CHAPTER XIX

.

"Je me dis seulement; a cette heure en ce lieu, Un jour, je fus aime, j'aimais, elle etait belle. J'enfouis ce tresor dans mon ame immortelle. Et je l'emporte a Dieu!"

"A letter for you, Mr. Graham."

"Very well; lay it down."

The burly landlady placed the missive on the small, unpainted pine table which stood near the artist's easel, and with a last glance at the feminine superscription, and the device of the golden Psyche which sealed it, left the room. It was late in the afternoon,--there would be only an hour more of light in which he could paint. Graham did not glance at the letter. If it had been a telegram it would have waited till the tender gray of the sky had been laid on the canvas. At last it grew too dim for him to distinguish the tints on his palette, and, throwing down his brushes, the young man rose and stretched his cramped limbs. He had not moved from his stool for four hours. As he paced up and down his narrow room, the letter caught his eye. He had quite forgotten its existence.

It was from Millicent. He stepped close to the window, and by the waning light perused the words traced by a hand that surely had trembled in the writing. Twice he read it through, as if not understanding its import. Then, with a groan, he cast the letter upon the floor, and sank upon a low seat near by. His head supported by his hands, his elbows upon his knees, he sat, the picture of despair. With a sudden movement he grasped the missive and crushed it between his two hands, as if to avenge upon the senseless paper the pain which it brought to him.

He could not bear it in the cold, dark room; the streets would be full of people who might divert him. He soon found himself in a crowded thoroughfare. It was six o'clock, and the city was full of hurrying men, women, and children returning homeward after the long day's work. The girl from the millinery establishment under his room, whose sweet, childish face he had painted from memory the very day before, was just leaving the shop as he stepped into the street. She was very poorly dressed, with a hat which would have disgraced anybody but a milliner's apprentice. Her dress fitted neatly, however, and she gave her close-cut jacket a tug to make it smooth about the shoulders before she reached the corner. A tall, pale, dyspeptic-looking youth joined her just outside the druggist's. Graham recognized him as the clerk in a dry-goods shop near by. Their greeting he could not but overhear.

"I am late, George--"

"Twenty minutes; I almost gave you up," in a surly tone.

"I am so sorry; don't be angry." The man hesitated a moment; then her pleading voice got the better of his ill-temper, and, taking her by the arm after the fashion of his kind, he led her across the street, and in a moment they were lost to Graham's sight. He next stopped at the cobbler's around the corner to call for a pair of boots which had needed repairing. The narrow stall was brightly lighted, and he saw through the window a little child holding up its face to be kissed. The cobbler's girl had just brought her father his supper. As Graham entered, the man pushed the little figure gently into the street. "Tell mother I 'll not be late," he said; and wiping his blackened hands upon his dirty ticking apron, he greeted the artist civilly, and proceeded to find his boots for him.

"They need re-soling, Mr. Graham, but I did not like to do the job without orders. The patches are all right."

Graham paid the man for his work, and went out. He had thought to find distraction in the street, but what he saw there only made him more desolate. He was alone, while all other men had some loving soul to greet them after their day's toil. The pair of lovers, the cobbler and his child, made him feel his loneliness more acutely, and emphasized painfully the news which the letter had brought to him,--Millicent was gone!

She had passed as suddenly and unexpectedly out of his life as she had entered it. He had not seen her since that day in the court-room. And now she was gone, back to the Old World, to Venice the mysterious, the silent, to the old Palazzo Fortunio, with its lofty halls and marble corridors, back to the old home, which he knew could never be home to her again. All the color seemed to have faded out of his life; she had taken it with her. He suffered deeply, impatiently, angry at himself for suffering, yet powerless to forget the pain which the letter had given him. He picked it up again from the floor when he came back to the lonely studio, and marked that though the letter was crushed and torn, the device of the golden Psyche was still intact.

