CHAPTER XV

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"It cannot be that love so deep as mine Could fail to stay you like ethereal wine."

When he first understood the full import of the dreadful story, John Graham had been dazed with grief. He had sought distraction from his torturing thoughts in action, and had spent that first day in wandering through the forest. When he lay down to sleep that night in the lodge, his heart was burdened with the double weight of Millicent's secret and Millicent's deceit. He said to himself that they had put an insuperable bar between her and himself. He could have pardoned the disgrace which had befallen her, and was not her fault, but he could never forgive her deceit toward him. The finding of her kerchief the next morning, and the terrible apprehension which the blood-stain had aroused in him, swept away the anger and sorrow from his heart, leaving nothing there but an agonizing fear. This had been, in turn, banished by the joy of finding her alive and unharmed, waiting for him amidst the roses. The great fear had softened the anger in his heart; the sudden happiness exalted his soul from the hell of anguish in which it had dwelt, into a perfect and pure peace. Pride, anger, and resentment were swept away, and love swayed him with its mastery. He knew her now, faulty as she was; and his higher nature forgave her, because of her great love, because of her great wrong. But in his stormy breast the tide of feeling flowed and ebbed; pride had reigned there so long that love could not all at once claim undisputed sway. He could not learn in an instant that pride is born of hell, while love is breathed from heaven. In that strange moment when their two beings had seemed etherealized, he had forgiven her all; but in the days that followed, pride, doubt, and prejudice came forward one by one to do combat with victorious love. It might be that they would conquer in the struggle; it might even be that pride, being selfish, should make him doubt and finally even forget love, which is unselfish. But he had pardoned her, and loved her with all her sins; he had acknowledged that bond of spirit which made them one; he had knelt before her and kissed her feet in a passionless embrace full of reverence. No matter what griefs should fall upon her, no matter what deed or word of his might put them apart in this world, she should carry through her life, and beyond it, the knowledge that what was highest in him had leapt to meet her love, and acknowledged that they belonged each to other for eternity.

John Graham awoke one morning to find himself possessed of a picture. He had seen it between waking and sleeping, in the early hours of the night, and it had haunted his dreams till sunrise. He heard the wondrous carolling of the birds just before dawn, with a joy greater than was his wont, for it heralded the day which should bring light for his work. French John, coming in with his breakfast, for the first time in his life entered and left the tower without word or look of greeting from the artist, who, with bent brow and serious face, was sketching in the first lines of his picture with a bit of white chalk. The half-finished portrait of Mrs. Patrick Shallop looked at him with one reproachful eye from the easel; but Graham paid no heed to the neglected portrait; he was deeply engrossed in pursuing his thought and preserving it in a tangible shape. It is a rare thing, in this age of the worship of the golden calf, for the artist even to be absorbed in the love of his profession. Of old, it seems that the sages and the sculptors wrought and thought for the sake of art and learning, the spur of ambition being all that was necessary to urge them forward. To-day the goal toward which such men strive is a golden one, and the worship of money is more in vogue than the pursuit of glory.

When artists sell their souls, brains, and talents to dealers, engaging to deliver so many works of art in so many months, on such and such a class of subjects, bargaining by the wholesale for the work which they shall produce during the coming twelve-month, what wonder that the cry of the connoisseur is, Too much technique, too little sentiment! "What is sentiment?" one would ask such a babbler; is it a thing to be measured off by the yard, or sold in canvases to suit traders, who feel the pulse of the public, and if it is feverish give more stimulant, or if it is fainting prescribe an anodyne? To such prostitution do these men strive to degrade the arts, but in vain. Apollo's voice is still stronger than the chink of doubloons; and there are those whose ears are ever strained to catch his mystic music. The art trade, the literary trade, may flourish luxuriantly, growing like weeds, with a rank prodigality; but the flowers of art and literature, for all that, stand serenely strong in the garden of our fair young world, growing day by day in beauty and strength. Their blossoming may be rare in this day and generation, but the plants are sound and full of a mighty sap.

Though John Graham was a man of the world, there was no taint of worldliness about him; he knew the world, because he had lived somewhat in it, but more, perhaps, because he had studied the lives of the world's people. The painting of a picture was to him of more importance than its sale; the conception of a work more than its accomplishment. His enthusiasm was apt to wane as his picture neared completion. The great glow with which the idea came to him kept him warm and interested through all the stages of the crystallization of his thought; but when the work was finished he ceased to prize it, and either threw himself into a new composition, or patiently labored at uninteresting mechanical work until he was again inspired. It was with difficulty that he could be induced to sell his pictures; he would sometimes keep them before him for years, waiting to alter some detail or to remedy some defect. His friends, knowing his reluctance to part with them, were wont to wait till they knew the artist to be in absolute need of funds, and then quietly to walk away with the coveted picture, forcing him to accept its price. A few people only in California understood or cared for his landscapes, or the rare works of imagination which he produced; and it was through his portraits that he was chiefly known. He felt in himself an unfitness for this line of work; and had it not been for the sake of his beloved mother, partially dependent on him, it is not likely that he would ever have followed it. The reason was not far to seek why. Graham did not succeed in that important branch of art: the individual had little interest for him; men and women absorbed him less than nature. Every tree and brooklet, dead forest leaf or purpled thunder-cloud, held for him a lesson. Men and women seen from a distance were more likely to interest him than those with whom he was thrown in close contact. When their lives and actions were viewed in an impersonal perspective, he understood them better, and often theorized about them. His thoughts were oftener occupied with people of whom he knew little than with his friends and intimates. To seek truth first and beauty second, was his creed; but his life was not always guided by that high rule; and the jack-o'-lantern beauty sometimes tempted him from the pursuit of truth, leading him on long rambles over smiling meads and into flower-hedged swamp lands. There would he lie undone, angry and smarting from the thorns through which beauty had led him; and then, turning his back upon her, would trudge earnestly along the road which leads truthward. Millicent had once whispered to him that he mistook two loving sisters for dread rivals, and that truth and beauty, when truly seen, are found together; whereat Graham had looked full into her eyes, long and steadily, and kissing her hand, with a sigh, had spoken of other things.

