The San Rosario Ranch

by Maud Howe Elliott

Six months after her departure, Millicent Almsford returned to the Palazzo Fortunio, where the report of her great social success had preceded her and tickled the ears of her parent, proud of the child for whose sake he had never sacrificed a whim of his own. Edward Holworthy, who had accompanied the father and daughter to London, and remained there during the period of the latter's stay, did not return to Venice, but sailed for Australia, from whence he never returned either to his native or to his adopted country. The change which her half year's absence had wrought in Millicent, her father attributed to her social experience. She had left him half a child, with a thousand absurd, whimsical ways, which had amused him, and endeared her to him more than any other trait in her character. Few things diverted him; and he counted every laugh which Millicent provoked from him as a positive good, which he set down to her credit in their joint account. Her stay in London had given Millicent a certain poise and manner which suited her marvellously well; but all the sparkle and freshness seemed to have left her. She was like a fresh, white lily which has been broken and wilted by a violent storm of wind and rain. For months she never smiled. Her life seemed to have come to a standstill; she suffered dumbly, hopelessly, with sad, deep eyes, made more beautiful by the trouble in them. A sceptic and a materialist, she found nothing in this world worth suffering for, and smiled incredulously when the old curé, her Latin teacher, tried to help her from the slough of earthly despair by promises of a glorious future, for whose attainment the life-battle should be bravely fought. She was conscious of no ethereal essence which should outlive the graceful body, whose beauty she sometimes cursed. Did it not reduce her to the level of all hunted creatures? Was she not a thing to be pursued by men, like a tall deer or a fleet, timid hare?

"Something had come to the Signorina," said Girolomo, the gondolier; "and the Signor Holworthy, where was he?" And he shook his head gravely, the wise old creature, guessing, as did no other soul, that Edward Holworthy was in some way connected with Millicent's changed face and listless demeanor.

Something had come to her; but she never confided to priest or friend the trouble which robbed her young face of its childish curves, which killed the youth in her, and made her a woman in grief, while she was still a child in years. Only one confidant had she,--the little journal; the gold-clasped tome which all those years after had fallen into John Graham's hands. The story of the first passion she had ever roused, read by the only man she had ever loved.

It was the pitiful story of a grievous wrong which had darkened more than one life. The miserable consequences of a wicked act are infinite; its influence spreads wider and wider every day, like the broadening rings which circle on the surface of a still pool disturbed by a stone which a careless hand has tossed. The black deed may be hidden from the sight of men, but its baleful effects are felt afar off in the lives of those who have known nought of its perpetration. Let not the sinner comfort himself in that his soul alone is damned for his crime. It darkens innocent lives with its evil; and in sinning against himself he sins against mankind.

In the strange country whither Millicent had gone, Holworthy was the only link which bound her to her home, the one being who understood and cared for her. The dominion which he had always held over her was now strengthened into a powerful magnetic force. The little journal told how that influence had been exerted in compelling her to a secret marriage against her own will and judgment. She had been tricked into an elopement,--it might better be called an abduction,--and all unwillingly became his wife. Then all too soon, ere a week had passed, came the terrible discovery that the marriage was no marriage. For then came to her the mother of the man whom she was striving to love with wifely duty, an old woman, bowed with grief and years. She had come very far, across half a continent, to break to the girl whose name she had heard linked with that of her only son, the news that he was not free to marry, that she must give him up. When the tall girl with the childish, flower face fell stricken to the earth like a broken lily, at the feet of the older woman, she had made no cry; in the hours that followed, she said no word. When the man who had wrecked her life came and knelt beside her, prayed her to be patient and her wrongs should be righted, spoke of his remorse, told her of his terrible mad wife from whom the law would set him free, and make him really hers, prayed, besought, and worshipped at her feet, she answered him with one terrible word only. She rose and stood before him white and cruel in her agony, relentless as Fate.

"Go!" was the one syllable which her frozen lips uttered; and with a gesture of command, majestic and beautiful, she had banished him from her presence. The secret was kept, even from the old woman, grown more sorrowful at the sight of the girl's dumb agony and of her son's grief, which she could not soothe. The secret was kept; and that very night Millicent's face, pale and clouded, shone out amidst a group of fair women who sat languidly chatting through the music of Faust at the opera. He kept her secret, poor wretch, and shielded her as best he might, forcing her to speak to him and see him before others, that no sudden breaking of their relations might be remarked. Save in the world, she never saw him again. That one word of command was the last syllable which he ever heard her speak to him directly. Not without a struggle did he give her up, but she was implacable. She yielded to him, and played her part in the little comedy which the world thought it understood. The beautiful Miss Almsford had found Holworthy a pleasant admirer, but her delicate American beauty and her solid American fortune would certainly win her a higher place in the world than that of the wife of Mr. Edward Holworthy, her countryman and old friend.

