The San Rosario Ranch

by Maud Howe Elliott

"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.

CHAPTER XVI.