Lying beside him on the floor, as he worked upon his newly imagined picture, was a painting nearly finished, on which he had been working the previous day. A wooden panel, on which was represented the ever-new subject, fairest of themes to artist and poet,--two lovers, standing together in the rosy dawn of love, ere the scorching sun of passion has deepened their cool morning into a fervid midday. The man's figure was strong and graceful, his attitude one of protection; the girl's rounded and delicate body swayed toward her lover, whose arm enfolded her. His face was turned away, the eyes looking far, as if into the future; while her delicate features were turned toward him, her glance trustfully fastened on his face. The color of the warm woodland background was mellow and rich, bringing out the deeper tones of the figures. The resemblance of the girl to Millicent Almsford could hardly have been unintentional, one who knew her well would have said; and yet Graham was only half-conscious that the face and figure recalled her chief traits. He had thought of her as he worked; and beneath his brush her bronze hair and luminous face had been shadowed out more distinctly every day. A rare picture, full of beauty and sentiment; but thrown aside to-day for the new inspiration which had seized upon the artist. The subject to be treated was the entrance of the Poet to the abode of the Muses. He sketched the Poet, mounted on his winged horse, just crossing the narrow, defile which led to the sacred spot. With knit brows and earnest face, Graham worked at the sketch all day; only leaving his tower when the daylight failed him. As he wandered through the dim forest aisles, he thought of Millicent for the first time, remembering that he had agreed to ride with her in the afternoon at three o'clock; it was now past six. Without the slightest feeling of remorse at his failure to keep the engagement, he determined to ride over to the house and see her. Millicent received him rather coolly, having spent the afternoon crying with worry and disappointment at his non-appearance; and he, only half noticing her mood, failed to understand it. He was dimly aware that her society was not as agreeable as usual, and consequently he devoted himself to Mrs. Deering during the evening. At first Miss Almsford kept aloof from the conversation; but later, when her lover began to talk brilliantly, she drew near to where he sat and listened to his words with downcast eyes. Graham was in wonderful vein that night; his every gesture spoke of a strong under-current of excitement. His eyes shone, and his deep voice had a thrill of enthusiasm which stirred the pulses of the calm-browed girl, sitting near by with softly folded hands and parted, breathless lips. But it was neither for Millicent, nor because of Millicent, that the young man talked so brilliantly. A more stimulating influence than hers had touched him, and he was beyond the reach of her sympathy; exalted by the wings of his genius to that clear, cool, lonely communion with the immortals which only such as he experience. Dismayed, and yet full of reverence for this new phase of his nature, Millicent was filled with a great pain. She was left behind; she could follow but not accompany the flight of his fancy; and a sense of lonely desolation chilled the hot heart-blood with a depression the like of which she had never before known. The ethereal quality of her being recognized and did honor to his bold up-winging; but the personal, selfish side rebelled at the neglect to which she was subjected. The struggle in her breast was at that time unintelligible to herself; in after days, when the baser nature had been overcome, she realized it all, and knew that the long death-struggle of self began that night when Graham's eyes looked beyond her for inspiration, up to the blue-starred empyrean over both their heads.

More from habit than because he needed her society, her lover asked her to step for a moment upon the piazza before he left. As they stood side by side, he absently took her firm, small hand in his and kissed the pink fingers one by one, as if she had been a child. All at once he perceived that she was weeping, her slender form shaken by a storm of sobs.

"Millicent, my child, what is it? Are you ill?" he asked, tenderly stroking her hair.

"No, only unhappy. Graham, why did you not come for me to-day? I waited for you all the afternoon."

"Did I not tell you, dear, that I was very busy? I have begun a new picture. I quite forgot my engagement with you,--I am very sorry," he answered, puzzled at her emotion.

"Then it is your picture that is my rival. I hate it, I hate it! I never want to see it!

"Millicent, what do you mean?"

Her only answer was to lay her aching head upon his breast, to twine her arms about him, and to sob out incoherent words of love and grief, all of which puzzled and wearied him. He soothed her tenderly; and when they parted there was a smile upon her lips, though her breast still trembled with the slow after-waves of a grief which shook her whole being. Graham, unnerved by the tempest which he had all unwittingly aroused, reached his tower in an excited and irritable frame of mind. The first thing that met his eyes was the picture of the lovers lying at the foot of the easel. He picked it up, placed it on the table before him, and long and critically surveyed his work.

"I painted better than I knew," he sighed. "Yes, thus it is that we stand toward each other, man and woman, and ever shall stand,--the man looking out beyond, above, the woman, and she finding her utmost limit of self-projection in him. Alas and alas!" He placed the painting with its face toward the wall, and with a moody brow turned to his new sketch.

"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 passionless 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 Tasso'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, passing 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 passed, 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 muffler and a broad hat pulled low over the brows. Deering drew his revolver and cocked 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 pass 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 passed 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 anticipated 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 butterfly 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 attitude 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 passionate 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, passion 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 amusement by intimate friends and relatives; and when they are of short duration, it is usually considered advisable to ignore them altogether. But as weeks passed, 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 passeth 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 god'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 breasts; 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.

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