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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A First Family of Tasajara, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A First Family of Tasajara
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 25, 2006 [EBook #2723]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FIRST FAMILY OF TASAJARA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+A FIRST FAMILY OF TASAJARA
+
+
+By Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+"It blows," said Joe Wingate.
+
+As if to accent the words of the speaker a heavy gust of wind at that
+moment shook the long light wooden structure which served as the general
+store of Sidon settlement, in Contra Costa. Even after it had passed a
+prolonged whistle came through the keyhole, sides, and openings of the
+closed glass front doors, that served equally for windows, and filled
+the canvas ceiling which hid the roof above like a bellying sail. A wave
+of enthusiastic emotion seemed to be communicated to a line of straw
+hats and sou-westers suspended from a cross-beam, and swung them with
+every appearance of festive rejoicing, while a few dusters, overcoats,
+and "hickory" shirts hanging on the side walls exhibited such marked
+though idiotic animation that it had the effect of a satirical comment
+on the lazy, purposeless figures of the four living inmates of the
+store.
+
+Ned Billings momentarily raised his head and shoulders depressed in the
+back of his wooden armchair, glanced wearily around, said, "You bet,
+it's no slouch of a storm," and then lapsed again with further extended
+legs and an added sense of comfort.
+
+Here the third figure, which had been leaning listlessly against the
+shelves, putting aside the arm of a swaying overcoat that seemed to
+be emptily embracing him, walked slowly from behind the counter to the
+door, examined its fastenings, and gazed at the prospect. He was the
+owner of the store, and the view was a familiar one,--a long stretch of
+treeless waste before him meeting an equal stretch of dreary sky above,
+and night hovering somewhere between the two. This was indicated by
+splashes of darker shadow as if washed in with india ink, and a lighter
+low-lying streak that might have been the horizon, but was not. To
+the right, on a line with the front door of the store, were several
+scattered, widely dispersed objects, that, although vague in outline,
+were rigid enough in angles to suggest sheds or barns, but certainly not
+trees.
+
+"There's a heap more wet to come afore the wind goes down," he said,
+glancing at the sky. "Hark to that, now!"
+
+They listened lazily. There was a faint murmur from the shingles above;
+then suddenly the whole window was filmed and blurred as if the
+entire prospect had been wiped out with a damp sponge. The man turned
+listlessly away.
+
+"That's the kind that soaks in; thar won't be much teamin' over Tasajara
+for the next two weeks, I reckon," said the fourth lounger, who,
+seated on a high barrel, was nibbling--albeit critically and
+fastidiously--biscuits and dried apples alternately from open boxes on
+the counter. "It's lucky you've got in your winter stock, Harkutt."
+
+The shrewd eyes of Mr. Harkutt, proprietor, glanced at the occupation of
+the speaker as if even his foresight might have its possible drawbacks,
+but he said nothing.
+
+"There'll be no show for Sidon until you've got a wagon road from here
+to the creek," said Billings languidly, from the depths of his chair.
+"But what's the use o' talkin'? Thar ain't energy enough in all Tasajara
+to build it. A God-forsaken place, that two months of the year can only
+be reached by a mail-rider once a week, don't look ez if it was goin' to
+break its back haulin' in goods and settlers. I tell ye what, gentlemen,
+it makes me sick!" And apparently it had enfeebled him to the extent of
+interfering with his aim in that expectoration of disgust against the
+stove with which he concluded his sentence.
+
+"Why don't YOU build it?" asked Wingate, carelessly.
+
+"I wouldn't on principle," said Billings. "It's gov'ment work. What did
+we whoop up things here last spring to elect Kennedy to the legislation
+for? What did I rig up my shed and a thousand feet of lumber for benches
+at the barbecue for? Why, to get Kennedy elected and make him get a
+bill passed for the road! That's MY share of building it, if it comes to
+that. And I only wish some folks, that blow enough about what oughter be
+done to bulge out that ceiling, would only do as much as I have done for
+Sidon."
+
+As this remark seemed to have a personal as well as local application,
+the storekeeper diplomatically turned it. "There's a good many as DON'T
+believe that a road from here to the creek is going to do any good to
+Sidon. It's very well to say the creek is an embarcadero, but callin' it
+so don't put anough water into it to float a steamboat from the bay, nor
+clear out the reeds and tules in it. Even if the State builds you roads,
+it ain't got no call to make Tasajara Creek navigable for ye; and as
+that will cost as much as the road, I don't see where the money's comin'
+from for both."
+
+"There's water enough in front of 'Lige Curtis's shanty, and his
+location is only a mile along the bank," returned Billings.
+
+"Water enough for him to laze away his time fishin' when he's sober, and
+deep enough to drown him when he's drunk," said Wingate. "If you
+call that an embarcadero, you kin buy it any day from 'Lige,--title,
+possession, and shanty thrown in,--for a demijohn o' whiskey."
+
+The fourth man here distastefully threw back a half-nibbled biscuit
+into the box, and languidly slipped from the barrel to the floor,
+fastidiously flicking the crumbs from his clothes as he did so. "I
+reckon somebody'll get it for nothing, if 'Lige don't pull up mighty
+soon. He'll either go off his head with jim-jams or jump into the creek.
+He's about as near desp'rit as they make 'em, and havin' no partner to
+look after him, and him alone in the tules, ther' 's no tellin' WHAT he
+may do."
+
+Billings, stretched at full length in his chair, here gurgled
+derisively. "Desp'rit!--ketch him! Why, that's his little game! He's
+jist playin' off his desp'rit condition to frighten Sidon. Whenever any
+one asks him why he don't go to work, whenever he's hard up for a drink,
+whenever he's had too much or too little, he's workin' that desp'rit
+dodge, and even talkin' o' killin' himself! Why, look here," he
+continued, momentarily raising himself to a sitting posture in his
+disgust, "it was only last week he was over at Rawlett's trying to
+raise provisions and whiskey outer his water rights on the creek! Fact,
+sir,--had it all written down lawyer-like on paper. Rawlett didn't
+exactly see it in that light, and told him so. Then he up with the
+desp'rit dodge and began to work that. Said if he had to starve in a
+swamp like a dog he might as well kill himself at once, and would too
+if he could afford the weppins. Johnson said it was not a bad idea, and
+offered to lend him his revolver; Bilson handed up his shot-gun, and
+left it alongside of him, and turned his head away considerate-like and
+thoughtful while Rawlett handed him a box of rat pizon over the counter,
+in case he preferred suthin' more quiet. Well, what did 'Lige do?
+Nothin'! Smiled kinder sickly, looked sorter wild, and shut up. He
+didn't suicide much. No, sir! He didn't kill himself,--not he. Why, old
+Bixby--and he's a deacon in good standin'--allowed, in 'Lige's hearin'
+and for 'Lige's benefit, that self-destruction was better nor bad
+example, and proved it by Scripture too. And yet 'Lige did nothin'!
+Desp'rit! He's only desp'rit to laze around and fish all day off a log
+in the tules, and soak up with whiskey, until, betwixt fever an' ague
+and the jumps, he kinder shakes hisself free o' responsibility."
+
+A long silence followed; it was somehow felt that the subject was
+incongruously exciting; Billings allowed himself to lapse again behind
+the back of his chair. Meantime it had grown so dark that the dull glow
+of the stove was beginning to outline a faint halo on the ceiling even
+while it plunged the further lines of shelves behind the counter into
+greater obscurity.
+
+"Time to light up, Harkutt, ain't it?" said Wingate, tentatively.
+
+"Well, I was reckoning ez it's such a wild night there wouldn't be any
+use keepin' open, and when you fellows left I'd just shut up for good
+and make things fast," said Harkutt, dubiously. Before his guests had
+time to fully weigh this delicate hint, another gust of wind shook the
+tenement, and even forced the unbolted upper part of the door to yield
+far enough to admit an eager current of humid air that seemed to justify
+the wisdom of Harkutt's suggestion. Billings slowly and with a sigh
+assumed a sitting posture in the chair. The biscuit-nibbler selected a
+fresh dainty from the counter, and Wingate abstractedly walked to the
+window and rubbed the glass. Sky and water had already disappeared
+behind a curtain of darkness that was illuminated by a single point of
+light--the lamp in the window of some invisible but nearer house--which
+threw its rays across the glistening shallows in the road. "Well," said
+Wingate, buttoning up his coat in slow dejection, "I reckon I oughter
+be travelin' to help the old woman do the chores before supper." He had
+just recognized the light in his own dining-room, and knew by that sign
+that his long-waiting helpmeet had finally done the chores herself.
+
+"Some folks have it mighty easy," said Billings, with long-drawn
+discontent, as he struggled to his feet. "You've only a step to go,
+and yer's me and Peters there"--indicating the biscuit-nibbler, who was
+beginning to show alarming signs of returning to the barrel again--"hev
+got to trapse five times that distance."
+
+"More'n half a mile, if it comes to that," said Peters, gloomily. He
+paused in putting on his overcoat as if thinking better of it, while
+even the more fortunate and contiguous Wingate languidly lapsed against
+the counter again.
+
+The moment was a critical one. Billings was evidently also regretfully
+eying the chair he had just quitted. Harkutt resolved on a heroic
+effort.
+
+"Come, boys," he said, with brisk conviviality, "take a parting drink
+with me before you go." Producing a black bottle from some obscurity
+beneath the counter that smelt strongly of india-rubber boots, he placed
+it with four glasses before his guests. Each made a feint of holding his
+glass against the opaque window while filling it, although nothing could
+be seen. A sudden tumult of wind and rain again shook the building, but
+even after it had passed the glass door still rattled violently.
+
+"Just see what's loose, Peters," said Billings; "you're nearest it."
+
+Peters, still holding the undrained glass in his hand, walked slowly
+towards it.
+
+"It's suthin'--or somebody outside," he said, hesitatingly.
+
+The three others came eagerly to his side. Through the glass, clouded
+from within by their breath, and filmed from without by the rain, some
+vague object was moving, and what seemed to be a mop of tangled hair
+was apparently brushing against the pane. The door shook again, but less
+strongly. Billings pressed his face against the glass. "Hol' on," he
+said in a quick whisper,--"it's 'Lige!" But it was too late. Harkutt
+had already drawn the lower bolt, and a man stumbled from the outer
+obscurity into the darker room.
+
+The inmates drew away as he leaned back for a moment against the door
+that closed behind him. Then dimly, but instinctively, discerning the
+glass of liquor which Wingate still mechanically held in his hand,
+he reached forward eagerly, took it from Wingate's surprised and
+unresisting fingers, and drained it at a gulp. The four men laughed
+vaguely, but not as cheerfully as they might.
+
+"I was just shutting up," began Harkutt, dubiously.
+
+"I won't keep you a minit," said the intruder, nervously fumbling in
+the breast pocket of his hickory shirt. "It's a matter of
+business--Harkutt--I"--But he was obliged to stop here to wipe his
+face and forehead with the ends of a loose handkerchief tied round his
+throat. From the action, and what could be seen of his pale,
+exhausted face, it was evident that the moisture upon it was beads of
+perspiration, and not the rain which some abnormal heat of his body was
+converting into vapor from his sodden garments as he stood there.
+
+"I've got a document here," he began again, producing a roll of paper
+tremblingly from his pocket, "that I'd like you to glance over, and
+perhaps you'd"--His voice, which had been feverishly exalted, here broke
+and rattled with a cough.
+
+Billings, Wingate, and Peters fell apart and looked out of the window.
+"It's too dark to read anything now, 'Lige," said Harkutt, with evasive
+good humor, "and I ain't lightin' up to-night."
+
+"But I can tell you the substance of it," said the man, with a faintness
+that however had all the distinctness of a whisper, "if you'll just step
+inside a minute. It's a matter of importance and a bargain"--
+
+"I reckon we must be goin'," said Billings to the others, with marked
+emphasis. "We're keepin' Harkutt from shuttin' up." "Good-night!"
+"Good-night!" added Peters and Wingate, ostentatiously following
+Billings hurriedly through the door. "So long!"
+
+The door closed behind them, leaving Harkutt alone with his importunate
+intruder. Possibly his resentment at his customers' selfish abandonment
+of him at this moment developed a vague spirit of opposition to them and
+mitigated his feeling towards 'Lige. He groped his way to the counter,
+struck a match, and lit a candle. Its feeble rays faintly illuminated
+the pale, drawn face of the applicant, set in a tangle of wet, unkempt,
+party-colored hair. It was not the face of an ordinary drunkard;
+although tremulous and sensitive from some artificial excitement, there
+was no ENGORGEMENT or congestion in the features or complexion, albeit
+they were morbid and unhealthy. The expression was of a suffering that
+was as much mental as physical, and yet in some vague way appeared
+unmeaning--and unheroic.
+
+"I want to see you about selling my place on the creek. I want you to
+take it off my hands for a bargain. I want to get quit of it, at once,
+for just enough to take me out o' this. I don't want any profit; only
+money enough to get away." His utterance, which had a certain kind of
+cultivation, here grew thick and harsh again, and he looked eagerly at
+the bottle which stood on the counter.
+
+"Look here, 'Lige," said Harkutt, not unkindly. "It's too late to do
+anythin' tonight. You come in to-morrow." He would have added "when
+you're sober," but for a trader's sense of politeness to a possible
+customer, and probably some doubt of the man's actual condition.
+
+"God knows where or what I may be tomorrow! It would kill me to go back
+and spend another night as the last, if I don't kill myself on the way
+to do it."
+
+Harkutt's face darkened grimly. It was indeed as Billings had said.
+The pitiable weakness of the man's manner not only made his desperation
+inadequate and ineffective, but even lent it all the cheapness of
+acting. And, as if to accent his simulation of a part, his fingers,
+feebly groping in his shirt bosom, slipped aimlessly and helplessly
+from the shining handle of a pistol in his pocket to wander hesitatingly
+towards the bottle on the counter.
+
+Harkutt took the bottle, poured out a glass of the liquor, and pushed
+it before his companion, who drank it eagerly. Whether it gave him more
+confidence, or his attention was no longer diverted, he went on
+more collectedly and cheerfully, and with no trace of his previous
+desperation in his manner. "Come, Harkutt, buy my place. It's a bargain,
+I tell you. I'll sell it cheap. I only want enough to get away with.
+Give me twenty-five dollars and it's yours. See, there's the papers--the
+quitclaim--all drawn up and signed." He drew the roll of paper from his
+pocket again, apparently forgetful of the adjacent weapon.
+
+"Look here, 'Lige," said Harkutt, with a business-like straightening of
+his lips, "I ain't buyin' any land in Tasajara,--least of all yours on
+the creek. I've got more invested here already than I'll ever get back
+again. But I tell you what I'll do. You say you can't go back to your
+shanty. Well, seein' how rough it is outside, and that the waters of
+the creek are probably all over the trail by this time, I reckon you're
+about right. Now, there's five dollars!" He laid down a coin sharply on
+the counter. "Take that and go over to Rawlett's and get a bed and
+some supper. In the mornin' you may be able to strike up a trade with
+somebody else--or change your mind. How did you get here? On your hoss?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He ain't starved yet?"
+
+"No; he can eat grass. I can't."
+
+Either the liquor or Harkutt's practical unsentimental treatment of
+the situation seemed to give him confidence. He met Harkutt's eye more
+steadily as the latter went on. "You kin turn your hoss for the night
+into my stock corral next to Rawlett's. It'll save you payin' for fodder
+and stablin'."
+
+The man took up the coin with a certain slow gravity which was almost
+like dignity. "Thank you," he said, laying the paper on the counter.
+"I'll leave that as security."
+
+"Don't want it, 'Lige," said Harkutt, pushing it back.
+
+"I'd rather leave it."
+
+"But suppose you have a chance to sell it to somebody at Rawlett's?"
+continued Harkutt, with a precaution that seemed ironical.
+
+"I don't think there's much chance of that."
