"Bah, I can do nothing, see nothing in that picture; I have been too rudely summoned back to earth, to the little griefs of humanity, by a woman's tears. I was never meant for it, I cannot bear it." So ran his thoughts impatiently. He had been living in the pa.s.sionless perfection of art, and had been suddenly recalled by a little creature, full of small human feelings, to this narrow world. Nettled and unstrung, he threw himself upon his hard bed, to dream of Millicent,--a happy dream, in which she knelt before him, acknowledging her fault, pleading his forgiveness; a dream of sweet reconciliation, wherein was memory of that hour among the redwoods, of that mystic soul-embrace but once known to him his whole life through. He awoke refreshed and strengthened, with a love-song on his lips tender as that of the mourning dove. Sundown showed him again at his easel after a long day's work; but that evening Millicent listened in vain for the patter of Ta.s.so's hoofs among the softly rustling autumn leaves.

In the week which followed Graham did not venture to see Millicent again, fearing her disturbing influence on his work. He sent her every day by his faithful henchman some little memento. One morning it was a quick sketch of the sunset of the previous night. Another day it was a bunch of pretty brown quails, the result of an hour's shooting. Once she found hung upon her window-ledge a garland of dewy red roses; and easily guessed what strong, light figure had swung itself up the piazza post, and over the trellis-work, to lay this offering before her curtained window.

Henry Deering, pa.s.sing by the piazza on the night the lovers had parted, heard the sound of weeping. In the days that followed, he noticed Millicent's reddened eyes and restless mood. He felt sure that some misunderstanding had arisen between them; and as the days pa.s.sed, and Graham failed to appear, he began to believe that the breach was a serious one. In the old days he had loved Graham as a brother; but in the last months his affection had grown cold, and held a weak place in his heart, from whence jealousy was fast banishing it. Now that he believed his old friend to have grieved the woman they both loved, a feeling of antipathy and an undefined distrust possessed him.

After the long day's work it was his custom to sit for an hour or so upon the piazza beneath Millicent's window, watching the beam of light which shone through her closed blinds until it was extinguished. One night, as he sat alone, the drowsy humming of the insects soothed him into a light sleep. When he awoke with a start, the moon, which had not before been visible, was high in the heavens. As he was about to go in-doors he heard a footstep on the path outside the house. He remained motionless in his chair, resolved to see who was abroad so late. The footsteps were uncertain and stealthy. The person first approached the house, and then retreated to the turf, where the steps were hardly audible. Deering stepped lightly to the edge of the piazza and peered through the honeysuckle screen. At a distance of twenty feet from him stood a man looking up at the house, at Millicent's window. His face was hidden by a m.u.f.fler and a broad hat pulled low over the brows.

Deering drew his revolver and c.o.c.ked it. The click of the lock evidently reached the intruder's ears, for he turned and fled toward the orchard. Deering sprang from the piazza, and shouting, "Who are you?

Stop, or I 'll fire!" ran down the path. The fugitive neither answered nor slackened his pace. Deering fired, aiming low down; but the ball whistled by the man and buried itself in the heart of a peach-tree. In the close shrubbery which surrounded the orchard Deering missed his man; and three minutes later he heard the swift tramp of a pair of horses on the path which led to the high-road. He ran to the stable. Nothing there but the mules and old Sphinx; his own fleet mare and Millicent's thorough-bred were grazing in the pasture. He slipped a bridle over the old mustang's head, and sprang on his back without waiting for a saddle.

By the time he reached the highway the riders were out of sight, and the echo of the distant hoof-beats reached his ears. Pursuit was useless; they were well mounted; and Sphinx had gone dead lame the day before.

The young man listened to the faint sound of the hoofs until it died in the silent night. Then he dismounted and examined the road. There were the traces of two horses. As he looked closely at the impressions left on the thick dust, he saw that only one of the horses had carried a rider; the other had been led.

When he returned to the house he found the family aroused. Barbara met him on the piazza, asking anxiously what had happened. The report of the revolver had awakened her.

"It was a bear, Barbara," said her brother. "It is a shame to have roused you all, and for nothing, too. I thought I had a sure shot, and that we should have bear-steak for dinner to-morrow."

"A bear, Hal? How strange! Why, this is the first time one ever came so near the house, is n't it?"

"No; Ralph killed two long ago, before you can remember. Go to bed now, and get the house quiet, for heaven's sake!"

The young man kept his own counsel, and the next morning made a careful examination of the grounds near the house. On the farther side of the orchard there were traces of a pair of horses having been tethered.

Two more days went by, and still Graham did not come. Millicent was distressed and puzzled at his long absence; and finally, after thoughtful deliberation, she decided to write to him, telling him how grieved she was at her own unreasonable behavior.

Graham found a letter early one morning folded in an embroidered kerchief, and laid before the door of his tower. That heavy unpainted barrier could have told a tale like that of Tennyson's talking oak, had it been given the power of speech. Trembling lips had pressed timid kisses upon its weather-beaten panels. Strange old door of the tower, roughly fashioned by the Mission priests a century ago, what secrets have you not shut in; what hopes have you not seen pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sionate 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, pa.s.sion 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 amus.e.m.e.nt by intimate friends and relatives; and when they are of short duration, it is usually considered advisable to ignore them altogether. But as weeks pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.seth 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 G.o.d'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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s; 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 stifle some tangible spark with their weight. A thousand times she submitted to the rest of a despair which was all too quickly routed by the fever of a hope which could not die.

