Part 8 (1/2)
”I suppose so,” jestingly.
”Bah! talk seriously for a moment with me. Why do you not marry Ferrara?
The poor fellow is perfectly pathetic in his devotion to you. You know, Barbara, that matrimony would suit you delightfully; there is nothing so becoming to a woman of your type as the background of a home of her own.
There you would s.h.i.+ne like Jessica's candle in this naughty world.”
”I have never thought about it in the way of a background.”
”Of course you never did; but, Barbara, do you think you could fall in love again?”
”Who knows?”
”Then I know that you have never been in love at all, _ma belle_--oh, I forgot, and have broken my vow to speak English pure and simple. Well, never mind, now we will talk about my broth, for I am very hungry. I feel like little Rosalba in the 'Rose and the Ring,' when she went about crying, 'Dutess Tountess, my royal highness vely hungy.'”
Long confidences had followed this conversation; and Millicent listened to Barbara's account of a childish romance with that deep interest which women all feel in the heart experiences of their sisters. Such sympathy is born in the feminine breast before the power of loving awakes there, and dies not when experience has brought nothing to it but grief and bitterness. The veriest chit of a girl of ten will read a love-story if she be allowed, while her brothers are inventing ingenious instruments for the torture of cats and nurses. The deafest grandam will listen with keen interest to her favorite grand-daughter's confession of love, and will be careful not to chill young hopes with her own sad memories.
All those who have loved truly, with that love which outlasts grief, death, and human pa.s.sion, which smiles at the cruelest neglect, which, like the love of the Most High, pa.s.seth all understanding, have sympathy and kindly interest for those who are in love. That ”all the world loves a lover,” is the truest of all sayings.
As soon as they were alone, Millicent told Barbara that she was anxious to return to the Ranch the following day. Since her first meeting with John Graham, her life had danced away through bright hours pa.s.sed in his company, in remembering past interviews, in looking forward to future meetings. In the long days when she lay weak and helpless, slowly recovering from the terrible drain on forces, nervous and muscular, she had thought long and deeply; and now that she was well, she did not wish to meet Graham, and avoided his presence. She realized, as she had not done before, that she deeply and irrevocably loved this man, whose name six months ago had been unknown to her. Whether this understanding of what was in her own heart came upon her in one broad flash of quickened intelligence, when she lay half swallowed up by the jaws of death, still clasping him with feeble hands, or if, in the quiet hours of introspection which followed that awful moment, she gradually learned the truth, it would be hard to say, but that she now knew it, was indubitable. The fact that the man she loved should be indebted to her for his life was a distasteful one. Not through grat.i.tude did she wish to attract him; the very thought of it was galling to her. She loved him, and longed, with the deepest power in her soul, to arouse in his breast that answering pa.s.sion, which, like a deep ba.s.s chord, mingles with the sweet treble song of woman's love, their harmony making the one perfect note to which the keystone of the universe trembles sympathetically. Sweet as was the thought that her strength had sufficed for them both, she mourned the chance which had made her hand the rescuing one. Love that springs from grat.i.tude or from pity is earth-born and earth-bound; she would have none of it; it was as if she had a claim upon him for that gift, which if not freely given is valueless. So, with a shyness new to her, she avoided meeting Graham; and the night of his return she sought her room again and did not appear until the following morning. If Graham did not know all, he was ready enough to understand that she avoided his thanks.
Mrs. Shallop pa.s.sed the last evening of her guests' visit sitting with Miss Almsford, answering her many eager questions of the strange, wild days when law and order were not in the broad golden land. It seemed almost incredible to Millicent, and yet she felt it to be true, that the wife of the mining king regretted the past days of poverty and simplicity. The hard-earned crust, shared with a husband whose every thought was known to her, had tasted sweeter than the luxuries of a table at which she often sat alone, or with a partner absorbed in thoughts and enterprises in which she had no part. Her children had then been entirely hers; now they were far distant,--the boy at an English college, the girl in a French conventual school, whence they would both return grown too clever and proud to care for her simple-hearted companions.h.i.+p. What mattered it that she had toiled day and night to buy them food and clothing, had worn out her poor body and dulled her simple mind with anxious overstrain and grinding labor? Would they thank her for it now? When, a year before, she had visited these adored children, she had felt the distance between them and herself. If her son had not been ashamed of his poor mother, it was only because his heart was not quite weaned from hers. The girl was gentle and kind; but the pitying care with which she brought her conversation to the level of her mother's understanding was all too obvious to the sensitive woman, whose nervous strength had been shattered in the hard fight which she had made all those years ago, to keep the breath of life in their little bodies. Half her life had been pa.s.sed at the wash-tub, half in the drawing-room; the transition had been too sudden for a person of her temperament. The soapsuds, which used to flash the splintered rays of light from her hands, were more appropriate to them than the diamonds with which they now glittered. Poor woman, the extremes of fortune were both known to her.
Though their visit had been a delightful one, Millicent was anxious to return to the Ranch; she longed for the quiet, refined atmosphere of the place, with its simple comforts, doubly attractive after this experience of the luxurious but inappropriate house of Mr. Patrick Shallop. There is a certain fitness in things; and the ex-miner, living in the palace of the railroad king, was less at home than England's monarch could have been in the cowherd's hovel. Millicent felt the social _malaise_ which arises from the incongruity of persons with their surroundings. Graham, interested in his portrait, which was coming on famously, was not easily affected by a personal atmosphere to which he was indifferent; while Barbara and Ferrara, used to a similar condition of things, accepted it without question.