On the following day he found some consolation in his picture. He came back to it after his vigil with an uncherished grief, with less enthusiasm than before; but from that hour until he had laid the last stroke of paint on the canvas, his hand faltered not, if his imagination sometimes flagged. He could not serve both love and art. He had chosen his mistress, and would be faithful to his choice. He dared not think, while he painted, of the woman whose influence had so warmed his frozen existence. To do so seemed an infidelity to his Art,--a breach of faith which would not escape its merited punishment. So he resolutely put her from his mind, and labored day and night upon his great picture.

Summer and autumn were past, and the first month of winter was drawing to its close, when Graham finished his picture. He had painted it as he always did his best works, without interruption. From the morning on which he had made the first rough chalk sketch, until the day when he reluctantly drew the fine veil of varnish over his work, he had hardly looked at any other canvas. He was not satisfied with it,--what true artist ever is satisfied with his work?--and yet he was convinced that it was the best he had yet accomplished. He had sometimes realized what he had sacrificed for this picture; and as he touched in the crimson line of sunset, the fancy came to him, that the sky was stained with heart's-blood.

His few brother artists--there was but a handful of them in the city--and his pupils requested him to set a day for them to see the new picture, and Graham had consented. The young sculptor, who had the next room, threw open the door which separated the two studios, and both rooms were in holiday trim. Northcote had been in the country all the previous day, gathering flowers and ferns with which to deck the bare apartment. He placed a jar of roses before the picture with a reverent face; he loved the artist whose light purse had for the last two years kept a roof over his head and life in his body.

Graham was greatly admired by the knot of artists who lived, or starved, in San Francisco. They were the pioneers of art in the new Western land; and their work, if crude and untutored, was not wanting in certain strong qualities. Several of them were men of promise; and they were all wise enough to feel that in Graham's genius lay the brightest hope for a new school of art which should combine the knowledge of the Old World with the fresh vigor and hope of the New. They looked up to him as a leader, and he earnestly wrought and thought for their advancement. It was for this that he had left Europe and his many agreeable associates there, and returned to his own country, that whatever power for good there in him lay should redound to her glory. His fellow artists all revered him, and they would gladly have loved him; but the sensitive man shrank from that familiarity which popularity entails. In their work he was always interested; and in whatever touched the art they all served, he was active and ready to labor endlessly without recompense or recognition. But in their lives and personalities he felt no wish to mix; and so it was that he who labored most for them as an artist was farthest removed from them as a man.

There was but one verdict rendered by the men who stood grouped about the easel. It was a masterly picture, they all said. For an hour or more, one or another of them discussed certain technical points with Graham, who with kindled face listened and talked with his associates, more himself than he had been since the night when he had first dreamed of the picture. The young sculptor was less loud in his praise than were the others; in his eyes the classic subject was a trifle labored and cold. After having praised, the men felt at liberty to criticise; and if Graham had followed one half the advice offered to him, there would have been little suggestion of the original picture left.

Standing in a corner, with its face to the wall, was a panel which, as the little circle was about to break up, Northcote asked Graham's permission to show. The new picture was taken from the easel, and the neglected canvas put in its place. Its surface was dusty, and the young man wiped it with his silk handkerchief. There was a minute's silence, broken by the oldest of the party, a disappointed painter whose life had been one long series of calamities.

"My boy, this is worth a dozen of the other. It is the biggest thing you have done yet."

The younger men all chimed in, echoing the opinion of their senior. Graham looked incredulously from one to the other; there was no doubting their sincerity. Like many another before him, he knew not how to distinguish his successes from his failures. The old artist, who had all his life been on the eve of painting his great picture, underrated the value of the new picture, but he was not mistaken in placing The Lovers far above it. Graham looked at it for the first time in many weeks, with that impersonal criticism of his own work which is only possible to an artist when a certain period has elapsed after its creation, and the mind has been occupied with other interests.