CHAPTER XVI.

"If we should part and pa.s.s to separate ways With stifled sigh, averted head, Within a land where centuries are as days Our love shall live though flesh and wrong lie dead."

And her lover, where was he? In the heart of the city, working in a garret on his great picture, for the sake of which he had forsaken the woman he loved. Intolerant of opposition was Graham; and when once an idea had been accepted by him, it was next to an impossibility for him to give it up. He had become convinced that his love for Millicent would make him faithless to his work; that the love of woman was not compatible with the highest devotion to art. Her fond dependence on him would drain his strength. Without his work he could neither be satisfied nor satisfy her. The closer she clung to him the more did he recoil from her. In the strength of his genius, he laughed at the idea that a loving companionship was necessary to him; and yet hours came, at the end of a long day's work, in the quiet watches of the night when the city slept about him, in which all his theories were overset, in a terrible longing for the girl whose sad eyes haunted him. To see her and to touch her; to hear her low, deep voice; to forget all the grievous striving of his life, in the restful warmth of hers! He thought of her always as he had first seen her, lying before the fire, her slender figure robed in white, her head supported in the hands which he had so often caressed. Waiting for him, she seemed to have been then. Waiting for him, he loved to fancy her always. These tender thoughts drifted through his mind in the soft twilight, or before the dawn. In the fervid daylight he only remembered her as she had been on that last evening, rebellious and close-clinging, desperate, beautiful, and full of unrest.

The city tired him with its everlasting sounds of traffic. The tread of dray horses and the rumbling of carts sounded in his ears from earliest dawn till late night. There was no peace here amongst his fellow-men.

He longed for the solitude of his tower, for his forest neighbors, for the sound of the woods, the wide arch of blue sky, seen now through one narrow slit between the opposing houses.

One morning he determined to take a day of rest; and, after making a light breakfast at a coffee-house near by, he started for the San Rosario Ranch, with a lighter heart than he had carried in his bosom for many days. It was a bright morning; the air was crisped with a prediction of winter weather, genial enough in this region at its worst.

As he pa.s.sed through the familiar country he traced some likeness to Millicent Almsford in every object on which his eyes lighted. Now it was the golden-brown of her hair seen in the shiny coat of a sleek filly frolicking in a pasture; now it was her graceful movements traced in the trembling branches of a straight young sapling; again, her gray eyes smiled in his face from under the brows of a fair child playing by the roadside. The harsh voice of the wheels thundering over the steel rails seemed to be repeating her name; and his heart kept time with the refrain, beating out the syllables rhythmically,--Millicent, Millicent, Millicent! He was weary of reasoning with himself. For six days in the week his work was all-sufficing, and he needed no other companionship; but on the seventh day he longed for rest; he needed beauty, he needed love. He knew that it was weak in him to waver in his resolution not to see Millicent again; he knew that it was a wrong to her, and that he would bitterly regret it in after days. And yet he yielded to that exquisite golden haze which seemed to have dropped about him, flooding his life with a pa.s.sionate delight, an ecstasy of expectation.

He alighted at the station, and stood watching the receding train with strained eyes. He wished now that he had not come. He walked up and down the narrow platform, flushed and unnerved with the tumult in his breast. On his right lay the dusty carriage-road which led to the house; on his left a narrow bridle-path pierced the woods, over which he must pa.s.s to reach his tower. Which should it be,--a day pa.s.sed with the creatures of the forest, under the blue sky and murmuring trees; or an hour of the soft delight which Millicent's voice, Millicent's eyes, Millicent's lightest finger-touch, wrapped about him? He realized now how he had cheated himself. He had said that it was the wood-birds whose voices wooed him from the city! He knew now that beneath that longing for the free air of his forest home lay the deeper desire which had tempted him to leave his picture half finished, his palette half set.

Which road should he take? Not more unstable was the blue ring of smoke which the breeze carried from his lips, tossing it hither and thither in a cloudy wreath upon the white air, than was this man between the opposing influences which divided his nature. At last he tossed his cigarette upon the platform, carefully quenching its spark with his foot, and with a light, fleet step ran down the wide carriage-road which led to the house--which would bring him to Millicent. He had known all along, with that inner consciousness which decides with lightning rapidity a question which the intellect debates long and seriously, that his feet would follow that pleasant, open road rather than the dark wood-trail; and yet the train had sped twenty miles further on its journey before he turned his face toward the happy valley. So clumsy is reason compared to instinct; so tedious are the modes of thought to the working of the feelings; so useless is the grave gate of wisdom to check the tumultuous torrent of feeling.

He found the wide piazza deserted, the front door fast closed, the blinds of the library and dining-room tightly drawn. The hospitable house was silent and deserted. His imperative summons was finally answered by a domestic, the successor of poor Ah Lam, who in his ridiculous vernacular informed the visitor that "Alley folk go waly."