Youth and health are great physicians; and as the years passed, Millicent recovered something of her old spring and elasticity. She was infinitely more interesting, if something colder and harder, than she had been in the old days. Her unquenchable vigor of temperament came to her help, and gave her a keen pleasure in her studies and in the work and thought of the people about her. Always self-reliant, she grew to live entirely without support from man or woman. She was a friend to many people, but was herself friendless. The Palazzo Fortunio, under her reign, grew to be the centre of a charming social circle. Musicians and painters were made welcome by the young hostess. At once an artist and a patron of the arts, she stood in a peculiar relation to the men who frequented her salon. If she had been without fortune she would have made music her profession. As it was, she studied it as faithfully as if self-support had been her aim; and she claimed that sympathy from her artistic friends which a mere connoisseur, be he ever so enthusiastic, can never arouse. To her small world she was all-important. Her sympathy helped many a timid debutante, and her counsel cheered the black days of more than one disheartened artist. Always gracious and kind, she had drawn about her a group of people, to all of whom she was a sort of exalted fellow-worker, who knew but the poetry of art, and helped them to forget its prose. Her heart was quite empty, but her mind was keenly interested and fully occupied by the men and women among whom she lived. Happiness she had forgotten to look for, but in enjoyment her days were not wanting. It was a terrible blow to her when this pleasant, quiet life was suddenly broken up by her father's marriage. To her imperious nature the presence of the inferior woman whom Mr. Almsford had brought home to the Palazzo was intolerable. Where could she go? For the first time in her life she felt the power which her fortune gave her. She could establish herself wherever she liked. Her father's sister proposed a repetition of their joint establishment in London, but at the very mention of her returning to England Millicent's face blanched. She would never again set foot in that country. It was while she was in a state of doubt concerning her future movements that her half-brother wrote her a long and affectionate letter, urging her to come and dwell for a time among his people, to visit her mother's country before she decided the important question of where she should establish herself for life. The idea seemed a just one to her; and acting on a tender impulse roused by the loving words of her unknown brother, she had telegraphed her departure, and forthwith started on her long journey accompanied by her capable French maid. The Abigail discharged her trust faithfully, as far as San Francisco, from which city she turned her face on the very day of her arrival, unwilling to remain longer in what she called "le plus triste pays du monde." If the truth could have been known, Millicent would have signed away ten years of her life to have gone back with the woman to the Old World, the only home she had ever known.

Graham had not been mistaken when he predicted to Millicent that she would grow more in sympathy with the race from which she drew her inheritance of character and temperament than at first seemed possible. Nature is stronger than habit, well called second nature; and as the surface roughness became familiar to her, she began to feel the strong life and vigor of the young Western land quickening her pulses and stimulating her whole being. The poverty of intellectual intercourse was more than compensated by the tremendous power of work, the electrical force which accomplishes so rapidly in this new land what in other countries has been the slow growth of centuries.

An answering glow of enthusiasm flushed her with hope, with a keener, fuller, more intense life than she had ever known before. She had clung at first to her traditions, and fought against the tide which seemed to be sweeping this people on and on and ever on. But nature was too strong for habit; her upright, fearless mind acknowledged kinship with these hard-working men and women, to whom pleasure is not save in toil, whose whole life is one long unconscious sacrifice to their country. On the eastern margins of our land the austere simplicity and purity have become infested with plague-spots brought--ay, imported with care and expense--from the Old World, and fostered like exotics on the clean soil. But from the great Western prairie comes a fresh, strong breeze which sweetens all the foulness of the Atlantic cities, and makes the breath of Columbia still pure and fragrant.

With this new sentiment for her new-found country came the first passionate love to the heart of the beautiful and unhappy young woman. She had breathed the spicy air of the Californian forests, bracing and sweet, and her cheek had grown fuller and fairer in the perfect climate. Her empty, hollow heart was filled by a great love and strength, all-sustaining and soothing.