrible picture, full of wrath, but untempered by mercy. His Cressida, purchased by a great European Academy, was another wonderful picture; a picture which made men smile a little bitterly, and had brought an angry flush to the cheek of more than one sensitive woman.

Over a man of this nature woman holds a more important influence than with any other cla.s.s; it may be a good influence or it may be a harmful one, but it is the most potent one which touches his life. Had John Graham loved happily at twenty-five, instead of most miserably, he would have been a very different man at thirty from the hermit artist of San Rosario. It would have been better for him if he could have learned the lesson which all wise men learn if they live long enough,--that women are neither angels who stand immeasurably above men, nor inferior beings whose place is at their feet, but human like themselves, full of good and faulty instincts, and, with all their imperfections, the G.o.d-given helpmates of man. So justly should they be judged; and if a little mercy be claimed for them, generosity should not deny it, so few are their chances in life compared with those of their brothers. A woman has but one possibility of happiness in this world. The stakes are high on which she risks her whole fortune, which she may lose by one unredeemable throw.

If Graham could have known all this, as, being what he was, he could not, he would have gained that one element which his genius lacked to make it superlative. Man and child he was by turns, but never for an instant had he been able to look at life from the standpoint of a woman.

He had once loved the whole gentler s.e.x with that chivalrous spirit which made him unfit to live in the nineteenth century. No discourteous or cruel word toward any woman had he to reproach himself with; he had looked upon them as creatures so far removed from his sphere, that his mind must be cleared of every base thought before it might dwell upon them; they were mysterious angels which it was his happiness to worship.

Then came a change, and the love which had turned to grief darkened his soul. As his heart had been filled with a love so great that it embraced all the sisters of his idol, his contempt went out towards them, as his love had done before. His revenge had been terrible: he had struck at womankind; he had pictured it in its debas.e.m.e.nt for all the world to see.

The few women for whom he cared were elderly people, whose life-battles had been fought and won; who sat enthroned in the calm of that peaceful period when youth is no longer regretted nor old age feared. Such women he could paint without bitterness; and his portrait of his mother was a masterpiece of exquisite sentiment. No woman that he had ever met disliked John Graham; if he was distant and cold, he was honest and courteous, and a gentleman in the deepest sense of the word. He was too chivalrous to revenge himself on any individual; his grief was too great to stoop to anything so mean. More than one woman would gladly have loved him, but he avoided them as if they had been poison-nurtured.

Men, as a rule, respected and feared Graham; a few of his heart-friends would have given their lives for him with a smile. To those who understood and loved him, there was something more than human about the man,--a quality to which the highest part of their nature did homage.

Fools laughed at him for his quixotism; the critics had worn themselves out in shrieking abuse of his work which affected him in nowise. He cared little for men's praise or blame; he would have died to help them to a new truth. He was of the stuff which made martyrs in the old time, crusaders in the dark ages, and artists in the Renaissance. His pictures were beautiful as works of art, but they were great because they embodied living truths. At twenty his friends said that he had great talent; at thirty his enemies ceased to deny his force; at forty, if he lived so long, the world would crown him with its laurel as a man of genius. If haply that bitterness which lay like a blight on all his work, on all his life, might be made sweet! What a chance was here for the woman whose love was now breaking over his frozen life with warmth, fragrance, and beauty! How grand an opportunity to sweeten by truth and faith all that had grown bitter from untruth and faithlessness! If she could only have known him as he was, have understood him and his past, before she had loved him, what could not Millicent have accomplished!

Alas! poor child, she knew nothing of all this. Her own past was black with a grief and wrong greater than that which he had borne. She, too, was waking, and for the first time, from a trance of soul and sleep of heart; she was all engrossed in her own growth and development. She was like a little dungeon-born plant, which has at last climbed through the iron bars, and under the light and warmth of the glorious day runs riotous and unthinking across the wall, up, down, on every side, content to live and grow in the sun and air. But the taint of the old wrong and the lie it had entailed, were not yet left behind. He had taken her for a pure white lily; and how could she tell him that there had been a time when she lived in darkness and despair before her life flowered into its one perfect white blossom under the warmth of his love?