+
+He remained quiet, looking at Harkutt with an odd expression as
+he rubbed the edge of the coin that he held between his fingers
+abstractedly on the counter. Something in his gaze--rather perhaps
+the apparent absence of anything in it approximate to the present
+occasion--was beginning to affect Harkutt with a vague uneasiness.
+Providentially a resumed onslaught of wind and rain against the panes
+effected a diversion. "Come," he said, with brisk practicality, "you'd
+better hurry on to Rawlett's before it gets worse. Have your clothes
+dried by his fire, take suthin' to eat, and you'll be all right." He
+rubbed his hands cheerfully, as if summarily disposing of the situation,
+and incidentally of all 'Lige's troubles, and walked with him to the
+door. Nevertheless, as the man's look remained unchanged, he hesitated
+a moment with his hand on the handle, in the hope that he would say
+something, even if only to repeat his appeal, but he did not. Then
+Harkutt opened the door; the man moved mechanically out, and at the
+distance of a few feet seemed to melt into the rain and darkness.
+Harkutt remained for a moment with his face pressed against the glass.
+After an interval he thought he heard the faint splash of hoofs in the
+shallows of the road; he opened the door softly and looked out.
+
+The light had disappeared from the nearest house; only an uncertain bulk
+of shapeless shadows remained. Other remoter and more vague outlines
+near the horizon seemed to have a funereal suggestion of tombs and grave
+mounds, and one--a low shed near the road--looked not unlike a halted
+bier. He hurriedly put up the shutters in a momentary lulling of the
+wind, and re-entering the store began to fasten them from within.
+
+While thus engaged an inner door behind the counter opened softly and
+cautiously, projecting a brighter light into the deserted apartment from
+some sacred domestic interior with the warm and wholesome incense of
+cooking. It served to introduce also the equally agreeable presence of a
+young girl, who, after assuring herself of the absence of every one but
+the proprietor, idly slipped into the store, and placing her rounded
+elbows, from which her sleeves were uprolled, upon the counter, leaned
+lazily upon them, with both hands supporting her dimpled chin, and gazed
+indolently at him; so indolently that, with her pretty face once
+fixed in this comfortable attitude, she was constrained to follow his
+movements with her eyes alone, and often at an uncomfortable angle. It
+was evident that she offered the final but charming illustration of the
+enfeebling listlessness of Sidon.
+
+"So those loafers have gone at last," she said, meditatively. "They'll
+take root here some day, pop. The idea of three strong men like that
+lazing round for two mortal hours doin' nothin'. Well!" As if to
+emphasize her disgust she threw her whole weight upon the counter by
+swinging her feet from the floor to touch the shelves behind her.
+
+Mr. Harkutt only replied by a slight grunt as he continued to screw on
+the shutters.
+
+"Want me to help you, dad?" she said, without moving.
+
+Mr. Harkutt muttered something unintelligible, which, however, seemed to
+imply a negative, and her attention here feebly wandered to the roll of
+paper, and she began slowly and lazily to read it aloud.
+
+"'For value received, I hereby sell, assign, and transfer to Daniel D.
+Harkutt all my right, titles and interest in, and to the undivided
+half of, Quarter Section 4, Range 5, Tasajara Township'--hum--hum," she
+murmured, running her eyes to the bottom of the page. "Why, Lord! It's
+that 'Lige Curtis!" she laughed. "The idea of HIM having property! Why,
+dad, you ain't been THAT silly!"
+
+"Put down that paper, miss," he said, aggrievedly; "bring the candle
+here, and help me to find one of these infernal screws that's dropped."
+
+The girl indolently disengaged herself from the counter and Elijah
+Curtis's transfer, and brought the candle to her father. The screw was
+presently found and the last fastening secured. "Supper gettin' cold,
+dad," she said, with a slight yawn. Her father sympathetically responded
+by stretching himself from his stooping position, and the two passed
+through the private door into inner domesticity, leaving the already
+forgotten paper lying with other articles of barter on the counter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER II.
+
+
+With the closing of the little door behind them they seemed to have shut
+out the turmoil and vibration of the storm. The reason became apparent
+when, after a few paces, they descended half a dozen steps to a lower
+landing. This disclosed the fact that the dwelling part of the Sidon
+General Store was quite below the level of the shop and the road, and
+on the slope of the solitary undulation of the Tasajara plain,--a little
+ravine that fell away to a brawling stream below. The only arboreous
+growth of Tasajara clothed its banks in the shape of willows and alders
+that set compactly around the quaint, irregular dwelling which straggled
+down the ravine and looked upon a slope of bracken and foliage on either
+side. The transition from the black, treeless, storm-swept plain to this
+sheltered declivity was striking and suggestive. From the opposite bank
+one might fancy that the youthful and original dwelling had ambitiously
+mounted the crest, but, appalled at the dreary prospect beyond, had
+gone no further; while from the road it seemed as if the fastidious
+proprietor had tried to draw a line between the vulgar trading-post,
+with which he was obliged to face the coarser civilization of the place,
+and the privacy of his domestic life. The real fact, however, was that
+the ravine furnished wood and water; and as Nature also provided one
+wall of the house,--as in the well-known example of aboriginal cave
+dwellings,--its peculiar construction commended itself to Sidon on the
+ground of involving little labor.
+
+Howbeit, from the two open windows of the sitting-room which they had
+entered only the faint pattering of dripping boughs and a slight murmur
+from the swollen brook indicated the storm that shook the upper plain,
+and the cool breath of laurel, syringa, and alder was wafted through
+the neat apartment. Passing through that pleasant rural atmosphere
+they entered the kitchen, a much larger room, which appeared to serve
+occasionally as a dining-room, and where supper was already laid out.
+A stout, comfortable-looking woman--who had, however, a singularly
+permanent expression of pained sympathy upon her face--welcomed them in
+tones of gentle commiseration.
+
+"Ah, there you be, you two! Now sit ye right down, dears; DO. You
+must be tired out; and you, Phemie, love, draw up by your poor father.
+There--that's right. You'll be better soon."
+
+There was certainly no visible sign of suffering or exhaustion on the
+part of either father or daughter, nor the slightest apparent earthly
+reason why they should be expected to exhibit any. But, as already
+intimated, it was part of Mrs. Harkutt's generous idiosyncrasy to look
+upon all humanity as suffering and toiling; to be petted, humored,
+condoled with, and fed. It had, in the course of years, imparted a
+singularly caressing sadness to her voice, and given her the habit of
+ending her sentences with a melancholy cooing and an unintelligible
+murmur of agreement. It was undoubtedly sincere and sympathetic, but at
+times inappropriate and distressing. It had lost her the friendship of
+the one humorist of Tasajara, whose best jokes she had received with
+such heartfelt commiseration and such pained appreciation of the evident
+labor involved as to reduce him to silence.
+
+Accustomed as Mr. Harkutt was to his wife's peculiarity, he was not
+above assuming a certain slightly fatigued attitude befitting it. "Yes,"
+he said, with a vague sigh, "where's Clemmie?"
+
+"Lyin' down since dinner; she reckoned she wouldn't get up to supper,"
+she returned soothingly. "Phemie's goin' to take her up some sass and
+tea. The poor dear child wants a change."
+
+"She wants to go to 'Frisco, and so do I, pop," said Phemie, leaning
+her elbow half over her father's plate. "Come, pop, say do,--just for a
+week."
+
+"Only for a week," murmured the commiserating Mrs. Harkutt.
+
+"Perhaps," responded Harkutt, with gloomy sarcasm, "ye wouldn't mind
+tellin' me how you're goin' to get there, and where the money's comin'
+from to take you? There's no teamin' over Tasajara till the rain stops,
+and no money comin' in till the ranchmen can move their stuff. There
+ain't a hundred dollars in all Tasajara; at least there ain't been the
+first red cent of it paid across my counter for a fortnit! Perhaps if
+you do go you wouldn't mind takin' me and the store along with ye, and
+leavin' us there."
+
+"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Harkutt, with sympathetic but shameless
+tergiversation. "Don't bother your poor father, Phemie, love; don't you
+see he's just tired out? And you're not eatin' anything, dad."
+
+As Mr. Harkutt was uneasily conscious that he had been eating heartily
+in spite of his financial difficulties, he turned the subject abruptly.
+"Where's John Milton?"
+
+Mrs. Harkutt shaded her eyes with her hand, and gazed meditatively on
+the floor before the fire and in the chimney corner for her only son,
+baptized under that historic title. "He was here a minit ago," she said
+doubtfully. "I really can't think where he's gone. But," assuringly, "it
+ain't far."
+
+"He's skipped with one o' those story-books he's borrowed," said Phemie.
+"He's always doin' it. Like as not he's reading with a candle in the
+wood-shed. We'll all be burnt up some night."
+
+"But he's got through his chores," interposed Mrs. Harkutt
+deprecatingly.
+
+"Yes," continued Harkutt, aggrievedly, "but instead of goin' to bed, or
+addin' up bills, or takin' count o' stock, or even doin' sums or suthin'
+useful, he's ruinin' his eyes and wastin' his time over trash." He rose
+and walked slowly into the sitting-room, followed by his daughter and a
+murmur of commiseration from his wife. But Mrs. Harkutt's ministration
+for the present did not pass beyond her domain, the kitchen.
+
+"I reckon ye ain't expectin' anybody tonight, Phemie?" said Mr. Harkutt,
+sinking into a chair, and placing his slippered feet against the wall.
+
+"No," said Phemie, "unless something possesses that sappy little Parmlee
+to make one of his visitations. John Milton says that out on the road
+it blows so you can't stand up. It's just like that idiot Parmlee to be
+blown in here, and not have strength of mind enough to get away again."
+
+Mr. Harkutt smiled. It was that arch yet approving, severe yet
+satisfied smile with which the deceived male parent usually receives any
+depreciation of the ordinary young man by his daughters. Euphemia was
+no giddy thing to be carried away by young men's attentions,--not
+she! Sitting back comfortably in his rocking-chair, he said, "Play
+something."
+
+The young girl went to the closet and took from the top shelf an
+excessively ornamented accordion,--the opulent gift of a reckless
+admirer. It was so inordinately decorated, so gorgeous in the blaze of
+papier mache, mother-of-pearl, and tortoise-shell on keys and keyboard,
+and so ostentatiously radiant in the pink silk of its bellows that it
+seemed to overawe the plainly furnished room with its splendors. "You
+ought to keep it on the table in a glass vase, Phemie," said her father
+admiringly.
+
+"And have HIM think I worshiped it! Not me, indeed! He's conceited
+enough already," she returned, saucily.
+
+Mr. Harkutt again smiled his approbation, then deliberately closed his
+eyes and threw his head back in comfortable anticipation of the coming
+strains.
+
+It is to be regretted that in brilliancy, finish, and even cheerfulness
+of quality they were not up to the suggestions of the keys and keyboard.
+The most discreet and cautious effort on the part of the young performer
+seemed only to produce startlingly unexpected, but instantly suppressed
+complaints from the instrument, accompanied by impatient interjections
+of "No, no," from the girl herself. Nevertheless, with her pretty
+eyebrows knitted in some charming distress of memory, her little mouth
+half open between an apologetic smile and the exertion of working the
+bellows, with her white, rounded arms partly lifted up and waving
+before her, she was pleasantly distracting to the eye. Gradually, as the
+scattered strains were marshaled into something like an air, she began
+to sing also, glossing over the instrumental weaknesses, filling
+in certain dropped notes and omissions, and otherwise assisting the
+ineffectual accordion with a youthful but not unmusical voice. The song
+was a lugubrious religious chant; under its influence the house seemed
+to sink into greater quiet, permitting in the intervals the murmur of
+the swollen creek to appear more distinct, and even the far moaning of
+the wind on the plain to become faintly audible. At last, having fairly
+mastered the instrument, Phemie got into the full swing of the chant.
+Unconstrained by any criticism, carried away by the sound of her own
+voice, and perhaps a youthful love for mere uproar, or possibly desirous
+to drown her father's voice, which had unexpectedly joined in with a
+discomposing bass, the conjoined utterances seemed to threaten the frail
+structure of their dwelling, even as the gale had distended the store
+behind them. When they ceased at last it was in an accession of dripping
+from the apparently stirred leaves outside. And then a voice, evidently
+from the moist depths of the abyss below, called out,--
+
+"Hullo, there!"
+
+Phemie put down the accordion, said, "Who's that now?" went to the
+window, lazily leaned her elbows on the sill, and peered into the
+darkness. Nothing was to be seen; the open space of dimly outlined
+landscape had that blank, uncommunicative impenetrability with which
+Nature always confronts and surprises us at such moments. It seemed to
+Phemie that she was the only human being present. Yet after the feeling
+had passed she fancied she heard the wash of the current against some
+object in the stream, half stationary and half resisting.
+
+"Is any one down there? Is that you, Mr. Parmlee?" she called.
+
+There was a pause. Some invisible auditor said to another, "It's a young
+lady." Then the first voice rose again in a more deferential tone: "Are
+we anywhere near Sidon?"
+
+"This is Sidon," answered Harkutt, who had risen, and was now quite
+obliterating his daughter's outline at the window.
+
+"Thank you," said the voice. "Can we land anywhere here, on this bank?"
+
+"Run down, pop; they're strangers," said the girl, with excited, almost
+childish eagerness.
+
+"Hold on," called out Harkutt, "I'll be thar in a moment!" He hastily
+thrust his feet into a pair of huge boots, clapped on an oilskin hat
+and waterproof, and disappeared through a door that led to a lower
+staircase. Phemie, still at the window, albeit with a newly added sense
+of self-consciousness, hung out breathlessly. Presently a beam of light
+from the lower depths of the house shot out into the darkness. It was
+her father with a bull's-eye lantern. As he held it up and clambered
+cautiously down the bank, its rays fell upon the turbid rushing stream,
+and what appeared to be a rough raft of logs held with difficulty
+against the bank by two men with long poles. In its centre was a roll
+of blankets, a valise and saddle-bags, and the shining brasses of some
+odd-looking instruments.
+
+As Mr. Harkutt, supporting himself by a willow branch that overhung
+the current, held up the lantern, the two men rapidly transferred their
+freight from the raft to the bank, and leaped ashore. The action gave
+an impulse to the raft, which, no longer held in position by the
+poles, swung broadside to the current and was instantly swept into the
+darkness.
+
+Not a word had been spoken, but now the voices of the men rose freely
+together. Phemie listened with intense expectation. The explanation
+was simple. They were surveyors who had been caught by the overflow
+on Tasajara plain, had abandoned their horses on the bank of Tasajara
+Creek, and with a hastily constructed raft had intrusted themselves and
+their instruments to the current. "But," said Harkutt quickly, "there is
+no connection between Tasajara Creek and this stream."
+
+The two men laughed. "There is NOW," said one of them.
+
+"But Tasajara Creek is a part of the bay," said the astonished Harkutt,
+"and this stream rises inland and only runs into the bay four miles
+lower down. And I don't see how--
+
+"You're almost twelve feet lower here than Tasajara Creek," said the
+first man, with a certain professional authority, "and that's WHY.
+There's more water than Tasajara Creek can carry, and it's seeking the
+bay this way. Look," he continued, taking the lantern from Harkutt's
+hand and casting its rays on the stream, "that's salt drift from the
+upper bay, and part of Tasajara Creek's running by your house now! Don't
+be alarmed," he added reassuringly, glancing at the staring storekeeper.
+"You're all right here; this is only the overflow and will find its
+level soon."
+
+But Mr. Harkutt remained gazing abstractedly at the smiling speaker.
+From the window above the impatient Phemie was wondering why he kept
+the strangers waiting in the rain while he talked about things that were
+perfectly plain. It was so like a man!
+
+"Then there's a waterway straight to Tasajara Creek?" he said slowly.
+
+"There is, as long as this flood lasts," returned the first speaker
+promptly; "and a cutting through the bank of two or three hundred yards
+would make it permanent. Well, what's the matter with that?"
+
+"Nothin'," said Harkutt hurriedly. "I am only considerin'! But come in,
+dry yourselves, and take suthin'."
