Part 7 (1/2)
”It is understood then that you admit my claim to your hand,--for one dance at least? You acknowledge the promise made so many dim years back?
You have come across wide, tossing seas and over broad, sun-parched fields to keep the tryst you made with me, a smile upon your face, a shadow in your eyes?”
For answer the girl bowed her head.
”Nay, I must hear it from your very own lips. Is it for this that you have come?”
”Yes.” The word came soft as twilight shadows, sweet as Nature's harmony. A long pause preceded the low-breathed monosyllable, the word which fond women love best to speak and which listening lovers thrill, half cold, half hot, at hearing. And when it was spoken and heard came a second silence, even longer than the first; and yet what they had said was begun in badinage, and was finished without serious thought by either man or woman. Dangerous words! dangerous silence! happy time, how oft remembered in later days!
”Did I hear you asking Miss Almsford for a dance, Graham? What ball are you contemplating? I have heard of none unless you mean to invite us all to your tower for a frolic. Be sure you do not leave me out; I have long wished to visit your hermitage.”
”If the ladies would so highly honor a lonely dweller in the woods as to allow him the felicity of being their host, be sure, my dear Ferrara, that you shall escort them to my humble abode.”
”Really, are you in earnest? I have always wished to see your tower.
When shall we come?”
”That is for you to say, Miss Deering. Any day which will suit your convenience will be agreeable to me.”
”We will settle it after we return to the Ranch.”
Soon after this Mrs. Shallop joined the group, and they all went out and walked on the wide terrace till dinner was served. Here Millicent met Mr. Shallop for the first time. He was a heavy-featured Irishman, with light-blue eyes, overhanging brows, and thick, coa.r.s.e brown hair. His badly modelled nose had a decided upward tendency, and the broad mouth disclosed sharp, long teeth, like those of an inferior animal. When he smiled he showed the whole set, which gave him a rather ferocious aspect. His face was clean shaven, save for a fringe of whisker stretching from the lobe of the ear to the lower jaw. With a pipe and a s.h.i.+llelah he would have been an excellent specimen of a patron of Donnybrook Fair. On this occasion he wore irreproachable evening dress.
His linen was finer than Graham's, and the cut of his collar and pattern of his studs were of a later fas.h.i.+on than those worn by Ferrara. A valet's care had smoothed the rough hair and cared for the ugly hands.
One of his peculiarities was to address all ladies as ”Marm.” His conversation was not unintelligent, and betrayed a keen, sharp mind, which clearly understood those things which came in close contact with it, but whose mental vision was bounded by the physical one. Those things which he had learned by experience he knew absolutely, and he never questioned or theorized on subjects which did not directly touch himself or his own interests. California had been to him a place which held a gold mine, nothing more or less. His history, which he made no effort to conceal, was not an uncommon one. He had come out in '49, among the fevered crowd of gold-seekers drawn from every country, from every station in life, by the loadstone which had been discovered on the banks, of the American River, by James Marshall. He had come to San Francisco in those early days when law and order were not, save when the conscience of the public, stronger and purer in its united power than in the individuals which compose it, was awakened, and hastened to punish a crime by a rude and swift justice. Shallop had built a cabin in which he lived, and in which he sold, when he was networking in the gulches, any articles of food which he was able to procure. When there were no potatoes or bread, he closed the door of his shanty and started off with pick and was.h.i.+ng-pan for the gulches. When these staple edibles were to be had, he made a brisk trade in catering to the half-starved miners.
It had been said that though Shallop's bread was heavy, it cost nearly its weight in gold. In those days he had wooed and married the widow of a brother miner, one of the few women whose sad lot brought them to the land of disorder and bloodshed. A few weeks only elapsed, before the widowed woman gladly changed her state for the protection of the strong arm of Patrick Shallop, to whom she became deeply attached, with a pathetic love resembling that of a dog for a kind master. The bread grew lighter then, and sometimes the potatoes fed pitiful pale youths who brought no store of gold-dust to pay for them. Patrick Shallop, living in the most magnificent dwelling in the whole length and breadth of California, was sometimes moved to tell of the little cabin where he had brought home his bride on a wet night, borrowing an umbrella to place over the bed to keep the rain from wetting her to the skin. There had been times when things had gone badly with the inmates of the little cabin, and days had pa.s.sed when the mother's ears were torn with the cries of children hungry for bread. It was at this time that Barbara's father had known the Shallops. Mr. Deering was a delicately bred, handsome young man, who had come with the eager crowd of men all pus.h.i.+ng ruthlessly forward to the golden goal, sometimes trampling to death the weaker brothers who fell by the wayside. Sick of a fever, faint and dying, he was plundered of his hard-earned store of gold-dust, and would have been murdered by his robber but for the interposition of Shallop, who stood by to see fair play, and carried the sick man home to his shanty, where the tender nursing of the busy wife saved his life a second time. Adversity makes strange companions.h.i.+ps between men; and the friends.h.i.+p between the saloon-keeper and the delicately nurtured youth with the blood of a Puritan ancestry in his veins, was one which lasted through both their lives. By some mining exploits which would hardly bear the light of day, but which were, alas! not more uncommon at that time than at the present day, the Irishman had made a colossal fortune which placed him among the richest men in the world. There could be little sympathy between the two men whom the chances of that wild time had thrown together for the moment, but a cordiality was always felt; and after Mr. Deering's death frequent visits were exchanged between the dwellers of the San Rosario Ranch and the inmates of the most celebrated house on the borders of the Pacific Ocean.