Life is very pleasant at the San Rosario Ranch with its bordering of peaceful hills. Here all are happy, be they of high or low degree; from the gentle-voiced _chatelaine_ to the stranger within her gates, the potent charm extends. The fair daughter and tall son have lived peaceful, uneventful lives; and though their young eyes may sometimes turn a little wearily toward the mountain barrier, beyond which lies the great busy world, known more to them by hearsay than by actual experience, they are happy, far happier than are most of the men and women in the crowded thoroughfare of the world's cities. The Ranch does not lie in the belt of gold, nor in the silver girdle which crosses the Pacific coast. The rude mining towns are far distant from this portion of the dairy lands of California. The trains which leave the station in this neighborhood are laden indeed with a golden freight; but no armed men are found necessary to guard the boxes filled with their rolls of fragrant yellow. The product of the dairy lands is of a smaller, surer value than that for which men toil and drudge in the gulches or mines.

Far away to the southward, where the orange groves are white and golden with their double burden of blossom and fruit, is a climate milder than that of San Rosario; and there Hal had set his heart upon one day establishing himself. In that vine country the air is heavy with the spicy odor of the grape, and the harvest is blood-red with its life-juices; and yet to Millicent the fairest garden in this world's garden lay between the circled hills of San Rosario.

Millicent, having learned the earliest stage of b.u.t.ter-making under Hal's direction, wished to be initiated into the mysteries which follow the skimming of the cream. Hal gave one of his boisterous guffaws of laughter when she one morning gravely informed him that she was going to help in that day's churning. She had donned the prettiest chintz morning gown imaginable, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and a fresh white ap.r.o.n. Her skirt was kilted up half way to the knee, showing a scarlet petticoat, which in turn exposed the pretty, small feet, and possibly two inches more of the round ankle than is usually shown by ladies of her degree. Tying one of the great picturesque hats which they had brought home from San Real, under her chin, the energetic young woman started for the dairy. Hal, giving a knowing wink to his mother and sister standing near by, as if to say that the joke was too good to be spoiled, followed her, with Tip, the cross old dog, following him in turn.

"Millicent, did you ever do any churning?"

"No, but I can learn."

"Without doubt; but tell me, did you ever see any one else churn?"

"Oh, yes; very often."

"Who, if one may ask?"

"You will not know any better if I tell you. It was old Nina, at home."

"Ah, old Nina; and what sort of a machine did she use?"

"She did not use a machine at all; she used a churn, like anybody else."

"What did it look like?"

"I am sure I have forgotten; it was probably an old-fashioned one, but it made quite as good b.u.t.ter as _yours_ does;" this in a slightly irritated voice. She objected to being catechised, and had, moreover, a dim sense that Deering was bent on quizzing her. She ran along the footpath in advance in order to avoid further questioning, and reached the dairy a few minutes before him. Finding the main door shut, she hurried round to the side, when, just as she turned the corner, her rapid progress was suddenly brought to an end. She had met an obstacle; she had, moreover, fallen into the arms of the obstacle, which proved to be a tall man with a kindly voice, for he called out merrily, "h.e.l.lo, my girl, where are you going so fast?" steadying her at the same moment with his arm, as the sudden shock almost precipitated her from the path.

Millicent drew back disconcerted and breathless, and looked up into the face of the man whom she had so unexpectedly encountered. When she saw that it was a face familiar to her, she blushed and stammered a little as she replied to his astonished greeting. Mutual apologies and explanations followed; and Hal, coming up at that moment, laughed at her discomfiture till the tears rolled down his face.

"You always laugh at other people's misfortunes," cried Millicent, trying to be angry; but it was impossible to be angry with Hal. The irrepressible young rancher carried the day; and Maurice Galbraith a.s.sured Millicent that it was his awkwardness which had aroused Deering's merriment.

"We are very glad to see you, Galbraith, but we are too busy to stop and talk to you just now. You will find mother and Bab at the house. I have a new hand here who is going to take charge of the churning in future, and I am just showing her about a little. Do you catch on?"