It was late that night when the artist returned to his room, after dining with his sculptor friend at a restaurant near by. The moonlight flooded the studio, lighting its farthest corner. It showed him the vases of rose-bloom and the dark-browed Circe on the wall; it showed him the blackened hearth, where the embers still smouldered. And what was that in the fireplace? A charred wooden frame with a heap of ashes lying 'twixt its sides. Graham sprang forward with a cry of apprehension, and lifted the blistered frame. His fear had not been groundless: this bit of wood and that handful of cinders were all that remained of his great new picture! He gave a deep groan and staggered back against the wall. Before him, on the easel, gleaming through the pure silver light, was the picture of The Lovers. Millicent's dreamy face, radiant with hope and love, smiled at him from the arms of the lover who now stood, half crazed with grief, gazing at the ruin before him.

The young sculptor stood beside him, full of a sympathy he knew not how to express. At last he spoke:--

"Graham, look up, and do not grieve for what is past help. I tell you, man, that your greatest picture stands before you. The Lovers has the one quality which your work has heretofore missed. It is human, it is full of natural sentiment. It does not appeal to an aristocracy of thought, but to all men and all women, learned and untaught. I know not what influence swayed you in this picture, but I know that it lifted you to a higher plane than you had before attained. I care not for the loss of your Poet; it told me nothing of you that I did not know before; it was a step backwards to the time when you made that wondrous wicked Circe with her herd of swine. Let it go, and submit to the influence which inspired this picture, for which the world is richer to-day than for a score of such works as the other."

Graham looked at the speaker with doubting eyes. The words seemed to rouse an echo in his soul. They told him that he had served the altar of Art with Moloch sacrifices. Instead of the peaceful offerings of love, he had brought the anguish of two strong hearts to desecrate her temple. A dim perception of the truth entered his mind, and his grief for the lost picture was for a moment forgotten in a doubt which rose before him, never to be dismissed again until it was fully solved. A doubt of self, of his own judgment, of his own inflexible will.

Millicent was gone! The six straight redwoods whispered the news one to another, and shook their tall tops sadly, while the sweet south wind sighed through their branches. Millicent was gone! and the roses that clasped and clung about her lattice died on the night she left them, and the vine bloomed no more, and bore for that season nothing but leaves. Millicent was gone! She had set wide the door of the golden prison where her love-birds had lived and sung so merrily through the long summer. But the little white creatures, prison-born, prison-bred, were too timid to venture out into the roomy forest, and had clung to the only home they had ever known; and so Barbara, gentle, sweet-souled Barbara, took them into her sunny room; and cared for them as Millicent had done. For a day they were silent, and then they sang as merrily as before. There was still sunshine; and crispy groundsel and clear cool water were given them by hands as gentle, if not so fair, as those which had tended them before.