The dinner was a long one, served with all the tedious formalities which the fierce butler chose to inflict. It was not until the servants had withdrawn that the host and hostess, who stood in mortal dread of their chief functionary, their oracle on all matters of etiquette, seemed to feel themselves at home at their own table. The removal of this restraint, and the excellent wine, served to make the last quarter of an hour spent over the dessert the pleasantest part of the repast.
Millicent, sitting at the right hand of her host, at last succeeded in making him tell some anecdotes of his early Californian experiences, to which she listened with breathless interest. Her feelings were undergoing a radical change; and if the country which she at first detested had not yet become dear to her, she certainly felt the greatest interest and curiosity to learn more of it. In the old dreamy life of Venice, her days had been spent in golden visions of a vanished grandeur. She was now awaking to the stirring reality of the present, and felt dimly that to be an heir to the glories of the past was but a part of living,--an inheritance which affects us less than the actual doing and striving of our own times.
The party sat together in the library, with its comfortable chairs and rows of undisturbed books sleeping between their gilded covers, until late in the evening. The conversation was general, and the quick mind of the stranger guest learned from it much that roused her attention.
”If I only had four ears instead of two!” she cried at last, after a vain endeavor to follow at the same time a discussion between Ferrara and Mr. Shallop on the best method of vine culture, and a conversation between Graham and Mrs. Shallop on the subject of the public schools.
Soon after this, the ladies left the room; and Millicent, her pulses all a-tremble with the various new experiences of the day, was slow in falling asleep. That night her lips forgot to give their wonted homesick sigh for Italy, for Venice.
CHAPTER VI.
”Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow do you say?”
The week's visit at the Shallops' slipped quickly away, each pleasant day pa.s.sing too hastily into to-morrow, Millicent thought. The ordering of each day had something of a routine, beginning invariably with a gallop on horseback. The way sometimes led across wet, hard beaches where the horses' hoofs crushed, with a crisp sound, the tiny sea-sh.e.l.ls left by the receding waves. The tall roan which Millicent rode was a young thoroughbred, with slender legs, a proud, arching neck, and unclipped mane and tail. Mrs. Shallop had given the fine animal to her guest; and Millicent, who had a magnetic influence over all animals, easily controlled the horse by word or touch. The young people usually paired off; Millicent riding beside Graham, Barbara and Ferrara following, while Mr. Shallop brought up the rear on a st.u.r.dy cob whose character and strength were well calculated to bear up the portly magnate. Sometimes they rode through the odorous woods, where the air was heavy with spices, and melodious with sweet bird-notes foreign to Millicent's ears. The tall and stately redwoods standing straight and unbending in their close serried ranks, seemed to her a n.o.ble symbol of the life of an upright man, who looks fearlessly into the wide heavens, raised far above the briers which grow about his lesser brethren.
On their return from their ride, glowing with the splendid exercise, breakfast was served; sometimes in the pretty morning room, oftener in a sheltered part of the wide veranda, from whence they might look out upon the shadowy woods stretching behind the house. After this meal, Mr.
Shallop and Ferrara took the train for San Francisco; and the hostess and Graham disappeared into the temporary studio which had been arranged for the artist. The two girls were left to amuse themselves.
Millicent, who had brought her usual store of books, did not open one of them, but moused about in the library, finding many works quite new to her and full of interest. If her knowledge of Italian and French literature was remarkable, her ignorance of the English cla.s.sics was stupendous. Shakspeare alone was familiar to her among the great ones.
The long rows of finely bound books were mostly uncut and showed little evidence of having been read, a copy of a lady's fas.h.i.+on book, and a volume treating of the manners of polite society, forming notable exceptions to this rule. At mid-day a beach-wagon conveyed the young girls to the s.h.i.+ning sea-sands, and they indulged in the luxury of a bath. In the afternoon they took long drives, or played lawn tennis with friends from the hotel in the town. The evenings were sometimes spent on the long, cool veranda, oftener on Mr. Shallop's stanch yacht, the ”Golden Hind.” She was a fine vessel several tons heavier than her ill.u.s.trious namesake, in which Sir Francis Drake sailed along the coast of California more than three centuries ago, and took possession of the land as ”New Albion,” in the name of good Queen Bess.