+
+The light over the rushing water was withdrawn, and the whole prospect
+sank back into profound darkness. Mr. Harkutt had disappeared with
+his guests. Then there was the familiar shuffle of his feet on
+the staircase, followed by other more cautious footsteps that grew
+delicately and even courteously deliberate as they approached. At which
+the young girl, in some new sense of decorum, drew in her pretty head,
+glanced around the room quickly, reset the tidy on her father's chair,
+placed the resplendent accordion like an ornament in the exact centre of
+the table, and then vanished into the hall as Mr. Harkutt entered with
+the strangers.
+
+They were both of the same age and appearance, but the principal speaker
+was evidently the superior of his companion, and although their attitude
+to each other was equal and familiar, it could be easily seen that
+he was the leader. He had a smooth, beardless face, with a critical
+expression of eye and mouth that might have been fastidious and
+supercilious but for the kindly, humorous perception that tempered
+it. His quick eye swept the apartment and then fixed itself upon the
+accordion, but a smile lit up his face as he said quietly,--
+
+"I hope we haven't frightened the musician away. It was bad enough to
+have interrupted the young lady."
+
+"No, no," said Mr. Harkutt, who seemed to have lost his abstraction in
+the nervousness of hospitality. "I reckon she's only lookin' after her
+sick sister. But come into the kitchen, both of you, straight off, and
+while you're dryin' your clothes, mother'll fix you suthin' hot."
+
+"We only need to change our boots and stockings; we've some dry ones in
+our pack downstairs," said the first speaker hesitatingly.
+
+"I'll fetch 'em up and you can change in the kitchen. The old woman
+won't mind," said Harkutt reassuringly. "Come along." He led the way to
+the kitchen; the two strangers exchanged a glance of humorous perplexity
+and followed.
+
+The quiet of the little room was once more unbroken. A far-off
+commiserating murmur indicated that Mrs. Harkutt was receiving her
+guests. The cool breath of the wet leaves without slightly stirred the
+white dimity curtains, and somewhere from the darkened eaves there was
+a still, somnolent drip. Presently a hurried whisper and a half-laugh
+appeared to be suppressed in the outer passage or hall. There
+was another moment of hesitation and the door opened suddenly and
+ostentatiously, disclosing Phemie, with a taller and slighter young
+woman, her elder sister, at her side. Perceiving that the room was
+empty, they both said "Oh!" yet with a certain artificiality of manner
+that was evidently a lingering trace of some previous formal attitude
+they had assumed. Then without further speech they each selected a
+chair and a position, having first shaken out their dresses, and gazed
+silently at each other.
+
+It may be said briefly that sitting thus--in spite of their unnatural
+attitude, or perhaps rather because of its suggestion of a photographic
+pose--they made a striking picture, and strongly accented their separate
+peculiarities. They were both pretty, but the taller girl, apparently
+the elder, had an ideal refinement and regularity of feature which was
+not only unlike Phemie, but gratuitously unlike the rest of her family,
+and as hopelessly and even wantonly inconsistent with her surroundings
+as was the elaborately ornamented accordion on the centre-table. She was
+one of those occasional creatures, episodical in the South and West,
+who might have been stamped with some vague ante-natal impression of a
+mother given to over-sentimental contemplation of books of beauty and
+albums rather than the family features; offspring of typical men and
+women, and yet themselves incongruous to any known local or even general
+type. The long swan-like neck, tendriled hair, swimming eyes, and small
+patrician head, had never lived or moved before in Tasajara or the
+West, nor perhaps even existed except as a personified "Constancy,"
+"Meditation," or the "Baron's Bride," in mezzotint or copperplate. Even
+the girl's common pink print dress with its high sleeves and shoulders
+could not conventionalize these original outlines; and the hand that
+rested stiffly on the back of her chair, albeit neither over-white nor
+well kept, looked as if it had never held anything but a lyre, a rose,
+or a good book. Even the few sprays of wild jessamine which she had
+placed in the coils of her waving hair, although a local fashion, became
+her as a special ornament.
+
+The two girls kept their constrained and artificially elaborated
+attitude for a few moments, accompanied by the murmur of voices in the
+kitchen, the monotonous drip of the eaves before the window, and the
+far-off sough of the wind. Then Phemie suddenly broke into a constrained
+giggle, which she however quickly smothered as she had the accordion,
+and with the same look of mischievous distress.
+
+"I'm astonished at you, Phemie," said Clementina in a deep contralto
+voice, which seemed even deeper from its restraint. "You don't seem to
+have any sense. Anybody'd think you never had seen a stranger before."
+
+"Saw him before you did," retorted Phemie pertly. But here a pushing
+of chairs and shuffling of feet in the kitchen checked her. Clementina
+fixed an abstracted gaze on the ceiling; Phemie regarded a leaf on
+the window sill with photographic rigidity as the door opened to the
+strangers and her father.
+
+The look of undisguised satisfaction which lit the young men's faces
+relieved Mr. Harkutt's awkward introduction of any embarrassment, and
+almost before Phemie was fully aware of it, she found herself talking
+rapidly and in a high key with Mr. Lawrence Grant, the surveyor, while
+her sister was equally, although more sedately, occupied with Mr.
+Stephen Rice, his assistant. But the enthusiasm of the strangers, and
+the desire to please and be pleased was so genuine and contagious that
+presently the accordion was brought into requisition, and Mr. Grant
+exhibited a surprising faculty of accompaniment to Mr. Rice's tenor, in
+which both the girls joined.
+
+Then a game of cards with partners followed, into which the rival
+parties introduced such delightful and shameless obviousness of
+cheating, and displayed such fascinating and exaggerated partisanship
+that the game resolved itself into a hilarious melee, to which peace was
+restored only by an exhibition of tricks of legerdemain with the
+cards by the young surveyor. All of which Mr. Harkutt supervised
+patronizingly, with occasional fits of abstraction, from his
+rocking-chair; and later Mrs. Harkutt from her kitchen threshold, wiping
+her arms on her apron and commiseratingly observing that she "declared,
+the young folks looked better already."
+
+But it was here a more dangerous element of mystery and suggestion was
+added by Mr. Lawrence Grant in the telling of Miss Euphemia's fortune
+from the cards before him, and that young lady, pink with excitement,
+fluttered her little hands not unlike timid birds over the cards to be
+drawn, taking them from him with an audible twitter of anxiety and
+great doubts whether a certain "fair-haired gentleman" was in hearts or
+diamonds.
+
+"Here are two strangers," said Mr. Grant, with extraordinary gravity
+laying down the cards, "and here is a 'journey;' this is 'unexpected
+news,' and this ten of diamonds means 'great wealth' to you, which you
+see follows the advent of the two strangers and is some way connected
+with them."
+
+"Oh, indeed," said the young lady with great pertness and a toss of her
+head. "I suppose they've got the money with them."
+
+"No, though it reaches you through them," he answered with unflinching
+solemnity. "Wait a bit, I have it! I see, I've made a mistake with this
+card. It signifies a journey or a road. Queer! isn't it, Steve? It's THE
+ROAD."
+
+"It is queer," said Rice with equal gravity; "but it's so. The road,
+sure!" Nevertheless he looked up into the large eyes of Clementina with
+a certain confidential air of truthfulness.
+
+"You see, ladies," continued the surveyor, appealing to them with
+unabashed rigidity of feature, "the cards don't lie! Luckily we are in
+a position to corroborate them. The road in question is a secret known
+only to us and some capitalists in San Francisco. In fact even THEY
+don't know that it is feasible until WE report to them. But I don't mind
+telling you now, as a slight return for your charming hospitality, that
+the road is a RAILROAD from Oakland to Tasajara Creek of which we've
+just made the preliminary survey. So you see what the cards mean is
+this: You're not far from Tasajara Creek; in fact with a very little
+expense your father could connect this stream with the creek, and have a
+WATERWAY STRAIGHT TO THE RAILROAD TERMINUS. That's the wealth the cards
+promise; and if your father knows how to take a hint he can make his
+fortune!"
+
+It was impossible to say which was the most dominant in the face of the
+speaker, the expression of assumed gravity or the twinkling of humor in
+his eyes. The two girls with superior feminine perception divined
+that there was much truth in what he said, albeit they didn't
+entirely understand it, and what they did understand--except the man's
+good-humored motive--was not particularly interesting. In fact they
+were slightly disappointed. What had promised to be an audaciously
+flirtatious declaration, and even a mischievous suggestion of marriage,
+had resolved itself into something absurdly practical and business-like.
+
+Not so Mr. Harkutt. He quickly rose from his chair, and, leaning over
+the table, with his eyes fixed on the card as if it really signified the
+railroad, repeated quickly: "Railroad, eh! What's that? A railroad to
+Tasajara Creek? Ye don't mean it!--That is--it ain't a SURE thing?"
+
+"Perfectly sure. The money is ready in San Francisco now, and by this
+time next year--"
+
+"A railroad to Tasajara Creek!" continued Harkutt hurriedly. "What part
+of it? Where?"
+
+"At the embarcadero naturally," responded Grant. "There isn't but the
+one place for the terminus. There's an old shanty there now belongs to
+somebody."
+
+"Why, pop!" said Phemie with sudden recollection, "ain't it 'Lige
+Curtis's house? The land he offered"--
+
+"Hush!" said her father.
+
+"You know, the one written in that bit of paper," continued the innocent
+Phemie.
+
+"Hush! will you? God A'mighty! are you goin' to mind me? Are you goin'
+to keep up your jabber when I'm speakin' to the gentlemen? Is that your
+manners? What next, I wonder!"
+
+The sudden and unexpected passion of the speaker, the incomprehensible
+change in his voice, and the utterly disproportionate exaggeration of
+his attitude towards his daughters, enforced an instantaneous silence.
+The rain began to drip audibly at the window, the rush of the river
+sounded distinctly from without, even the shaking of the front part
+of the dwelling by the distant gale became perceptible. An angry flash
+sprang for an instant to the young assistant's eye, but it met the
+cautious glance of his friend, and together both discreetly sought the
+table. The two girls alone remained white and collected. "Will you go on
+with my fortune, Mr. Grant?" said Phemie quietly.
+
+A certain respect, perhaps not before observable, was suggested in the
+surveyor's tone as he smilingly replied, "Certainly, I was only waiting
+for you to show your confidence in me," and took up the cards.
+
+Mr. Harkutt coughed. "It looks as if that blamed wind had blown suthin'
+loose in the store," he said affectedly. "I reckon I'll go and see." He
+hesitated a moment and then disappeared in the passage. Yet even here he
+stood irresolute, looking at the closed door behind him, and passing his
+hand over his still flushed face. Presently he slowly and abstractedly
+ascended the flight of steps, entered the smaller passage that led to
+the back door of the shop and opened it.
+
+He was at first a little startled at the halo of light from the
+still glowing stove, which the greater obscurity of the long room had
+heightened rather than diminished. Then he passed behind the counter,
+but here the box of biscuits which occupied the centre and cast a shadow
+over it compelled him to grope vaguely for what he sought. Then he
+stopped suddenly, the paper he had just found dropping from his fingers,
+and said sharply,--
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+"Me, pop."
+
+"John Milton?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"What the devil are you doin' there, sir?"
+
+"Readin'."
+
+It was true. The boy was half reclining in a most distorted posture on
+two chairs, his figure in deep shadow, but his book was raised above his
+head so as to catch the red glow of the stove on the printed page.
+Even then his father's angry interruption scarcely diverted his
+preoccupation; he raised himself in his chair mechanically, with his
+eyes still fixed on his book. Seeing which his father quickly regained
+the paper, but continued his objurgation.
+
+"How dare you? Clear off to bed, will you! Do you hear me? Pretty
+goin's on," he added as if to justify his indignation. "Sneakin' in here
+and--and lyin' 'round at this time o' night! Why, if I hadn't come in
+here to"--
+
+"What?" asked the boy mechanically, catching vaguely at the unfinished
+sentence and staring automatically at the paper in his father's hand.
+
+"Nothin', sir! Go to bed, I tell you! Will you? What are you standin'
+gawpin' at?" continued Harkutt furiously.
+
+The boy regained his feet slowly and passed his father, but not without
+noticing with the same listless yet ineffaceable perception of childhood
+that he was hurriedly concealing the paper in his pocket. With the same
+youthful inconsequence, wondering at this more than at the interruption,
+which was no novel event, he went slowly out of the room.
+
+Harkutt listened to the retreating tread of his bare feet in the passage
+and then carefully locked the door. Taking the paper from his pocket,
+and borrowing the idea he had just objurgated in his son, he turned it
+towards the dull glow of the stove and attempted to read it. But perhaps
+lacking the patience as well as the keener sight of youth, he was forced
+to relight the candle which he had left on the counter, and reperused
+the paper. Yes! there was certainly no mistake! Here was the actual
+description of the property which the surveyor had just indicated as
+the future terminus of the new railroad, and here it was conveyed to
+him--Daniel Harkutt! What was that? Somebody knocking? What did this
+continual interruption mean? An odd superstitious fear now mingled with
+his irritation.
+
+The sound appeared to come from the front shutters. It suddenly
+occurred to him that the light might be visible through the crevices. He
+hurriedly extinguished it, and went to the door.
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+"Me,--Peters. Want to speak to you."
+
+Mr. Harkutt with evident reluctance drew the bolts. The wind, still
+boisterous and besieging, did the rest, and precipitately propelled
+Peters through the carefully guarded opening. But his surprise at
+finding himself in the darkness seemed to forestall any explanation of
+his visit.
+
+"Well," he said with an odd mingling of reproach and suspicion. "I
+declare I saw a light here just this minit! That's queer."
+
+"Yes, I put it out just now. I was goin' away," replied Harkutt, with
+ill-disguised impatience.
+
+"What! been here ever since?"
+
+"No," said Harkutt curtly.
+
+"Well, I want to speak to ye about 'Lige. Seein' the candle shinin'
+through the chinks I thought he might be still with ye. If he ain't, it
+looks bad. Light up, can't ye! I want to show you something."
+
+There was a peremptoriness in his tone that struck Harkutt disagreeably,
+but observing that he was carrying something in his hand, he somewhat
+nervously re-lit the candle and faced him. Peters had a hat in his hand.
+It was 'Lige's!
+
+"'Bout an hour after we fellers left here," said Peters, "I heard the
+rattlin' of hoofs on the road, and then it seemed to stop just by my
+house. I went out with a lantern, and, darn my skin! if there warn't
+'Lige's hoss, the saddle empty, and 'Lige nowhere! I looked round and
+called him--but nothing were to be seen. Thinkin' he might have slipped
+off--tho' ez a general rule drunken men don't, and he is a good rider--I
+followed down the road, lookin' for him. I kept on follerin' it down to
+your run, half a mile below."
+
+"But," began Harkutt, with a quick nervous laugh, "you don't reckon that
+because of that he"--
+
+"Hold on!" said Peters, grimly producing a revolver from his side-pocket
+with the stock and barrel clogged and streaked with mud. "I found THAT
+too,--and look! one barrel discharged! And," he added hurriedly, as
+approaching a climax, "look ye,--what I nat'rally took for wet from the
+rain--inside that hat--was--blood!"
+
+"Nonsense!" said Harkutt, putting the hat aside with a new
+fastidiousness. "You don't think"--
+
+"I think," said Peters, lowering his voice, "I think, by God! HE'S BIN
+AND DONE IT!"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Sure! Oh, it's all very well for Billings and the rest of that
+conceited crowd to sneer and sling their ideas of 'Lige gen'rally as
+they did jess now here,--but I'd like 'em to see THAT." It was difficult
+to tell if Mr. Peters' triumphant delight in confuting his late
+companions' theories had not even usurped in his mind the importance of
+the news he brought, as it had of any human sympathy with it.
