Part 10 (2/2)

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 wors.h.i.+p.

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 establis.h.i.+ng 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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?”

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