The morning of the last day of their visit dawned bright and clear; and Millicent, standing on the terrace, thought the wide view had never seemed so beautiful before. She was taking farewell of that sea which had so nearly swallowed her young life with all its hopes and fears. The waves murmured with a gentle sound, as if quite oblivious of their late rapacity. She went out into the thick pine woods behind the house, and stood for the last time among the great redwoods, which to her were so wonderful, and which everybody else accepted as a matter of course. A well-known footstep behind her on the dry leaves caused the slight pink tinge which the morning breeze had brought to her cheek to fade suddenly; the blood seemed rus.h.i.+ng from every vein back to its source, and her heart stopped its pulsations for a moment. She did not turn her head, but stood quite silent, waiting for Graham's first word. When he was at her side, she felt her hand suddenly caught in a warm pressure which sent the blood rus.h.i.+ng through the arteries again, tingling painfully in every fibre of her body, and loosening the cold silence of the heart, which beat out a quick answer to the words of greeting. They were but few and very earnest, the words of a brave man glad to be beholden to so fair a woman for his life. Was it grat.i.tude that made his voice tremble, that lighted his grave eyes with a smile?
She answered him sweetly and seriously, with a steady voice and calm eyes, though the rose-flush flooded and ebbed from her cheek and brow.
The man did not trouble himself to a.n.a.lyze the feelings which gave rise to the fleeting blushes; he was too full of his own enthusiasm to notice how it affected its object. He spoke as he felt and thought of the woman standing there so full of life and beauty,--only in the light of his relation to her. He knew how he felt towards her, and told her so with admiring frankness; of her feelings towards himself he never stopped to think. His was an egotistic nature, as are those of all strong men whose personality stamps the age in which they live. Weaker men and women receive the imprint of their time; only the few strong ones leave their images impressed when the soft clay of the present is transmitted into the unmalleable granite of the past.
They walked together for a time, Graham full of anxious inquiry for her health, and Millicent happy in his anxiety. When the artist learned of the proposed departure, he strongly opposed it, urging a longer stay.
When he found that the young ladies had decided to leave San Real, he announced his intention of accompanying them. Mrs. Shallop shortly afterward joined the pair and handed Millicent a newspaper, at which the girl looked quite indifferently until her eyes caught her own name in large letters at the head of a column. She quickly read the article, which proved to be a highly sensational account of the rescue of Graham.
A FIGHT WITH DEATH!--Heroism of a Young Girl!--John Graham rescued from Drowning by Beautiful Millicent Almsford!--The Personal Appearance of the Heroine!--Early History of the Lucky Man!
These headings preceded the two-column article at which Graham laughed contemptuously, and which drew hot tears from Millicent's eyes. She had never before seen her own name in print, and the freedom with which the Anglo-Saxon press deals with the affairs of ladies who have no claim on the public interest was unknown to her. She only felt that her name was being spoken by people who never had heard of her; that the most sacred and awful hour of her life was revealed to the world; and that the event of which she had hardly spoken, and of which she barely dared to think, was now familiar to thousands of indifferent readers. The news had in fact been telegraphed to one of the large New York papers, and in the course of a week filtered down through the smaller organs of that city to the suburban press, and was read and forgotten by the careless public throughout the length and breadth of this enlightened land. To Mrs.
Shallop and Barbara, accustomed to the vagaries of American journalism, the state of mind into which Millicent was thrown by the article in the San Francisco ”Roarer,” was entirely surprising. It was without doubt annoying, but they had both become so accustomed to seeing their own names and those of their friends in the columns of the daily journals, that Millicent's horror and indignation seemed disproportionate to the cause. This utter disrespect of the privacy of life which is the right of all men and women leading peaceable lives, breaking no law of the civil or social statutes, is the crying sin of modern journalism. When they are charged with this, the journals very tritely retort that ”social news” pays better than any other cla.s.s of matter; that its insertion is more often prized and sought after by the individuals mentioned than resented by them; that much of the personal news is actually furnished by the individuals whom it most concerns; and that they but supply the demand of their readers. It would be well for them to remember that to pander to the public taste is not the highest object open to journalism; to elevate that taste were a task more deserving of commendation, and less unworthy of good printer's ink and paper.
The next mail brought two letters for Millicent; one from a well-known photographer asking her for an early sitting, and begging that he might have the sole privilege of photographing her. The other communication was a civil letter from the editor of a weekly journal, asking for a slight autobiographical sketch from the hand of the heroine of San Real.
In the course of the morning a reporter from the California ”Bugle,” a rival sheet, arrived and requested an interview with Miss Almsford and Mr. Graham, from which to compile an article on ”The Rescuer and the Rescued.” Millicent's eyes flashed angrily when the import of the small printed visiting-card bearing the name of this nineteenth-century inquisitor was explained to her. She was heard to murmur, beneath her breath, some Italian words highly inimical to the smart young person who was taking the opportunity to examine Mrs. Shallop's drawing-room with an eye to future ”notes.” She was astonished when Graham quietly lighted a cigarette, and asking that the gentleman might be shown into the smoking-room, joined him there.
”Why does he not beat him?” she cried. ”If I were a man I should thrust him from the house.”
”And be held up to the public as a brutal a.s.sa.s.sin?” laughed Barbara.
”No, no, my dear, let Mr. Graham alone; he knows best how to manage the visitor. It never does to insult those gentlemen; they are dangerous enemies, and have the public's ear into which to pour all their grievances. Our friend will draw the fire on himself, I fancy, in order to spare you. News the news-fiend must have; he will make it himself if it be not provided for him. Poor thing! he must live, after all, as well as you or I. It is not his fault that he is obliged to interview people; it must be a very disagreeable profession.”
Thus kindly and with wide sympathy did Barbara Deering judge all men and women; ay, and reporters too, together with babies, Chinamen, and other unfortunate works of G.o.d. Graham returned in a quarter of an hour, having appeased his visitor with the aid of a good cigar and a champagne c.o.c.ktail, compounded by the careful hand of the solemn-faced butler.