+
+"Look here," returned Harkutt earnestly, yet with a singularly cleared
+brow and a more natural manner. "You ought to take them things over to
+Squire Kerby's, right off, and show 'em to him. You kin tell him how you
+left 'Lige here, and say that I can prove by my daughter that he went
+away about ten minutes after,--at least, not more than fifteen." Like
+all unprofessional humanity, Mr. Harkutt had an exaggerated conception
+of the majesty of unimportant detail in the eye of the law. "I'd go with
+you myself," he added quickly, "but I've got company--strangers--here."
+
+"How did he look when he left,--kinder wild?" suggested Peters.
+
+Harkutt had begun to feel the prudence of present reticence. "Well," he
+said, cautiously, "YOU saw how he looked."
+
+"You wasn't rough with him?--that might have sent him off, you know,"
+said Peters.
+
+"No," said Harkutt, forgetting himself in a quick indignation, "no,
+I not only treated him to another drink, but gave him"--he stopped
+suddenly and awkwardly.
+
+"Eh?" said Peters.
+
+"Some good advice,--you know," said Harkutt, hastily. "But come, you'd
+better hurry over to the squire's. You know YOU'VE made the discovery;
+YOUR evidence is important, and there's a law that obliges you to give
+information at once."
+
+The excitement of discovery and the triumph over his disputants being
+spent, Peters, after the Sidon fashion, evidently did not relish
+activity as a duty. "You know," he said dubiously, "he mightn't be dead,
+after all."
+
+Harkutt became a trifle distant. "You know your own opinion of the
+thing," he replied after a pause. "You've circumstantial evidence
+enough to see the squire, and set others to work on it; and," he added
+significantly, "you've done your share then, and can wipe your hands of
+it, eh?"
+
+"That's so," said Peters, eagerly. "I'll just run over to the squire."
+
+"And on account of the women folks, you know, and the strangers here,
+I'll say nothin' about it to-night," added Harkutt.
+
+Peters nodded his head, and taking up the hat of the unfortunate Elijah
+with a certain hesitation, as if he feared it had already lost its
+dramatic intensity as a witness, disappeared into the storm and darkness
+again. A lurking gust of wind lying in ambush somewhere seemed to swoop
+down on him as if to prevent further indecision and whirl him away in
+the direction of the justice's house; and Mr. Harkutt shut the door,
+bolted it, and walked aimlessly back to the counter.
+
+From a slow, deliberate and cautious man, he seemed to have changed
+within an hour to an irresolute and capricious one. He took the paper
+from his pocket, and, unlocking the money drawer of his counter, folded
+into a small compass that which now seemed to be the last testament of
+Elijah Curtis, and placed it in a recess. Then he went to the back door
+and paused, then returned, reopened the money drawer, took out the
+paper and again buttoned it in his hip pocket, standing by the stove and
+staring abstractedly at the dull glow of the fire. He even went through
+the mechanical process of raking down the ashes,--solely to gain time
+and as an excuse for delaying some other necessary action.
+
+He was thinking what he should do. Had the question of his right to
+retain and make use of that paper been squarely offered to him an hour
+ago, he would without doubt have decided that he ought not to keep it.
+Even now, looking at it as an abstract principle, he did not deceive
+himself in the least. But Nature has the reprehensible habit of
+not presenting these questions to us squarely and fairly, and it is
+remarkable that in most of our offending the abstract principle is never
+the direct issue. Mr. Harkutt was conscious of having been unwillingly
+led step by step into a difficult, not to say dishonest, situation,
+and against his own seeking. He had never asked Elijah to sell him the
+property; he had distinctly declined it; it had even been forced upon
+him as security for the pittance he so freely gave him. This proved (to
+himself) that he himself was honest; it was only the circumstances that
+were queer. Of course if Elijah had lived, he, Harkutt, might have tried
+to drive some bargain with him before the news of the railroad survey
+came out--for THAT was only business. But now that Elijah was dead, who
+would be a penny the worse or better but himself if he chose to consider
+the whole thing as a lucky speculation, and his gift of five dollars as
+the price he paid for it? Nobody could think that he had calculated upon
+'Lige's suicide, any more than that the property would become valuable.
+In fact if it came to that, if 'Lige had really contemplated killing
+himself as a hopeless bankrupt after taking Harkutt's money as a loan,
+it was a swindle on his--Harkutt's--good-nature. He worked himself into
+a rage, which he felt was innately virtuous, at this tyranny of cold
+principle over his own warm-hearted instincts, but if it came to the
+LAW, he'd stand by law and not sentiment. He'd just let them--by
+which he vaguely meant the world, Tasajara, and possibly his own
+conscience--see that he wasn't a sentimental fool, and he'd freeze on to
+that paper and that property!
+
+Only he ought to have spoken out before. He ought to have told the
+surveyor at once that he owned the land. He ought to have said: "Why,
+that's my land. I bought it of that drunken 'Lige Curtis for a song and
+out of charity." Yes, that was the only real trouble, and that came from
+his own goodness, his own extravagant sense of justice and right,--his
+own cursed good-nature. Yet, on second thoughts, he didn't know why he
+was obliged to tell the surveyor. Time enough when the company wanted to
+buy the land. As soon as it was settled that 'Lige was dead he'd openly
+claim the property. But what if he wasn't dead? or they couldn't find
+his body? or he had only disappeared? His plain, matter-of-fact face
+contracted and darkened. Of course he couldn't ask the company to
+wait for him to settle that point. He had the power to dispose of the
+property under that paper, and--he should do it. If 'Lige turned up,
+that was another matter, and he and 'Lige could arrange it between them.
+He was quite firm here, and oddly enough quite relieved in getting rid
+of what appeared only a simple question of detail. He never suspected
+that he was contemplating the one irretrievable step, and summarily
+dismissing the whole ethical question.
+
+He turned away from the stove, opened the back door, and walked with a
+more determined step through the passage to the sitting-room. But here
+he halted again on the threshold with a quick return of his old habits
+of caution. The door was slightly open; apparently his angry outbreak of
+an hour ago had not affected the spirits of his daughters, for he could
+hear their hilarious voices mingling with those of the strangers. They
+were evidently still fortune-telling, but this time it was the prophetic
+and divining accents of Mr. Rice addressed to Clementina which were now
+plainly audible.
+
+"I see heaps of money and a great many friends in the change that is
+coming to you. Dear me! how many suitors! But I cannot promise you any
+marriage as brilliant as my friend has just offered your sister. You may
+be certain, however, that you'll have your own choice in this, as you
+have in all things."
+
+"Thank you for nothing," said Clementina's voice. "But what are those
+horrid black cards beside them?--that's trouble, I'm sure."
+
+"Not for you, though near you. Perhaps some one you don't care much for
+and don't understand will have a heap of trouble on your account,--yes,
+on account of these very riches; see, he follows the ten of diamonds. It
+may be a suitor; it may be some one now in the house, perhaps."
+
+"He means himself, Miss Clementina," struck in Grant's voice laughingly.
+
+"You're not listening, Miss Harkutt," said Rice with half-serious
+reproach. "Perhaps you know who it is?"
+
+But Miss Clementina's reply was simply a hurried recognition of her
+father's pale face that here suddenly confronted her with the opening
+door.
+
+"Why, it's father!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER III.
+
+
+In his strange mental condition even the change from Harkutt's feeble
+candle to the outer darkness for a moment blinded Elijah Curtis, yet it
+was part of that mental condition that he kept moving steadily forward
+as in a trance or dream, though at first purposelessly. Then it occurred
+to him that he was really looking for his horse, and that the animal was
+not there. This for a moment confused and frightened him, first with the
+supposition that he had not brought him at all, but that it was part of
+his delusion; secondly, with the conviction that without his horse
+he could neither proceed on the course suggested by Harkutt, nor take
+another more vague one that was dimly in his mind. Yet in his hopeless
+vacillation it seemed a relief that now neither was practicable, and
+that he need do nothing. Perhaps it was a mysterious providence!
+
+The explanation, however, was much simpler. The horse had been taken by
+the luxurious and indolent Billings unknown to his companions. Overcome
+at the dreadful prospect of walking home in that weather, this perfect
+product of lethargic Sidon had artfully allowed Peters and Wingate to
+precede him, and, cautiously unloosing the tethered animal, had safely
+passed them in the darkness. When he gained his own inclosure he had
+lazily dismounted, and, with a sharp cut on the mustang's haunches,
+sent him galloping back to rejoin his master, with what result has been
+already told by the unsuspecting Peters in the preceding chapter.
+
+Yet no conception of this possibility entered 'Lige Curtis's alcoholized
+consciousness, part of whose morbid phantasy it was to distort or
+exaggerate all natural phenomena. He had a vague idea that he could not
+go back to Harkutt's; already his visit seemed to have happened long,
+long ago, and could not be repeated. He would walk on, enwrapped in
+this uncompromising darkness which concealed everything, suggested
+everything, and was responsible for everything.
+
+It was very dark, for the wind, having lulled, no longer thinned the
+veil of clouds above, nor dissipated a steaming mist that appeared to
+rise from the sodden plain. Yet he moved easily through the darkness,
+seeming to be upheld by it as something tangible, upon which he might
+lean. At times he thought he heard voices,--not a particular voice he
+was thinking of, but strange voices--of course unreal to his present
+fancy. And then he heard one of these voices, unlike any voice in
+Sidon, and very faint and far off, asking if it "was anywhere near
+Sidon?"--evidently some one lost like himself. He answered in a voice
+that seemed quite as unreal and as faint, and turned in the direction
+from which it came. There was a light moving like a will-o'-the-wisp far
+before him, yet below him as if coming out of the depths of the earth.
+It must be fancy, but he would see--ah!
+
+He had fallen violently forward, and at the same moment felt his
+revolver leap from his breast pocket like a living thing, and an instant
+after explode upon the rock where it struck, blindingly illuminating the
+declivity down which he was plunging. The sulphurous sting of burning
+powder was in his eyes and nose, yet in that swift revealing flash he
+had time to clutch the stems of a trailing vine beside him, but not
+to save his head from sharp contact with the same rocky ledge that had
+caught his pistol. The pain and shock gave way to a sickening sense of
+warmth at the roots of his hair. Giddy and faint, his fingers relaxed,
+he felt himself sinking, with a languor that was half acquiescence,
+down, down,--until, with another shock, a wild gasping for air, and a
+swift reaction, he awoke in the cold, rushing water!
+
+Clear and perfectly conscious now, though frantically fighting for
+existence with the current, he could dimly see a floating black object
+shooting by the shore, at times striking the projections of the bank,
+until in its recoil it swung half round and drifted broadside on towards
+him. He was near enough to catch the frayed ends of a trailing rope that
+fastened the structure, which seemed to be a few logs, together. With
+a convulsive effort he at last gained a footing upon it, and then fell
+fainting along its length. It was the raft which the surveyors from the
+embarcadero had just abandoned.
+
+He did not know this, nor would he have thought it otherwise strange
+that a raft might be a part of the drift of the overflow, even had he
+been entirely conscious; but his senses were failing, though he was
+still able to keep a secure position on the raft, and to vaguely believe
+that it would carry him to some relief and succor. How long he lay
+unconscious he never knew; in his after-recollections of that night, it
+seemed to have been haunted by dreams of passing dim banks and strange
+places; of a face and voice that had been pleasant to him; of a terror
+coming upon him as he appeared to be nearing a place like that home that
+he had abandoned in the lonely tules. He was roused at last by a violent
+headache, as if his soft felt hat had been changed into a tightening
+crown of iron. Lifting his hand to his head to tear off its covering,
+he was surprised to find that he was wearing no hat, but that his matted
+hair, stiffened and dried with blood and ooze, was clinging like a cap
+to his skull in the hot morning sunlight. His eyelids and lashes were
+glued together and weighted down by the same sanguinary plaster. He
+crawled to the edge of his frail raft, not without difficulty, for it
+oscillated and rocked strangely, and dipped his hand in the current.
+When he had cleared his eyes he lifted them with a shock of amazement.
+Creeks, banks, and plain had disappeared; he was alone on a bend of the
+tossing bay of San Francisco!
+
+His first and only sense--cleared by fasting and quickened by
+reaction--was one of infinite relief. He was not only free from the
+vague terrors of the preceding days and nights, but his whole past
+seemed to be lost and sunk forever in this illimitable expanse. The low
+plain of Tasajara, with its steadfast monotony of light and shadow,
+had sunk beneath another level, but one that glistened, sparkled, was
+instinct with varying life, and moved and even danced below him. The low
+palisades of regularly recurring tules that had fenced in, impeded, but
+never relieved the blankness of his horizon, were forever swallowed
+up behind him. All trail of past degradation, all record of pain and
+suffering, all footprints of his wandering and misguided feet were
+smoothly wiped out in that obliterating sea. He was physically helpless,
+and he felt it; he was in danger, and he knew it,--but he was free!
+
+Happily there was but little wind and the sea was slight. The raft was
+still intact so far as he could judge, but even in his ignorance he
+knew it would scarcely stand the surges of the lower bay. Like most
+Californians who had passed the straits of Carquinez at night in a
+steamer, he did not recognize the locality, nor even the distant peak
+of Tamalpais. There were a few dotting sails that seemed as remote,
+as uncertain, and as unfriendly as sea birds. The raft was motionless,
+almost as motionless as he was in his cramped limbs and sun-dried,
+stiffened clothes. Too weak to keep an upright position, without mast,
+stick, or oar to lift a signal above that vast expanse, it seemed
+impossible for him to attract attention. Even his pistol was gone.
+
+Suddenly, in an attempt to raise himself, he was struck by a flash so
+blinding that it seemed to pierce his aching eyes and brain and turned
+him sick. It appeared to come from a crevice between the logs at the
+further end of the raft. Creeping painfully towards it he saw that it
+was a triangular slip of highly polished metal that he had hitherto
+overlooked. He did not know that it was a "flashing" mirror used
+in topographical observation, which had slipped from the surveyors'
+instruments when they abandoned the raft, but his excited faculties
+instinctively detected its value to him. He lifted it, and, facing the
+sun, raised it at different angles with his feeble arms. But the effort
+was too much for him; the raft presently seemed to be whirling with his
+movement, and he again fell.
+
+*****
+
+"Ahoy there!"
+
+The voice was close upon--in his very ears. He opened his eyes. The sea
+still stretched emptily before him; the dotting sails still unchanged
+and distant. Yet a strange shadow lay upon the raft. He turned his head
+with difficulty. On the opposite side--so close upon him as to be almost
+over his head--the great white sails of a schooner hovered above him
+like the wings of some enormous sea bird. Then a heavy boom swung across
+the raft, so low that it would have swept him away had he been in an
+upright position; the sides of the vessel grazed the raft and she fell
+slowly off. A terrible fear of abandonment took possession of him; he
+tried to speak, but could not. The vessel moved further away, but the
+raft followed! He could see now it was being held by a boat-hook,--could
+see the odd, eager curiosity on two faces that were raised above
+the taffrail, and with that sense of relief his eyes again closed in
+unconsciousness.
+
+A feeling of chilliness, followed by a grateful sensation of drawing
+closer under some warm covering, a stinging taste in his mouth of fiery
+liquor and the aromatic steam of hot coffee, were his first returning
+sensations. His head and neck were swathed in coarse bandages, and his
+skin stiffened and smarting with soap. He was lying in a rude berth
+under a half-deck from which he could see the sky and the bellying sail,
+and presently a bearded face filled with rough and practical concern
+that peered down upon him.
+
+"Hulloo! comin' round, eh? Hold on!" The next moment the stranger had
+leaped down beside Elijah. He seemed to be an odd mingling of the sailor
+and ranchero with the shrewdness of a seaport trader.
+
+"Hulloo, boss! What was it? A free fight, or a wash-out?"
+
+"A wash-out!"* Elijah grasped the idea as an inspiration. Yes, his cabin
+had been inundated, he had taken to a raft, had been knocked off twice
+or thrice, and had lost everything--even his revolver!
+
+     * A mining term for the temporary inundation of a claim by
+     flood; also used for the sterilizing effect of flood on
+     fertile soil.