The New Year was at hand, and the _chatelaine_ of the San Rosario Ranch had summoned a group of friends to her hospitable home to pass the holiday time. So Barbara was full of household cares, and Hal was busy with shooting and riding expeditions. Ferrara was there, just back from Alaska, with a tribute of rare furs to lay at Barbara's pretty feet. Maurice Galbraith and John Graham were missing, and that other whose absence was still keenly felt. Mr. and Mrs. Shallop, O'Neil, and Hartley were come, with a half dozen other old friends, all bound together by the magnetic influence which radiated from their hostess, in whom all their various interests were concentrated. Each was friend to other for her sake, whom they all loved. In the existence of every one of the group her pure and unselfish nature was a real factor. When faith in human nature, in one's self, is faint and wavering, then is the time when the remembrance of such a spotless life, so pure a heart, steadies the wavering belief in truth, and strengthens us to fight the good fight. By loving help and by high example, Marianne Deering had succored and befriended each of the friends who on that New Year's eve assembled about her dining table. With a face bright with that beauty of the soul which knows not the marring of time, she presided over the gay festivity. Three pretty cousins from San Francisco added their bright faces to the charming scene. The apartment and the board were garlanded with flowers. Banks of heavy ferns panelled the walls, and bunches of white, heavy-scented magnolias were outlined against their dark green. Through the open windows were seen the gay lanterns hung about the veranda, illuminating the festoons of fresh creepers, and giving glimpses of the soft velvet turf outside. The merriment was at its height as Barbara lifted the loving-cup, filled with a sweet, strong wine, and, calling out the toast, "To absent friends," set her rosy lips to the brim, and drank from the cup in which each of the joyful company was to pledge some distant dear one. It was a custom at the San Rosario Ranch which had become time-honored. The girl smiled gayly as she passed the crystal beaker to Juan Ferrara, who sat upon her right; but her eyes were dark with unshed tears, and the man sighed as he drank, omitting to repeat the toast. What were absent friends to him beside this woman who smiled in his face, but whose tears fell for one who was far from her! Round went the cup from hand to hand, and to every heart came a thrill of joy or sorrow at the thought of the absent one, toward whom it turned in this loving communion. O'Neil, sitting by his hostess, was the last to take the cup. The warm-blooded Irishman was in high spirits. The glances of the dark-eyed "girling" at his side, and the general good-fellowship of the occasion, had brought out in him the irrepressible good-humor of his nation. The ceremony of passing the loving-cup, and the invocation to absent friends, had carried something a little serious with it, which, to the jolly Irishman, was thoroughly antagonistic.

"Dear hostess," said he, placing the cup before him on the table, "I do not like the sentiment of your toast; 't is ungallant. How can I, sitting between two such lovely ladies, find time or power to salute an absent one, howsoever fair? May I give you my toast for the loving-cup? Have I your permission to sing a stave from one of my national songs on the subject?"

He was answered by a general acclamation of assent. Rising to his feet, the blond, burly giant held up the cup with its low ebb of crimson wine, and sang in a clear, strong voice the following couplet:--

"Oh! 't is sweet to think that where'er we rove We are sure to find something blissful and dear, And that, when we 're far from the lips that we love, We 've but to make love to the lips that are near. The heart, like a tendril accustomed to cling, Let it grow where it will, cannot flourish alone, But will lean to the nearest and loveliest thing It can twine with itself, and make closely its own. Then oh! what pleasure where'er we rove To be sure to find something still that is dear; And to know, when far from the lips that we love, We have but to make love to the lips that are near."

Amidst the general laughter and applause which followed O'Neil's song, Madame Marianne's gentle word of disapproval was lost. The song had restored the jollity which, for a moment, seemed to have left the party. O'Neil now drained the cup to the last drop, turning the crystal vessel upside down to show that it was empty, and whispered a saucy compliment to the bright-eyed girl beside him. At that moment, when the merriment was at its height, when O'Neil stood with the empty cup in his hand, the door opened, and, as if in answer to the toast, John Graham entered the room. He was greeted by a dozen voices as he made his way to Mrs. Deering's side. Taking her outstretched hand in his own, he dropped upon one knee, and kissed it respectfully.

"Dear my lady, I have come to wish you the happiest New Year, and to join in your loving-cup, in your toast to absent friends--"

"Always welcome, dear Graham," said the lady, laying her hand upon his head for an instant; "there is always a place for you at our table, but alas--"

"You are too late--too late!"

It was Barbara who spoke, interrupting her mother brusquely, her voice full of a reproach inexplicable to all but Graham. He looked at her fixedly for a moment, and then O'Neil clapped him on the back, and held up the empty cup.

"Too late, old fellow, as Miss Barbara says. Never mind," in a lower key, "I have promised Deering to brew an Irish punch, after the ladies withdraw."

The artist stared a moment at the goblet, and shivered as he took the place which had been made for him beside his hostess. Soon the signal was given for the ladies to leave the room; Graham's arrival having precipitated the breaking up of the party. The new-comer did not long remain in the dining-room, but presently followed his hostess into the library, where he found Barbara at the piano. Mrs. Deering signalled him to take a place at her side.

