Graham now walked slowly along the road, looking intently into the grass which lined the highway. Suddenly the dread sound of the rattle was heard, awful alike to man and beast. Sphinx started again, but was soon quieted, while Tasso reared and gave a shriek of terror. Graham, raising his heavy whip, brought the thong with a tremendous force across the snake's body. The creature reared itself with blazing eyes and sprang towards its pursuer, who dealt it another blow; and before it could coil itself for a second spring, Graham ran forward, and with his iron boot-heel crushed the reptile's head into the dust. He soon despatched the writhing creature, and was stooping to cut the rattles from its lifeless body, when a warning cry from Millicent told him that the battle was not over. The mate of the dead snake was close beside him, ready to spring upon his stooping body. He straightened himself, and ran backwards, firing his revolver as he went. The shot missed the snake, whose rattle rang out a very death-knell. It leaped savagely towards him. Graham had dropped his whip, most efficient of weapons with which to meet these dangerous animals, and hastily tearing off his coat he threw it over the snake. He sprang upon the garment and stamped in every direction; finally pinning the creature low down in the body, the bristled head, with its awful tongue, reared itself from beneath the folds of the coat, wounded but furious to avenge its mate. The horrible hiss chilled Millicent's blood. She saw the forked tongue dart out and strike Graham's leg. Mercifully it struck below the knee, the fang failing to penetrate the thick leather of the boot. The creature wreathed another coil of its length from beneath the iron heel, and again made ready to strike. Graham cocked his revolver, and while the angry red throat, with its death-dealing jaws, yawned before him, he poured a volley of hot lead into the writhing body. One, two, three shots Millicent counted; and then after a pause Graham's voice rang out brisk and clear: "All right, my girl, if there are no more of the beasts." The still quivering bodies of the snakes lay in the dust of the road, and Graham, recovering his whip, carefully examined the locality from which they had emerged, to see if by chance a nest of eggs or young ones was to be found. His search was unsuccessful; and after securing the second rattle, which was a long one, proving how powerful the reptile had been, he measured the bodies of the dead snakes, and rejoined Millicent. She held out her hand to him; and Deering, who had had as much as he could do in controlling the two horses, congratulated him on his success, and was about to resume his seat in the carriage. Millicent had been perfectly quiet and composed during the time of danger; her firm hand and voice had controlled the frightened horse; her watchfulness had warned Graham of the approach of his second enemy. But now the snakes were both dead, her lover was safe, and there was no further need of her strength or composure. As Hal approached the carriage, she dropped the reins, buried her face in her hands, and burst into an uncontrollable fit of weeping. Hal, who had lifted one foot to the step of the vehicle, dropped it to the ground, and retreated a few paces with a frightened countenance. He would not have been afraid to encounter a nest of rattlesnakes, but a weeping girl completely unnerved him. He retreated behind the wagon, and, after a hurried conversation with Graham, without more ado, mounted that gentleman's horse and rode off as fast as the animal would carry him; while Graham quietly stepped into the vehicle, and touching Millicent lightly on the shoulder, said, "Millicent, it is I."
The passionate weeping grew more quiet; the sobs became less violent; a slight tremor ran through her frame at the touch; at the words the tears rolled back to their source; and presently a pale face was lifted from the supporting hands, and the mouth quivered into a smile. And so they rode home together, hand in hand, through the deepening shadows; and one more day of the sweet summer-tide of love had passed, and each was richer for that day, how often recalled by both of them when the shadows of life had deepened into night.
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 sex. 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 noble 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 abasement 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 class; 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 God-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 sex 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 worship. 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 debasement 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 châtelaine 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 establishing 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.