+
+The man looked relieved. "Then it ain't a free fight, nor havin' your
+crust busted and bein' robbed by beach combers, eh?"
+
+"No," said Elijah, with his first faint smile.
+
+"Glad o' that," said the man bluntly. "Then thar ain't no police
+business to tie up to in 'Frisco? We were stuck thar a week once, just
+because we chanced to pick up a feller who'd been found gagged and then
+thrown overboard by wharf thieves. Had to dance attendance at court
+thar and lost our trip." He stopped and looked half-pathetically at the
+prostrate Elijah. "Look yer! ye ain't just dyin' to go ashore NOW and
+see yer friends and send messages, are ye?"
+
+Elijah shuddered inwardly, but outwardly smiled faintly as he replied,
+"No!"
+
+"And the tide and wind jest servin' us now, ye wouldn't mind keepin'
+straight on with us this trip?"
+
+"Where to?" asked Elijah.
+
+"Santy Barbara."
+
+"No," said Elijah, after a moment's pause. "I'll go with you."
+
+The man leaped to his feet, lifted his head above the upper deck,
+shouted "Let her go free, Jerry!" and then turned gratefully to his
+passenger. "Look yer! A wash-out is a wash-out, I reckon, put it any
+way you like; it don't put anything back into the land, or anything back
+into your pocket afterwards, eh? No! And yer well out of it, pardner!
+Now there's a right smart chance for locatin' jest back of Santy
+Barbara, where thar ain't no God-forsaken tules to overflow; and ez far
+ez the land and licker lies ye 'needn't take any water in yours' ef ye
+don't want it. You kin start fresh thar, pardner, and brail up. What's
+the matter with you, old man, is only fever 'n' agur ketched in them
+tules! I kin see it in your eyes. Now you hold on whar you be till I go
+forrard and see everything taut, and then I'll come back and we'll have
+a talk."
+
+And they did. The result of which was that at the end of a week's
+tossing and seasickness, Elijah Curtis was landed at Santa Barbara,
+pale, thin, but self-contained and resolute. And having found favor
+in the eyes of the skipper of the Kitty Hawk, general trader,
+lumber-dealer, and ranch-man, a week later he was located on the
+skipper's land and installed in the skipper's service. And from that
+day, for five years Sidon and Tasajara knew him no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER IV.
+
+
+It was part of the functions of John Milton Harkutt to take down the
+early morning shutters and sweep out the store for his father each day
+before going to school. It was a peculiarity of this performance that he
+was apt to linger over it, partly from the fact that it put off the
+evil hour of lessons, partly that he imparted into the process a purely
+imaginative and romantic element gathered from his latest novel-reading.
+In this he was usually assisted by one or two school-fellows on their
+way to school, who always envied him his superior menial occupation. To
+go to school, it was felt, was a common calamity of boyhood that called
+into play only the simplest forms of evasion, whereas to take down
+actual shutters in a bona fide store, and wield a real broom that raised
+a palpable cloud of dust, was something that really taxed the noblest
+exertions. And it was the morning after the arrival of the strangers
+that John Milton stood on the veranda of the store ostentatiously
+examining the horizon, with his hand shading his eyes, as one of his
+companions appeared.
+
+"Hollo, Milt! wot yer doin'?"
+
+John Milton started dramatically, and then violently dashed at one of
+the shutters and began to detach it. "Ha!" he said hoarsely. "Clear the
+ship for action! Open the ports! On deck there! Steady, you lubbers!"
+In an instant his enthusiastic school-fellow was at his side attacking
+another shutter. "A long, low schooner bearing down upon us! Lively,
+lads, lively!" continued John Milton, desisting a moment to take another
+dramatic look at the distant plain. "How does she head now?" he demanded
+fiercely.
+
+"Sou' by sou'east, sir," responded the other boy, frantically dancing
+before the window. "But she'll weather it."
+
+They each then wrested another shutter away, violently depositing them,
+as they ran to and fro, in a rack at the corner of the veranda. Added
+to an extraordinary and unnecessary clattering with their feet, they
+accompanied their movements with a singular hissing sound, supposed to
+indicate in one breath the fury of the elements, the bustle of the eager
+crew, and the wild excitement of the coming conflict. When the last
+shutter was cleared away, John Milton, with the cry "Man the starboard
+guns!" dashed into the store, whose floor was marked by the muddy
+footprints of yesterday's buyers, seized a broom and began to sweep
+violently. A cloud of dust arose, into which his companion at once
+precipitated himself with another broom and a loud BANG! to indicate the
+somewhat belated sound of cannon. For a few seconds the two boys plied
+their brooms desperately in that stifling atmosphere, accompanying each
+long sweep and puff of dust out of the open door with the report of
+explosions and loud HA'S! of defiance, until not only the store, but the
+veranda was obscured with a cloud which the morning sun struggled vainly
+to pierce. In the midst of this tumult and dusty confusion--happily
+unheard and unsuspected in the secluded domestic interior of the
+building--a shrill little voice arose from the road.
+
+"Think you're mighty smart, don't ye?"
+
+The two naval heroes stopped in their imaginary fury, and, as the dust
+of conflict cleared away, recognized little Johnny Peters gazing at them
+with mingled inquisitiveness and envy.
+
+"Guess ye don't know what happened down the run last night," he
+continued impatiently. "'Lige Curtis got killed, or killed hisself!
+Blood all over the rock down thar. Seed it, myseff. Dad picked up his
+six-shooter,--one barrel gone off. My dad was the first to find it out,
+and he's bin to Squire Kerby tellin' him."
+
+The two companions, albeit burning with curiosity, affected indifference
+and pre-knowledge.
+
+"Dad sez your father druv 'Lige outer the store lass night! Dad sez your
+father's 'sponsible. Dad sez your father ez good ez killed him. Dad sez
+the squire'll set the constable on your father. Yah!" But here the small
+insulter incontinently fled, pursued by both the boys. Nevertheless,
+when he had made good his escape, John Milton showed neither a
+disposition to take up his former nautical role, nor to follow his
+companion to visit the sanguinary scene of Elijah's disappearance. He
+walked slowly back to the store and continued his work of sweeping and
+putting in order with an abstracted regularity, and no trace of his
+former exuberant spirits.
+
+The first one of those instinctive fears which are common to imaginative
+children, and often assume the functions of premonition, had taken
+possession of him. The oddity of his father's manner the evening before,
+which had only half consciously made its indelible impression on his
+sensitive fancy, had recurred to him with Johnny Peters's speech. He had
+no idea of literally accepting the boy's charges; he scarcely understood
+their gravity; but he had a miserable feeling that his father's anger
+and excitement last night was because he had been discovered hunting in
+the dark for that paper of 'Lige Curtis's. It WAS 'Lige Curtis's paper,
+for he had seen it lying there. A sudden dreadful conviction came over
+him that he must never, never let any one know that he had seen his
+father take up that paper; that he must never admit it, even to HIM. It
+was not the boy's first knowledge of that attitude of hypocrisy which
+the grownup world assumes towards childhood, and in which the innocent
+victims eventually acquiesce with a Machiavellian subtlety that at last
+avenges them,--but it was his first knowledge that that hypocrisy might
+not be so innocent. His father had concealed something from him, because
+it was not right.
+
+But if childhood does not forget, it seldom broods and is not above
+being diverted. And the two surveyors--of whose heroic advent in a raft
+John Milton had only heard that morning with their traveled ways, their
+strange instruments and stranger talk, captured his fancy. Kept in
+the background by his sisters when visitors came, as an unpresentable
+feature in the household, he however managed to linger near the
+strangers when, in company with Euphemia and Clementina, after breakfast
+they strolled beneath the sparkling sunlight in the rude garden
+inclosure along the sloping banks of the creek. It was with the average
+brother's supreme contempt that he listened to his sisters' "practicin'"
+upon the goodness of these superior beings; it was with an exceptional
+pity that he regarded the evident admiration of the strangers in return.
+He felt that in the case of Euphemia, who sometimes evinced a laudable
+curiosity in his pleasures, and a flattering ignorance of his reading,
+this might be pardonable; but what any one could find in the useless
+statuesque Clementina passed his comprehension. Could they not see at
+once that she was "just that kind of person" who would lie abed in
+the morning, pretending she was sick, in order to make Phemie do the
+housework, and make him, John Milton, clean her boots and fetch things
+for her? Was it not perfectly plain to them that her present sickening
+politeness was solely with a view to extract from them caramels,
+rock-candy, and gum drops, which she would meanly keep herself, and
+perhaps some "buggy-riding" later? Alas, John Milton, it was not! For
+standing there with her tall, perfectly-proportioned figure outlined
+against a willow, an elastic branch of which she had drawn down by one
+curved arm above her head, and on which she leaned--as everybody leaned
+against something in Sidon--the two young men saw only a straying
+goddess in a glorified rosebud print. Whether the clearly-cut profile
+presented to Rice, or the full face that captivated Grant, each
+suggested possibilities of position, pride, poetry, and passion that
+astonished while it fascinated them. By one of those instincts known
+only to the freemasonry of the sex, Euphemia lent herself to this
+advertisement of her sister's charms by subtle comparison with her own
+prettinesses, and thus combined against their common enemy, man.
+
+"Clementina certainly is perfect, to keep her supremacy over that pretty
+little sister," thought Rice.
+
+"What a fascinating little creature to hold her own against that tall,
+handsome girl," thought Grant.
+
+"They're takin' stock o' them two fellers so as to gabble about 'em when
+their backs is turned," said John Milton gloomily to himself, with a
+dismal premonition of the prolonged tea-table gossip he would be obliged
+to listen to later.
+
+"We were very fortunate to make a landing at all last night," said Rice,
+looking down upon the still swollen current, and then raising his eyes
+to Clementina. "Still more fortunate to make it where we did. I suppose
+it must have been the singing that lured us on to the bank,--as,
+you know, the sirens used to lure people,--only with less disastrous
+consequences."
+
+John Milton here detected three glaring errors; first, it was NOT
+Clementina who had sung; secondly, he knew that neither of his sisters
+had ever read anything about sirens, but he had; thirdly, that the
+young surveyor was glaringly ignorant of local phenomena and should be
+corrected.
+
+"It's nothin' but the current," he said, with that feverish youthful
+haste that betrays a fatal experience of impending interruption. "It's
+always leavin' drift and rubbish from everywhere here. There ain't
+anythin' that's chucked into the creek above that ain't bound to fetch
+up on this bank. Why, there was two sheep and a dead hoss here long
+afore YOU thought of coming!" He did not understand why this should
+provoke the laughter that it did, and to prove that he had no ulterior
+meaning, added with pointed politeness, "So IT ISN'T YOUR FAULT, you
+know--YOU couldn't help it;" supplementing this with the distinct
+courtesy, "otherwise you wouldn't have come."
+
+"But it would seem that your visitors are not all as accidental as your
+brother would imply, and one, at least, seems to have been expected last
+evening. You remember you thought we were a Mr. Parmlee," said Mr. Rice
+looking at Clementina.
+
+It would be strange indeed, he thought, if the beautiful girl were not
+surrounded by admirers. But without a trace of self-consciousness, or
+any change in her reposeful face, she indicated her sister with a slight
+gesture, and said: "One of Phemie's friends. He gave her the accordion.
+She's very popular."
+
+"And I suppose YOU are very hard to please?" he said with a tentative
+smile.
+
+She looked at him with her large, clear eyes, and that absence of
+coquetry or changed expression in her beautiful face which might have
+stood for indifference or dignity as she said: "I don't know. I am
+waiting to see."
+
+But here Miss Phemie broke in saucily with the assertion that Mr.
+Parmlee might not have a railroad in his pocket, but that at least he
+didn't have to wait for the Flood to call on young ladies, nor did he
+usually come in pairs, for all the world as if he had been let out of
+Noah's Ark, but on horseback and like a Christian by the front door.
+All this provokingly and bewitchingly delivered, however, and with a
+simulated exaggeration that was incited apparently more by Mr. Lawrence
+Grant's evident enjoyment of it, than by any desire to defend the absent
+Parmlee.
+
+"But where is the front door?" asked Grant laughingly.
+
+The young girl pointed to a narrow zigzag path that ran up the bank
+beside the house until it stopped at a small picketed gate on the level
+of the road and store.
+
+"But I should think it would be easier to have a door and private
+passage through the store," said Grant.
+
+"WE don't," said the young lady pertly, "we have nothing to do with the
+store. I go in to see paw sometimes when he's shutting up and there's
+nobody there, but Clem has never set foot in it since we came. It's bad
+enough to have it and the lazy loafers that hang around it as near to
+us as they are; but paw built the house in such a fashion that we ain't
+troubled by their noise, and we might be t'other side of the creek as
+far as our having to come across them. And because paw has to sell pork
+and flour, we haven't any call to go there and watch him do it."
+
+The two men glanced at each other. This reserve and fastidiousness were
+something rare in a pioneer community. Harkutt's manners certainly did
+not indicate that he was troubled by this sensitiveness; it must have
+been some individual temperament of his daughters. Stephen felt his
+respect increase for the goddess-like Clementina; Mr. Lawrence Grant
+looked at Miss Phemie with a critical smile.
+
+"But you must be very limited in your company," he said; "or is Mr.
+Parmlee not a customer of your father's?"
+
+"As Mr. Parmlee does not come to us through the store, and don't talk
+trade to me, we don't know," responded Phemie saucily.
+
+"But have you no lady acquaintances--neighbors--who also avoid the store
+and enter only at the straight and narrow gate up there?" continued
+Grant mischievously, regardless of the uneasy, half-reproachful glances
+of Rice.
+
+But Phemie, triumphantly oblivious of any satire, answered promptly:
+"If you mean the Pike County Billingses who live on the turnpike road as
+much as they do off it, or the six daughters of that Georgia Cracker who
+wear men's boots and hats, we haven't."
+
+"And Mr. Parmlee, your admirer?" suggested Rice. "Hasn't he a mother or
+sisters here?"
+
+"Yes, but they don't want to know us, and have never called here."
+
+The embarrassment of the questioner at this unexpected reply, which came
+from the faultless lips of Clementina, was somewhat mitigated by the
+fact that the young woman's voice and manner betrayed neither annoyance
+nor anger.
+
+Here, however, Harkutt appeared from the house with the information that
+he had secured two horses for the surveyors and their instruments, and
+that he would himself accompany them a part of the way on their
+return to Tasajara Creek, to show them the road. His usual listless
+deliberation had given way to a certain nervous but uneasy energy. If
+they started at once it would be better, before the loungers gathered at
+the store and confused them with lazy counsel and languid curiosity. He
+took it for granted that Mr. Grant wished the railroad survey to be
+a secret, and he had said nothing, as they would be pestered with
+questions. "Sidon was inquisitive--and old-fashioned." The benefit its
+inhabitants would get from the railroad would not prevent them from
+throwing obstacles in its way at first; he remembered the way they
+had acted with a proposed wagon road,--in fact, an idea of his own,
+something like the railroad; he knew them thoroughly, and if he might
+advise them, it would be to say nothing here until the thing was
+settled.
+
+"He evidently does not intend to give us a chance," said Grant
+good-humoredly to his companion, as they turned to prepare for their
+journey; "we are to be conducted in silence to the outskirts of the town
+like horse-thieves."
+
+"But you gave him the tip for himself," said Rice reproachfully; "you
+cannot blame him for wanting to keep it."
+
+"I gave it to him in trust for his two incredible daughters," said Grant
+with a grimace. "But, hang it! if I don't believe the fellow has more
+concern in it than I imagined."
+
+"But isn't she perfect?" said Rice, with charming abstraction.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Clementina, and so unlike her father."
+
+"Discomposingly so," said Grant quietly. "One feels in calling her 'Miss
+Harkutt' as if one were touching upon a manifest indiscretion. But here
+comes John Milton. Well, my lad, what can I do for you?"
