Part 5 (1/2)

These ideas, believe me, are not worthy of you, and have been derived by you from some perverted mind. Your own is too clear to have formed such opinions. They have been engrafted or inherited. How should you really have any idea but the most chimerical one, of America or Americans? You have pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances 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, pa.s.sionate to an unusual degree, yet guided by an intelligence stronger than pa.s.sion. 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 s.e.x. 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 n.o.bility, abnegation, and heroism in his eyes were masculine attributes only. Too chivalrous by nature to think of himself as in opposition to the gentler s.e.x, 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 friends.h.i.+p. 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 pa.s.sionate 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 companions.h.i.+p had wrought upon Millicent, he would have felt that if there was no danger for him in those swift fleeting hours pa.s.sed 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 seash.o.r.e. 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 m.u.f.fins 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?”