"I fear I took too great a liberty in coming unasked. O'Neil says I stalked into the room like a stage ghost, and cast a gloom over the party."

"You know you are always welcome here. You used to call the Ranch your home."

"Have I still a right to do so? Things seem so changed, my lady."

"You will never find me changed while I can help you. I did not send for you, knowing that you would come if it was best for you."

"And yet I came too late!"

"Graham, there are no such words as too late to those who know how to wait. That phrase is only for the impatient, not for the steadfast. But now tell me of yourself, of your work; it is so long since we have seen you."

"Of myself, no! of my work, yes. I have finished my picture; it has gone to Paris. It will now be judged by other men." He did not tell her of his loss, or that he had sent The Lovers in the place of the burned picture.

"May they prove kindly critics."

"No, I do not want that; I do not insist that they shall praise my work; I only question, can they understand it?"

"But that is the least of it all, you have sometimes said."

"Ah! Madonna, I have been wrong. What use is there for me to speak if there be no one to hear? If they do not understand, the fault must lie in me. I must learn to speak the broad language of humanity. I cannot ask men to puzzle themselves with my small vernacular." The man sighed deeply, and his friend noticed that he was paler and thinner than she had last seen him.

"You have been over-working, Graham; you lead an unnatural life when you are in town, now that your people are away. Why not come back to the tower again?"

"I think I will, Madonna."

He had been over-working, and for what? That the picture for which he had sacrificed so much, should be seen one brief hour by a dozen men! He now felt in what a strained condition his nerves had been. The picture was gone, and with it the strong excitement which had kept him alive and alert. The tension was relaxed, and an intense depression had followed, which was in turn losing itself in a new feeling. A lonely longing, a craving for a tender womanly sympathy, for the only human being who had never misunderstood his many moods, who was always in sympathy with him in joy or sorrow. She alone in all the world could have helped him at this time; to her he could have confided all those delicate shades of thought which drifted through his mind, too fragile ever to be prisoned in words. She could have divined those half-formed ideas and crystallized them into steadfast utterances. He was cold, bitterly cold, and suffered for that loving human sympathy as the parched hillsides had but now longed for the refreshing rain which had made the earth green and fair after the long summer drought. He had chosen Art for his mistress, and she had smiled upon him chastely and coolly; and yet he was not content.

Barbara left the piano, and Graham joined her. The over-punctilious courtesy with which he had always treated her was forgotten. He spoke suddenly and sharply:--

"What did you mean by what you said to me,--why am I too late?"

"I meant too late for a draught from the loving-cup."

"You meant more than that."

"If you choose to fancy--"

"I cannot but choose to _know_."

By this time the gay group from the dining-room had flooded the library with their ringing voices, their merry faces. Only these two were pale and out of harmony with the scene. Barbara, with downcast eyes, stood by the piano, tapping her fingers nervously on the polished case.

"I have interrupted your festivity; I have been a very skeleton at the feast; forgive me,--I could not help coming,--forgive me and answer me one question, and I will go and leave you in peace."

"I say, Bab, we are going into the drawing-room to tell ghost stories. O'Neil has a splendid one,--a real Irish family banshee yarn. Come on, you and Graham."

"In a moment, Hal, don't wait for us; we will join you before you are all settled and Mr. O'Neil has begun."

The library was again empty. The voices of the holiday folk reached their ears across the hall.

"Tell me what you have heard from her."

There was no need of speaking her name. Her face looked at them from its place over the mantel-shelf,--a quick, strong sketch made by Graham. From a leafy background white shoulders, and a fair face with deep eyes, were shadowed forth. The firelight, falling restlessly upon the picture, touched into light now the full red mouth, now the ivory throat.

"I have not heard for some time. She was in Venice again, very ill from the long journey, when she last wrote."

"You have not heard since?"