+
+The boy, who had been regarding them from a distance with wistful and
+curious eyes as they replaced their instruments for the journey, had
+gradually approached them. After a moment's timid hesitation he said,
+looking at Grant: "You don't know anybody in this kind o' business,"
+pointing to the instruments, "who'd like a boy, about my size?"
+
+"I'm afraid not, J. M.," said Grant, cheerfully, without suspending his
+operation. "The fact is, you see, it's not exactly the kind of work for
+a boy of your size."
+
+John Milton was silent for a moment, shifting himself slowly from one
+leg to another as he watched the surveyor. After a pause he said, "There
+don't seem to be much show in this world for boys o' my size. There
+don't seem to be much use for 'em any way." This not bitterly, but
+philosophically, and even politely, as if to relieve Grant's rejection
+of any incivility.
+
+"Really you quite pain me, John Milton," said Grant, looking up as he
+tightened a buckle. "I never thought of it before, but you're right."
+
+"Now," continued the boy slowly, "with girls it's just different. Girls
+of my size everybody does things for. There's Clemmy,--she's only two
+years older nor me, and don't know half that I do, and yet she kin lie
+about all day, and hasn't to get up to breakfast. And Phemie,--who's
+jest the same age, size, and weight as me,--maw and paw lets her do
+everything she wants to. And so does everybody. And so would you."
+
+"But you surely don't want to be like a girl?" said Grant, smiling.
+
+It here occurred to John Milton's youthful but not illogical mind that
+this was not argument, and he turned disappointedly away. As his father
+was to accompany the strangers a short distance, he, John Milton, was
+to-day left in charge of the store. That duty, however, did not involve
+any pecuniary transactions--the taking of money or making of change but
+a simple record on a slate behind the counter of articles selected by
+those customers whose urgent needs could not wait Mr. Harkutt's return.
+Perhaps on account of this degrading limitation, perhaps for other
+reasons, the boy did not fancy the task imposed upon him. The presence
+of the idle loungers who usually occupied the armchairs near the stove,
+and occasionally the counter, dissipated any romance with which he
+might have invested his charge; he wearied of the monotony of their dull
+gossip, but mostly he loathed the attitude of hypercritical counsel and
+instruction which they saw fit to assume towards him at such moments.
+"Instead o' lazin' thar behind the counter when your father ain't here
+to see ye, John," remarked Billings from the depths of his armchair a
+few moments after Harkutt had ridden away, "ye orter be bustlin' round,
+dustin' the shelves. Ye'll never come to anythin' when you're a man ef
+you go on like that. Ye never heard o' Harry Clay--that was called 'the
+Mill-boy of the Slashes'--sittin' down doin' nothin' when he was a boy."
+
+"I never heard of him loafin' round in a grocery store when he was
+growned up either," responded John Milton, darkly.
+
+"P'r'aps you reckon he got to be a great man by standin' up sassin' his
+father's customers," said Peters, angrily. "I kin tell ye, young man, if
+you was my boy"--
+
+"If I was YOUR boy, I'd be playin' hookey instead of goin' to school,
+jest as your boy is doin' now," interrupted John Milton, with a literal
+recollection of his quarrel and pursuit of the youth in question that
+morning.
+
+An undignified silence on the part of the adults followed, the usual
+sequel to those passages; Sidon generally declining to expose itself to
+the youthful Harkutt's terrible accuracy of statement.
+
+The men resumed their previous lazy gossip about Elijah Curtis's
+disappearance, with occasional mysterious allusions in a lower tone,
+which the boy instinctively knew referred to his father, but which
+either from indolence or caution, the two great conservators of Sidon,
+were never formulated distinctly enough for his relentless interference.
+The morning sunshine was slowly thickening again in an indolent mist
+that seemed to rise from the saturated plain. A stray lounger shuffled
+over from the blacksmith's shop to the store to take the place of
+another idler who had joined an equally lethargic circle around
+the slumbering forge. A dull intermittent sound of hammering came
+occasionally from the wheelwright's shed--at sufficiently protracted
+intervals to indicate the enfeebled progress of Sidon's vehicular
+repair. A yellow dog left his patch of sunlight on the opposite side
+of the way and walked deliberately over to what appeared to be more
+luxurious quarters on the veranda; was manifestly disappointed but not
+equal to the exertion of returning, and sank down with blinking eyes and
+a regretful sigh without going further. A procession of six ducks got
+well into a line for a laborious "march past" the store, but fell out
+at the first mud puddle and gave it up. A highly nervous but respectable
+hen, who had ventured upon the veranda evidently against her better
+instincts, walked painfully on tiptoe to the door, apparently was met
+by language which no mother of a family could listen to, and retired in
+strong hysterics. A little later the sun became again obscured, the
+wind arose, rain fell, and the opportunity for going indoors and doing
+nothing was once more availed of by all Sidon.
+
+It was afternoon when Mr. Harkutt returned. He did not go into the
+store, but entered the dwelling from the little picket-gate and steep
+path. There he called a family council in the sitting-room as being
+the most reserved and secure. Mrs. Harkutt, sympathizing and cheerfully
+ready for any affliction, still holding a dust-cloth in her hand, took
+her seat by the window, with Phemie breathless and sparkling at one side
+of her, while Clementina, all faultless profile and repose, sat on the
+other. To Mrs. Harkutt's motherly concern at John Milton's absence, it
+was pointed out that he was wanted at the store,--was a mere boy anyhow,
+and could not be trusted. Mr. Harkutt, a little ruddier from weather,
+excitement, and the unusual fortification of a glass of liquor, a little
+more rugged in the lines of his face, and with an odd ring of defiant
+self-assertion in his voice, stood before them in the centre of the
+room.
+
+He wanted them to listen to him carefully, to remember what he said, for
+it was important; it might be a matter of "lawing" hereafter,--and he
+couldn't be always repeating it to them,--he would have enough to do.
+There was a heap of it that, as women-folks, they couldn't understand,
+and weren't expected to. But he'd got it all clear now, and what he was
+saying was gospel. He'd always known to himself that the only good that
+could ever come to Sidon would come by railroad. When those fools talked
+wagon road he had said nothing, but he had his own ideas; he had worked
+for that idea without saying anything to anybody; that idea was to get
+possession of all the land along the embarcadero, which nobody
+cared for, and 'Lige Curtis was ready to sell for a song. Well, now,
+considering what had happened, he didn't mind telling them that he had
+been gradually getting possession of it, little by little, paying 'Lige
+Curtis in advances and installments, until it was his own! They had
+heard what those surveyors said; how that it was the only fit terminus
+for the railroad. Well, that land, and that water-front, and the
+terminus were HIS! And all from his own foresight and prudence.
+
+It is needless to say that this was not the truth. But it is necessary
+to point out that this fabrication was the result of his last night's
+cogitations and his morning's experience. He had resolved upon a bold
+course. He had reflected that his neighbors would be more ready to
+believe in and to respect a hard, mercenary, and speculative foresight
+in his taking advantage of 'Lige's necessities than if he had--as was
+the case--merely benefited by them through an accident of circumstance
+and good humor. In the latter case he would be envied and hated; in
+the former he would be envied and feared. By logic of circumstance
+the greater wrong seemed to be less obviously offensive than the minor
+fault. It was true that it involved the doing of something he had not
+contemplated, and the certainty of exposure if 'Lige ever returned,
+but he was nevertheless resolved. The step from passive to active
+wrong-doing is not only easy, it is often a relief; it is that return to
+sincerity which we all require. Howbeit, it gave that ring of assertion
+to Daniel Harkutt's voice already noted, which most women like, and
+only men are prone to suspect or challenge. The incompleteness of his
+statement was, for the same reason, overlooked by his feminine auditors.
+
+"And what is it worth, dad?" asked Phemie eagerly.
+
+"Grant says I oughter get at least ten thousand dollars for the site of
+the terminus from the company, but of course I shall hold on to the rest
+of the land. The moment they get the terminus there, and the depot and
+wharf built, I can get my own price and buyers for the rest. Before the
+year is out Grant thinks it ought to go up ten per cent on the value of
+the terminus, and that a hundred thousand."
+
+"Oh, dad!" gasped Phemie, frantically clasping her knees with both hands
+as if to perfectly assure herself of this good fortune.
+
+Mrs. Harkutt audibly murmured "Poor dear Dan'l," and stood, as it were,
+sympathetically by, ready to commiserate the pains and anxieties of
+wealth as she had those of poverty. Clementina alone remained silent,
+clear-eyed, and unchanged.
+
+"And to think it all came through THEM!" continued Phemie. "I always had
+an idea that Mr. Grant was smart, dad. And it was real kind of him to
+tell you."
+
+"I reckon father could have found it out without them. I don't know why
+we should be beholden to them particularly. I hope he isn't expected to
+let them think that he is bound to consider them our intimate friends
+just because they happened to drop in here at a time when his plans have
+succeeded."
+
+The voice was Clementina's, unexpected but quiet, unemotional and
+convincing. "It seemed," as Mrs. Harkutt afterwards said, "as if the
+child had already touched that hundred thousand." Phemie reddened with a
+sense of convicted youthful extravagance.
+
+"You needn't fear for me," said Harkutt, responding to Clementina's
+voice as if it were an echo of his own, and instinctively recognizing
+an unexpected ally. "I've got my own ideas of this thing, and what's
+to come of it. I've got my own ideas of openin' up that property and
+showin' its resources. I'm goin' to run it my own way. I'm goin' to have
+a town along the embarcadero that'll lay over any town in Contra Costa.
+I'm goin' to have the court-house and county seat there, and a couple
+of hotels as good as any in the Bay. I'm goin' to build that wagon road
+through here that those lazy louts slipped up on, and carry it clear
+over to Five Mile Corner, and open up the whole Tasajara Plain!"
+
+They had never seen him look so strong, so resolute, so intelligent and
+handsome. A dimly prophetic vision of him in a black broadcloth suit and
+gold watch-chain addressing a vague multitude, as she remembered to
+have seen the Hon. Stanley Riggs of Alasco at the "Great Barbecue,"
+rose before Phemie's blue enraptured eyes. With the exception of Mrs.
+Harkutt,--equal to any possibilities on the part of her husband,--they
+had honestly never expected it of him. They were pleased with their
+father's attitude in prosperity, and felt that perhaps he was not
+unworthy of being proud of them hereafter.
+
+"But we're goin' to leave Sidon," said Phemie, "ain't we, paw?"
+
+"As soon as I can run up a new house at the embarcadero," said Harkutt
+peevishly, "and that's got to be done mighty quick if I want to make a
+show to the company and be in possession."
+
+"And that's easier for you to do, dear, now that 'Lige's disappeared,"
+said Mrs. Harkutt consolingly.
+
+"What do ye mean by that? What the devil are ye talkin' about?" demanded
+Harkutt suddenly with unexpected exasperation.
+
+"I mean that that drunken 'Lige would be mighty poor company for the
+girls if he was our only neighbor," returned Mrs. Harkutt submissively.
+
+Harkutt, after a fixed survey of his wife, appeared mollified. The two
+girls, who were mindful of his previous outburst the evening before,
+exchanged glances which implied that his manners needed correction for
+prosperity.
+
+"You'll want a heap o' money to build there, Dan'l," said Mrs. Harkutt
+in plaintive diffidence.
+
+"Yes! Yes!" said Harkutt impatiently. "I've kalkilated all that, and
+I'm goin' to 'Frisco to-morrow to raise it and put this bill of sale on
+record." He half drew Elijah Curtis's paper from his pocket, but paused
+and put it back again.
+
+"Then THAT WAS the paper, dad," said Phemie triumphantly.
+
+"Yes," said her father, regarding her fixedly, "and you know now why I
+didn't want anything said about it last night--nor even now."
+
+"And 'Lige had just given it to you! Wasn't it lucky?"
+
+"He HADN'T just given it to me!" said her father with another unexpected
+outburst. "God Amighty! ain't I tellin' you all the time it was an old
+matter! But you jabber, jabber all the time and don't listen! Where's
+John Milton?" It had occurred to him that the boy might have read the
+paper--as his sister had--while it lay unheeded on the counter.
+
+"In the store,--you know. You said he wasn't to hear anything of this,
+but I'll call him," said Mrs. Harkutt, rising eagerly.
+
+"Never mind," returned her husband, stopping her reflectively, "best
+leave it as it is; if it's necessary I'll tell him. But don't any of you
+say anything, do you hear?"
+
+Nevertheless a few hours later, when the store was momentarily free of
+loungers, and Harkutt had relieved his son of his monotonous charge, he
+made a pretense, while abstractedly listening to an account of the boy's
+stewardship, to look through a drawer as if in search of some missing
+article.
+
+"You didn't see anything of a paper I left somewhere about here
+yesterday?" he asked carelessly.
+
+"The one you picked up when you came in last night?" said the boy with
+discomposing directness.
+
+Harkutt flushed slightly and drew his breath between his set teeth. Not
+only could he place no reliance upon ordinary youthful inattention,
+but he must be on his guard against his own son as from a spy! But he
+restrained himself.
+
+"I don't remember," he said with affected deliberation, "what it was I
+picked up. Do you? Did you read it?"
+
+The meaning of his father's attitude instinctively flashed upon the boy.
+He HAD read the paper, but he answered, as he had already determined,
+"No."
+
+An inspiration seized Mr. Harkutt. He drew 'Lige Curtis's bill of sale
+from his pocket, and opening it before John Milton said, "Was it that?"
+
+"I don't know," said the boy. "I couldn't tell." He walked away with
+affected carelessness, already with a sense of playing some part like
+his father, and pretended to whistle for the dog across the street.
+Harkutt coughed ostentatiously, put the paper back in his pocket,
+set one or two boxes straight on the counter, locked the drawer, and
+disappeared into the back passage. John Milton remained standing in
+the doorway looking vacantly out. But he did not see the dull familiar
+prospect beyond. He only saw the paper his father had opened and
+unfolded before him. It was the same paper he had read last night. But
+there were three words written there THAT WERE NOT THERE BEFORE! After
+the words "Value received" there had been a blank. He remembered that
+distinctly. This was filled in by the words, "Five hundred dollars." The
+handwriting did not seem like his father's, nor yet entirely like 'Lige
+Curtis's. What it meant he did not know,--he would not try to think. He
+should forget it, as he had tried to forget what had happened before,
+and he should never tell it to any one!
+
+There was a feverish gayety in his sisters' manner that afternoon that
+he did not understand; short colloquies that were suspended with ill
+concealed impatience when he came near them, and resumed when he
+was sent, on equally palpable excuses, out of the room. He had been
+accustomed to this exclusion when there were strangers present, but it
+seemed odd to him now, when the conversation did not even turn upon the
+two superior visitors who had been there, and of whom he confidently
+expected they would talk. Such fragments as he overheard were always in
+the future tense, and referred to what they intended to do. His
+mother, whose affection for him had always been shown in excessive
+and depressing commiseration of him in even his lightest moments, that
+afternoon seemed to add a prophetic and Cassandra-like sympathy for some
+vague future of his that would require all her ministration. "You won't
+need them new boots, Milty dear, in the changes that may be comin' to
+ye; so don't be bothering your poor father in his worriments over his
+new plans."
+
+"What new plans, mommer?" asked the boy abruptly. "Are we goin' away
+from here?"
+
+"Hush, dear, and don't ask questions that's enough for grown folks to
+worry over, let alone a boy like you. Now be good,"--a quality in Mrs.
+Harkutt's mind synonymous with ceasing from troubling,--"and after
+supper, while I'm in the parlor with your father and sisters, you kin
+sit up here by the fire with your book."
+
+"But," persisted the boy in a flash of inspiration, "is popper goin' to
+join in business with those surveyors,--a surveyin'?"
+
+"No, child, what an idea! Run away there,--and mind!--don't bother your
+father."