"No."

"Do you think she is well now, and--and at peace?"

"No."

"What reason have you to doubt her well-being?"

"I cannot tell you."

The man looked at her searchingly, as if he would read her very soul, and then turned away with a word of leave-taking,--"Good-night."

"Stay a moment. I have something to tell you. I do not know why I am forced to speak to you of the last interview she had in this room, but I must do so. Before she left,--on the night when she cried out in the court-room,--you remember?"

Did he remember? Ah, Heaven! only too well he remembered the last words she had ever spoken to him,--valiant words, full of love and protection.

"That night Mr. Galbraith came to see her. It was very late, and they had a long conversation. I could only hear their voices from the next room; and then she called me to her, and told us both all her sad story,--all that had passed between you and her. She took all blame upon herself, and would have made us both acknowledge that you had been right and just in acting as you did."

"And was I not just?"

"Just, perhaps; but how ungenerous! What have you to do with justice? You, who never painted till you painted her; you, who were so cold and unfeeling till her smile made you human for a little time. Then your own selfish egotism froze you again."

"Thank you for what you have told me, and good-by. I shall not see you soon again. You were very good to her; bless you for it! Every one was good to her,--every one but me, it seems."

"You speak as if she were dead."

He did not hear her last words. He was already out of earshot, taking leave of his hostess.

When he was alone with the stars he could think better than in that heated room, with that dear vine-crowned face before his eyes, with Barbara's voice in his ears. He saw how Barbara misjudged him. He knew that most men and women would have held him as she did; and yet he had thought that he was right. He had fought the good fight, and he had conquered. What mattered it if all the world saw in him a monster of selfishness? He had chosen poverty, hard work, and loneliness, when wealth, worldly success, and a painless love might have been his. Sybaris had been open to him; and he had turned his back upon the perfumed island for an attic, a crust, and a mistress who demanded all, and had yielded nothing but hope.

But now things were altered. He felt angry and outraged at the thought that others knew her story, that she was pitied by them because of her great love for him. He longed to protect her, to suffer for her, to make her forget in his love and care the cruel lot which had been hers. He yearned for her sympathy, for her love, for that sense of peace which had come upon him as he sat by her side. The tide of love, which not once in a million years is at the full in two human hearts at once, rushed over him, sweeping away pride, reason, selfishness, ambition,--all, all routed and o'erset by that warm, delicious flood of emotion. He had fought against love so long, that at last the overthrow of will brought him an ecstasy of delight. He ran like one crazed through the cool, starry night, singing a love-song strange and tender, a song of submission, of hope and passionate love. Through the orchard he passed, startling the birds with his wonderful song. The prisoned love-mates heard it in their little nest, and folded their snowy wings closer together; the white roses heard it, and trembled at the sound; the six tall redwoods listened and whispered gravely together as he came among them and sank upon his knees at their feet, on the very spot where she had sat that day. That day! How could he have forgotten it, and all that it had meant to them both? What mist had risen again between them and hidden its memory from his sight? Before, it had been her want of faith in him, her fault, her only fault. Her atonement for that sin against her own soul, against him, had been bitter indeed. And afterwards what veil had blinded him to the great truth that they loved each other absolutely, that their two beings were each incomplete without the other? His pride! It had been his pride which had kept them so long apart! But now it was over. He would go to her, and tell her all.

"Millicent, Millicent, I love you!" he cried aloud, his eager voice surging from his breast as if to relieve its weight of love. His cry was joyous, bounding, full of life and love and hope. The night wind bore back to his ears a tender, mournful cadence,--"love you."

"Millicent, my love, I am coming; wait for me!"

"Wait for me!" sighed the echo.

And the young moon, pale and shrinking, dropped behind the high tree-tops from his sight; while the redwoods swayed tremulously, shaken by a sudden blast, and the echo again sighed its faint response,--

"Wait for me!"

And the tide on the Pacific was at the flood.

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