+
+Nevertheless John Milton's inspiration had taken a new and
+characteristic shape. All this, he reflected, had happened since the
+surveyors came--since they had weakly displayed such a shameless and
+unmanly interest in his sisters! It could have but one meaning. He hung
+around the sitting-room and passages until he eventually encountered
+Clementina, taller than ever, evidently wearing a guilty satisfaction
+in her face, engrafted upon that habitual bearing of hers which he had
+always recognized as belonging to a vague but objectionable race whose
+members were individually known to him as "a proudy."
+
+"Which of those two surveyor fellows is it, Clemmy?" he said with an
+engaging smile, yet halting at a strategic distance.
+
+"Is what?"
+
+"Wot you're goin' to marry."
+
+"Idiot!"
+
+"That ain't tellin' which," responded the boy darkly.
+
+Clementina swept by him into the sitting-room, where he heard her
+declare that "really that boy was getting too low and vulgar
+for anything." Yet it struck him, that being pressed for further
+explanation, she did NOT specify why. This was "girls' meanness!"
+
+Howbeit he lingered late in the road that evening, hearing his father
+discuss with the search-party that had followed the banks of the creek,
+vainly looking for further traces of the missing 'Lige, the possibility
+of his being living or dead, of the body having been carried away by the
+current to the bay or turning up later in some distant marsh when the
+spring came with low water. One who had been to his cabin beside the
+embarcadero reported that it was, as had been long suspected, barely
+habitable, and contained neither books, papers, nor records which would
+indicate his family or friends. It was a God-forsaken, dreary, worthless
+place; he wondered how a white man could ever expect to make a living
+there. If Elijah never turned up again it certainly would be a long time
+before any squatter would think of taking possession of it. John Milton
+knew instinctively, without looking up, that his father's eyes were
+fixed upon him, and he felt himself constrained to appear to be
+abstracted in gazing down the darkening road. Then he heard his father
+say, with what he felt was an equal assumption of carelessness: "Yes, I
+reckon I've got somewhere a bill of sale of that land that I had to take
+from 'Lige for an old bill, but I kalkilate that's all I'll ever see of
+it."
+
+Rain fell again as the darkness gathered, but he still loitered on the
+road and the sloping path of the garden, filled with a half resentful
+sense of wrong, and hugging with gloomy pride an increasing sense of
+loneliness and of getting dangerously wet. The swollen creek still
+whispered, murmured and swirled beside the bank. At another time he
+might have had wild ideas of emulating the surveyors on some extempore
+raft and so escaping his present dreary home existence; but since the
+disappearance of 'Lige, who had always excited an odd boyish antipathy
+in his heart, although he had never seen him, he shunned the stream
+contaminated with the missing man's unheroic fate. Presently the light
+from the open window of the sitting-room glittered on the wet leaves
+and sprays where he stood, and the voices of the family conclave came
+fitfully to his ear. They didn't want him there. They had never thought
+of asking him to come in. Well!--who cared? And he wasn't going to be
+bought off with a candle and a seat by the kitchen fire. No!
+
+Nevertheless he was getting wet to no purpose. There was the tool-house
+and carpenter's shed near the bank; its floor was thickly covered with
+sawdust and pine-wood shavings, and there was a mouldy buffalo skin
+which he had once transported thither from the old wagon-bed. There,
+too, was his secret cache of a candle in a bottle, buried with other
+piratical treasures in the presence of the youthful Peters, who
+consented to be sacrificed on the spot in buccaneering fashion to
+complete the unhallowed rites. He unearthed the candle, lit it, and
+clearing away a part of the shavings stood it up on the floor. He then
+brought a prized, battered, and coverless volume from a hidden recess in
+the rafters, and lying down with the buffalo robe over him, and his cap
+in his hand ready to extinguish the light at the first footstep of a
+trespasser, gave himself up--as he had given himself up, I fear, many
+other times--to the enchantment of the page before him.
+
+The current whispered, murmured, and sang, unheeded at his side. The
+voices of his mother and sisters, raised at times in eagerness or
+expectation of the future, fell upon his unlistening ears. For with the
+spell that had come upon him, the mean walls of his hiding-place
+melted away; the vulgar stream beside him might have been that dim,
+subterraneous river down which Sindbad and his bale of riches were swept
+out of the Cave of Death to the sunlight of life and fortune, so surely
+and so simply had it transported him beyond the cramped and darkened
+limits of his present life. He was in the better world of boyish
+romance,--of gallant deeds and high emprises; of miraculous atonement
+and devoted sacrifice; of brave men, and those rarer, impossible
+women,--the immaculate conception of a boy's virgin heart. What mattered
+it that behind that glittering window his mother and sisters grew
+feverish and excited over the vulgar details of their real but baser
+fortune? From the dark tool-shed by the muddy current, John Milton,
+with a battered dogs'-eared chronicle, soared on the wings of fancy far
+beyond their wildest ken!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER V.
+
+
+Prosperity had settled upon the plains of Tasajara. Not only had the
+embarcadero emerged from the tules of Tasajara Creek as a thriving town
+of steamboat wharves, warehouses, and outlying mills and factories, but
+in five years the transforming railroad had penetrated the great plain
+itself and revealed its undeveloped fertility. The low-lying lands that
+had been yearly overflowed by the creek, now drained and cultivated,
+yielded treasures of wheat and barley that were apparently
+inexhaustible. Even the helpless indolence of Sidon had been surprised
+into activity and change. There was nothing left of the straggling
+settlement to recall its former aspect. The site of Harkutt's old store
+and dwelling was lost and forgotten in the new mill and granary that
+rose along the banks of the creek. Decay leaves ruin and traces for the
+memory to linger over; prosperity is unrelenting in its complete and
+smiling obliteration of the past.
+
+But Tasajara City, as the embarcadero was now called, had no previous
+record, and even the former existence of an actual settler like the
+forgotten Elijah Curtis was unknown to the present inhabitants. It was
+Daniel Harkutt's idea carried out in Daniel Harkutt's land, with Daniel
+Harkutt's capital and energy. But Daniel Harkutt had become Daniel
+Harcourt, and Harcourt Avenue, Harcourt Square, and Harcourt House,
+ostentatiously proclaimed the new spelling of his patronymic. When the
+change was made and for what reason, who suggested it and under what
+authority, were not easy to determine, as the sign on his former store
+had borne nothing but the legend, Goods and Provisions, and his name did
+not appear on written record until after the occupation of Tasajara;
+but it is presumed that it was at the instigation of his daughters, and
+there was no one to oppose it. Harcourt was a pretty name for a street,
+a square, or a hotel; even the few in Sidon who had called it Harkutt
+admitted that it was an improvement quite consistent with the change
+from the fever-haunted tules and sedges of the creek to the broad,
+level, and handsome squares of Tasajara City.
+
+This might have been the opinion of a visitor at the Harcourt House, who
+arrived one summer afternoon from the Stockton boat, but whose shrewd,
+half-critical, half-professional eyes and quiet questionings betrayed
+some previous knowledge of the locality. Seated on the broad veranda
+of the Harcourt House, and gazing out on the well-kept green and young
+eucalyptus trees of the Harcourt Square or Plaza, he had elicited a
+counter question from a prosperous-looking citizen who had been lounging
+at his side.
+
+"I reckon you look ez if you might have been here before, stranger."
+
+"Yes," said the stranger quietly, "I have been. But it was when the
+tules grew in the square opposite, and the tide of the creek washed
+them."
+
+"Well," said the Tasajaran, looking curiously at the stranger, "I call
+myself a pioneer of Tasajara. My name's Peters,--of Peters and Co.,--and
+those warehouses along the wharf, where you landed just now, are mine;
+but I was the first settler on Harcourt's land, and built the next cabin
+after him. I helped to clear out them tules and dredged the channels
+yonder. I took the contract with Harcourt to build the last fifteen
+miles o' railroad, and put up that depot for the company. Perhaps you
+were here before that?"
+
+"I was," returned the stranger quietly.
+
+"I say," said Peters, hitching his chair a little nearer to his
+companion, "you never knew a kind of broken-down feller, called
+Curtis--'Lige Curtis--who once squatted here and sold his right to
+Harkutt? He disappeared; it was allowed he killed hisself, but they
+never found his body, and, between you and me, I never took stock in
+that story. You know Harcourt holds under him, and all Tasajara rests on
+that title."
+
+"I've heard so," assented the stranger carelessly, "but I never knew the
+original settler. Then Harcourt has been lucky?"
+
+"You bet. He's got three millions right about HERE, or within this
+quarter section, to say nothing of his outside speculations."
+
+"And lives here?"
+
+"Not for two years. That's his old house across the plaza, but his
+women-folks live mostly in 'Frisco and New York, where he's got houses
+too. They say they sorter got sick of Tasajara after his youngest
+daughter ran off with a feller."
+
+"Hallo!" said the stranger with undisguised interest. "I never heard of
+that! You don't mean that she eloped"--he hesitated.
+
+"Oh, it was a square enough marriage. I reckon too square to suit some
+folks; but the fellow hadn't nothin', and wasn't worth shucks,--a sort
+of land surveyor, doin' odd jobs, you know; and the old man and old
+woman were agin it, and the tother daughter worse of all. It was allowed
+here--you know how women-folks talk!--that the surveyor had been sweet
+on Clementina, but had got tired of being played by her, and took up
+with Phemie out o' spite. Anyhow they got married, and Harcourt gave
+them to understand they couldn't expect anything from him. P'raps that's
+why it didn't last long, for only about two months ago she got a divorce
+from Rice and came back to her family again."
+
+"Rice?" queried the stranger. "Was that her husband's name, Stephen
+Rice?"
+
+"I reckon! You knew him?"
+
+"Yes,--when the tide came up to the tules, yonder," answered the
+stranger musingly. "And the other daughter,--I suppose she has made a
+good match, being a beauty and the sole heiress?"
+
+The Tasajaran made a grimace. "Not much! I reckon she's waitin' for the
+Angel Gabriel,--there ain't another good enough to suit her here. They
+say she's had most of the big men in California waitin' in a line with
+their offers, like that cue the fellows used to make at the 'Frisco
+post-office steamer days--and she with nary a letter or answer for any
+of them."
+
+"Then Harcourt doesn't seem to have been as fortunate in his family
+affairs as in his speculations?"
+
+Peters uttered a grim laugh. "Well, I reckon you know all about his
+son's stampeding with that girl last spring?"
+
+"His son?" interrupted the stranger. "Do you mean the boy they called
+John Milton? Why, he was a mere child!"
+
+"He was old enough to run away with a young woman that helped in his
+mother's house, and marry her afore a justice of the peace. The old man
+just snorted with rage, and swore he'd have the marriage put aside, for
+the boy was under age. He said it was a put-up job of the girl's; that
+she was older by two years, and only wanted to get what money might be
+comin' some day, but that they'd never see a red cent of it. Then, they
+say, John Milton up and sassed the old man to his face, and allowed that
+he wouldn't take his dirty money if he starved first, and that if the
+old man broke the marriage he'd marry her again next year; that true
+love and honorable poverty were better nor riches, and a lot more o'
+that stuff he picked out o' them ten-cent novels he was allus reading.
+My women-folks say that he actually liked the girl, because she was the
+only one in the house that was ever kind to him; they say the girls were
+just ragin' mad at the idea o' havin' a hired gal who had waited on 'em
+as a sister-in-law, and they even got old Mammy Harcourt's back up by
+sayin' that John's wife would want to rule the house, and run her out
+of her own kitchen. Some say he shook THEM, talked back to 'em mighty
+sharp, and held his head a heap higher nor them. Anyhow, he's livin'
+with his wife somewhere in 'Frisco, in a shanty on a sand lot, and
+workin' odd jobs for the newspapers. No! takin' it by and large--it
+don't look as if Harcourt had run his family to the same advantage that
+he has his land."
+
+"Perhaps he doesn't understand them as well," said the stranger smiling.
+
+"Mor'n likely the material ain't thar, or ain't as vallyble for a new
+country," said Peters grimly. "I reckon the trouble is that he lets them
+two daughters run him, and the man who lets any woman or women do that,
+lets himself in for all their meannesses, and all he gets in return is a
+woman's result,--show!"
+
+Here the stranger, who was slowly rising from his chair with the polite
+suggestion of reluctantly tearing himself from the speaker's spell,
+said: "And Harcourt spends most of his time in San Francisco, I
+suppose?"
+
+"Yes! but to-day he's here to attend a directors' meeting and the
+opening of the Free Library and Tasajara Hall. I saw the windows open,
+and the blinds up in his house across the plaza as I passed just now."
+
+The stranger had by this time quite effected his courteous withdrawal.
+"Good-afternoon, Mr. Peters," he said, smilingly lifting his hat, and
+turned away.
+
+Peters, who was obliged to take his legs off the chair, and half rise
+to the stranger's politeness, here reflected that he did not know his
+interlocutor's name and business, and that he had really got nothing
+in return for his information. This must be remedied. As the stranger
+passed through the hall into the street, followed by the unwonted
+civilities of the spruce hotel clerk and the obsequious attentions of
+the negro porter, Peters stepped to the window of the office. "Who was
+that man who just passed out?" he asked.
+
+The clerk stared in undisguised astonishment. "You don't mean to say you
+didn't know WHO he was--all the while you were talking to him?"
+
+"No," returned Peters, impatiently.
+
+"Why, that was Professor Lawrence Grant!--THE Lawrence Grant--don't you
+know?--the biggest scientific man and recognized expert on the Pacific
+slope. Why, that's the man whose single word is enough to make or break
+the biggest mine or claim going! That man!--why, that's the man whose
+opinion's worth thousands, for it carries millions with it--and can't be
+bought. That's him who knocked the bottom outer El Dorado last year, and
+next day sent Eureka up booming! Ye remember that, sure?"
+
+"Of course--but"--stammered Peters.
+
+"And to think you didn't know him!" repeated the hotel clerk
+wonderingly. "And here I was reckoning you were getting points from him
+all the time! Why, some men would have given a thousand dollars for your
+chance of talking to him--yes!--of even being SEEN talking to him.
+Why, old Wingate once got a tip on his Prairie Flower lead worth five
+thousand dollars while just changing seats with him in the cars and
+passing the time of day, sociable like. Why, what DID you talk about?"
+
+Peters, with a miserable conviction that he had thrown away a valuable
+opportunity in mere idle gossip, nevertheless endeavored to look
+mysterious as he replied, "Oh, business gin'rally." Then in the faint
+hope of yet retrieving his blunder he inquired, "How long will he be
+here?"
+
+"Don't know. I reckon he and Harcourt's got something on hand. He just
+asked if he was likely to be at home or at his office. I told him I
+reckoned at the house, for some of the family--I didn't get to see who
+they were--drove up in a carriage from the 3.40 train while you were
+sitting there."
+
+Meanwhile the subject of this discussion, quite unconscious of the
+sensation he had created, or perhaps like most heroes philosophically
+careless of it, was sauntering indifferently towards Harcourt's house.
+But he had no business with his former host, his only object was to pass
+an idle hour before his train left. He was, of course, not unaware that
+he himself was largely responsible for Harcourt's success; that it was
+HIS hint which had induced the petty trader of Sidon to venture his all
+in Tasajara; HIS knowledge of the topography and geology of the
+plain that had stimulated Harcourt's agricultural speculations; HIS
+hydrographic survey of the creek that had made Harcourt's plan of
+widening the channel to commerce practicable and profitable. This he
+could not help but know. But that it was chiefly owing to his own clear,
+cool, far-seeing, but never visionary, scientific observation,--his
+own accurate analysis, unprejudiced by even a savant's enthusiasm, and
+uninfluenced by any personal desire or greed of gain,--that Tasajara
+City had risen from the stagnant tules, was a speculation that had never
+occurred to him. There was a much more uneasy consciousness of what he
+had done in Mr. Harcourt's face a few moments later, when his visitor's
+name was announced, and it is to be feared that if that name had been
+less widely honored and respected than it was, no merely grateful
+recollection of it would have procured Grant an audience. As it was,
+it was with a frown and a touch of his old impatient asperity that he
+stepped to the threshold of an adjoining room and called, "Clemmy!"
+
+Clementina appeared at the door.
+
+"There's that man Grant in the parlor. What brings HIM here, I wonder?
+Who does he come to see?"
+
+"Who did he ask for?"
+
+"Me,--but that don't mean anything."
+
+"Perhaps he wants to see you on some business."
+
+"No. That isn't his high-toned style. He makes other people go to him
+for that," he said bitterly. "Anyhow--don't you think it's mighty queer
+his coming here after his friend--for it was he who introduced Rice
+to us--had behaved so to your sister, and caused all this divorce and
+scandal?"
+
+"Perhaps he may know nothing about it; he and Rice separated long ago,
+even before Grant became so famous. We never saw much of him, you know,
+after we came here. Suppose you leave him to ME. I'll see him."
+
+Mr. Harcourt reflected. "Didn't he used to be rather attentive to
+Phemie?"
+
+Clementina shrugged her shoulders carelessly. "I dare say--but I don't
+think that NOW"--
+
+"Who said anything about NOW?" retorted her father, with a return of his
+old abruptness. After a pause he said: "I'll go down and see him first,
+and then send for you. You can keep him for the opening and dinner, if
+you like."
+
+Meantime Lawrence Grant, serenely unsuspicious of these domestic
+confidences, had been shown into the parlor--a large room furnished in
+the same style as the drawing-room of the hotel he had just quitted.
+He had ample time to note that it was that wonderful Second Empire
+furniture which he remembered that the early San Francisco pioneers in
+the first flush of their wealth had imported directly from France, and
+which for years after gave an unexpected foreign flavor to the western
+domesticity and a tawdry gilt equality to saloons and drawing-rooms,
+public and private. But he was observant of a corresponding change in
+Harcourt, when a moment later he entered the room. That individuality
+which had kept the former shopkeeper of Sidon distinct from, although
+perhaps not superior to, his customers--was strongly marked. He was
+perhaps now more nervously alert than then; he was certainly more
+impatient than before,--but that was pardonable in a man of
+large affairs and action. Grant could not deny that he seemed
+improved,--rather perhaps that the setting of fine clothes, cleanliness,
+and the absence of petty worries, made his characteristics respectable.
+That which is ill breeding in homespun, is apt to become mere
+eccentricity in purple and fine linen; Grant felt that Harcourt
+jarred on him less than he did before, and was grateful without
+superciliousness. Harcourt, relieved to find that Grant was neither
+critical nor aggressively reminiscent, and above all not inclined to
+claim the credit of creating him and Tasajara, became more confident,
+more at his ease, and, I fear, in proportion more unpleasant. It is the
+repose and not the struggle of the parvenu that confounds us.
+
+"And YOU, Grant,--you have made yourself famous, and, I hear, have got
+pretty much your own prices for your opinions ever since it was known
+that you--you--er--were connected with the growth of Tasajara."
+
+Grant smiled; he was not quite prepared for this; but it was amusing
+and would pass the time. He murmured a sentence of half ironical
+deprecation, and Mr. Harcourt continued:--
+
+"I haven't got my San Francisco house here to receive you in, but I hope
+some day, sir, to see you there. We are only here for the day and night,
+but if you care to attend the opening ceremonies at the new hall, we
+can manage to give you dinner afterwards. You can escort my daughter
+Clementina,--she's here with me."
+
+The smile of apologetic declination which had begun to form on Grant's
+lips was suddenly arrested. "Then your daughter is here?" he asked, with
+unaffected interest.
+
+"Yes,--she is in fact a patroness of the library and sewing-circle, and
+takes the greatest interest in it. The Reverend Doctor Pilsbury relies
+upon her for everything. She runs the society, even to the training of
+the young ladies, sir. You shall see their exercises."
+
+This was certainly a new phase of Clementina's character. Yet why should
+she not assume the role of Lady Bountiful with the other functions of
+her new condition. "I should have thought Miss Harcourt would have found
+this rather difficult with her other social duties," he said, "and would
+have left it to her married sister." He thought it better not to appear
+as if avoiding reference to Euphemia, although quietly ignoring her late
+experiences. Mr. Harcourt was less easy in his response.
+
+"Now that Euphemia is again with her own family," he said ponderously,
+with an affectation of social discrimination that was in weak contrast
+to his usual direct business astuteness, "I suppose she may take her
+part in these things, but just now she requires rest. You may have heard
+some rumor that she is going abroad for a time? The fact is she hasn't
+the least intention of doing so, nor do we consider there is the
+slightest reason for her going." He paused as if to give great emphasis
+to a statement that seemed otherwise unimportant. "But here's Clementina
+coming, and I must get you to excuse ME. I've to meet the trustees of
+the church in ten minutes, but I hope she'll persuade you to stay, and
+I'll see you later at the hall."
+
+As Clementina entered the room her father vanished and, I fear,
+as completely dropped out of Mr. Grant's mind. For the daughter's
+improvement was greater than her father's, yet so much more refined as
+to be at first only delicately perceptible. Grant had been prepared for
+the vulgar enhancement of fine clothes and personal adornment, for the
+specious setting of luxurious circumstances and surroundings, for the
+aplomb that came from flattery and conscious power. But he found none of
+these; her calm individuality was intensified rather than subdued; she
+was dressed simply, with an economy of ornament, rich material, and
+jewelry, but an accuracy of taste that was always dominant. Her plain
+gray merino dress, beautifully fitting her figure, suggested, with
+its pale blue facings, some uniform, as of the charitable society she
+patronized. She came towards him with a graceful movement of greeting,
+yet her face showed no consciousness of the interval that had elapsed
+since they met; he almost fancied himself transported back to the
+sitting-room at Sidon with the monotonous patter of the leaves outside,
+and the cool moist breath of the bay and alder coming in at the window.
+
+"Father says that you are only passing through Tasajara to-day, as you
+did through Sidon five years ago," she said with a smiling earnestness
+that he fancied however was the one new phase of her character. "But
+I won't believe it! At least we will not accept another visit quite as
+accidental as that, even though you brought us twice the good fortune
+you did then. You see, we have not forgotten it if you have, Mr. Grant.
+And unless you want us to believe that your fairy gifts will turn some
+day to leaves and ashes, you will promise to stay with us tonight, and
+let me show you some of the good we have done with them. Perhaps
+you don't know, or don't want to know, that it was I who got up this
+'Library and Home Circle of the Sisters of Tasajara' which we are
+to open to-day. And can you imagine why? You remember--or have you
+forgotten--that you once affected to be concerned at the social
+condition of the young ladies on the plains of Sidon? Well, Mr. Grant,
+this is gotten up in order that the future Mr. Grants who wander may
+find future Miss Billingses who are worthy to converse with them and
+entertain them, and who no longer wear men's hats and live on the public
+road."
+
+It was such a long speech for one so taciturn as he remembered
+Clementina to have been; so unexpected in tone considering her father's
+attitude towards him, and so unlooked for in its reference to a slight
+incident of the past, that Grant's critical contemplation of her gave
+way to a quiet and grateful glance of admiration. How could he have
+been so mistaken in her character? He had always preferred the outspoken
+Euphemia, and yet why should he not have been equally mistaken in
+her? Without having any personal knowledge of Rice's matrimonial
+troubles--for their intimate companionship had not continued after the
+survey--he had been inclined to blame him; now he seemed to find excuses
+for him. He wondered if she really had liked him as Peters had hinted;
+he wondered if she knew that he, Grant, was no longer intimate with him
+and knew nothing of her affairs. All this while he was accepting her
+proffered hospitality and sending to the hotel for his luggage. Then
+he drifted into a conversation, which he had expected would be brief,
+pointless, and confined to a stupid resume of their mutual and social
+progress since they had left Sidon. But here he was again mistaken; she
+was talking familiarly of present social topics, of things that she knew
+clearly and well, without effort or attitude. She had been to New
+York and Boston for two winters; she had spent the previous summer at
+Newport; it might have been her whole youth for the fluency, accuracy,
+and familiarity of her detail, and the absence of provincial enthusiasm.
+She was going abroad, probably in the spring. She had thought of going
+to winter in Italy, but she would wait now until her sister was ready to
+go with her. Mr. Grant of course knew that Euphemia was separated from
+Mr. Rice--no--not until her father told him? Well--the marriage had been
+a wild and foolish thing for both. But Euphemia was back again with them
+in the San Francisco house; she had talked of coming to Tasajara to-day,
+perhaps she might be there tonight. And, good heavens! it was actually
+three o'clock already, and they must start at once for the Hall. She
+would go and get her hat and return instantly.
+
+It was true; he had been talking with her an hour--pleasantly,
+intelligently, and yet with a consciousness of an indefinite
+satisfaction beyond all this. It must have been surprise at her
+transformation, or his previous misconception of her character. He had
+been watching her features and wondering why he had ever thought them
+expressionless. There was also the pleasant suggestion--common to
+humanity in such instances--that he himself was in some way responsible
+for the change; that it was some awakened sympathy to his own nature
+that had breathed into this cold and faultless statue the warmth of
+life. In an odd flash of recollection he remembered how, five years ago,
+when Rice had suggested to her that she was "hard to please," she had
+replied that she "didn't know, but that she was waiting to see." It did
+not occur to him to wonder why she had not awakened then, or if this
+awakening had anything to do with her own volition. It was not probable
+that they would meet again after to-day, or if they did, that she would
+not relapse into her former self and fail to impress him as she had now.
+But--here she was--a paragon of feminine promptitude--already standing
+in the doorway, accurately gloved and booted, and wearing a demure gray
+hat that modestly crowned her decorously elegant figure.
+
+They crossed the plaza side by side, in the still garish sunlight that
+seemed to mock the scant shade of the youthful eucalyptus trees, and
+presently fell in with the stream of people going in their direction.
+The former daughters of Sidon, the Billingses, the Peterses, and
+Wingates, were there bourgeoning and expanding in the glare of their new
+prosperity, with silk and gold; there were newer faces still, and pretty
+ones,--for Tasajara as a "Cow County" had attracted settlers with large
+families,--and there were already the contrasting types of East and
+West. Many turned to look after the tall figure of the daughter of the
+Founder of Tasajara,--a spectacle lately rare to the town; a few glanced
+at her companion, equally noticeable as a stranger. Thanks, however, to
+some judicious preliminary advertising from the hotel clerk, Peters, and
+Daniel Harcourt himself, by the time Grant and Miss Harcourt had reached
+the Hall his name and fame were already known, and speculation had
+already begun whether this new stroke of Harcourt's shrewdness might not
+unite Clementina to a renowned and profitable partner.
+
+The Hall was in one of the further and newly opened suburbs, and its
+side and rear windows gave immediately upon the outlying and illimitable
+plain of Tasajara. It was a tasteful and fair-seeming structure of wood,
+surprisingly and surpassingly new. In fact that was its one dominant
+feature; nowhere else had youth and freshness ever shown itself
+as unconquerable and all-conquering. The spice of virgin woods and
+trackless forests still rose from its pine floors, and breathed from its
+outer shell of cedar that still oozed its sap, and redwood that still
+dropped its life-blood. Nowhere else were the plastered walls and
+ceilings as white and dazzling in their unstained purity, or as redolent
+of the outlying quarry in their clear cool breath of lime and stone.
+Even the turpentine of fresh and spotless paint added to this sense
+of wholesome germination, and as the clear and brilliant Californian
+sunshine swept through the open windows west and east, suffusing the
+whole palpitating structure with its searching and resistless radiance,
+the very air seemed filled with the aroma of creation.
+
+The fresh colors of the young Republic, the bright blazonry of the
+newest State, the coat-of-arms of the infant County of Tasajara--(a
+vignette of sunset-tules cloven by the steam of an advancing
+train)--hanging from the walls, were all a part of this invincible
+juvenescence. Even the newest silks, ribbons and prints of the latest
+holiday fashions made their first virgin appearance in the new building
+as if to consecrate it, until it was stirred by the rustle of youth, as
+with the sound and movement of budding spring.
+
+A strain from the new organ--whose heart, however, had prematurely
+learned its own bitterness--and a thin, clear, but somewhat shrill
+chanting from a choir of young ladies were followed by a prayer from the
+Reverend Mr. Pilsbury. Then there was a pause of expectancy, and Grant's
+fair companion, who up to that moment had been quietly acting as guide
+and cicerone to her father's guest, excused herself with a little
+grimace of mock concern and was led away by one of the committee.
+Grant's usually keen eyes were wandering somewhat abstractedly over the
+agitated and rustling field of ribbons, flowers and feathers before him,
+past the blazonry of banner on the walls, and through the open windows
+to the long sunlit levels beyond, when he noticed a stir upon the raised
+dais or platform at the end of the room, where the notables of Tasajara
+were formally assembled. The mass of black coats suddenly parted and
+drew back against the wall to allow the coming forward of a single
+graceful figure. A thrill of nervousness as unexpected as unaccountable
+passed over him as he recognized Clementina. In the midst of a sudden
+silence she read the report of the committee from a paper in her hand,
+in a clear, untroubled voice--the old voice of Sidon--and formally
+declared the building opened. The sunlight, nearly level, streamed
+through the western window across the front of the platform where she
+stood and transfigured her slight but noble figure. The hush that had
+fallen upon the Hall was as much the effect of that tranquil, ideal
+presence as of the message with which it was charged. And yet that
+apparition was as inconsistent with the clear, searching light
+which helped to set it off, as it was with the broad new blazonry of
+decoration, the yet unsullied record of the white walls, or even the
+frank, animated and pretty faces that looked upon it. Perhaps it was
+some such instinct that caused the applause which hesitatingly and
+tardily followed her from the platform to appear polite and half
+restrained rather than spontaneous.
+
+Nevertheless Grant was honestly and sincerely profuse in his
+congratulations. "You were far cooler and far more self-contained than I
+should have been in your place," he said, "than in fact I actually WAS,
+only as your auditor. But I suppose you have done it before?"
+
+She turned her beautiful eyes on his wonderingly. "No,--this is the
+first time I ever appeared in public,--not even at school, for even
+there I was always a private pupil."
+
+"You astonish me," said Grant; "you seemed like an old hand at it."
+
+"Perhaps I did, or rather as if I didn't think anything of it
+myself,--and that no doubt is why the audience didn't think anything of
+it either."
+
+So she HAD noticed her cold reception, and yet there was not the
+slightest trace of disappointment, regret, or wounded vanity in her
+tone or manner. "You must take me to the refreshment room now," she
+said pleasantly, "and help me to look after the young ladies who are my
+guests. I'm afraid there are still more speeches to come, and father and
+Mr. Pilsbury are looking as if they confidently expected something more
+would be 'expected' of them."
+
+Grant at once threw himself into the task assigned to him, with his
+natural gallantry and a certain captivating playfulness which he still
+retained. Perhaps he was the more anxious to please in order that his
+companion might share some of his popularity, for it was undeniable that
+Miss Harcourt still seemed to excite only a constrained politeness
+among those with whom she courteously mingled. And this was still more
+distinctly marked by the contrast of a later incident.
+
+For some moments the sound of laughter and greeting had risen near the
+door of the refreshment room that opened upon the central hall, and
+there was a perceptible movement of the crowd--particularly of youthful
+male Tasajara--in that direction. It was evident that it announced the
+unexpected arrival of some popular resident. Attracted like the others,
+Grant turned and saw the company making way for the smiling, easy,
+half-saucy, half-complacent entry of a handsomely dressed young girl. As
+she turned from time to time to recognize with rallying familiarity or
+charming impertinence some of her admirers, there was that in her
+tone and gesture which instantly recalled to him the past. It was
+unmistakably Euphemia! His eyes instinctively sought Clementina's. She
+was gazing at him with such a grave, penetrating look,--half doubting,
+half wistful,--a look so unlike her usual unruffled calm that he felt
+strangely stirred. But the next moment, when she rejoined him, the look
+had entirely gone. "You have not seen my sister since you were at Sidon,
+I believe?" she said quietly. "She would be sorry to miss you." But
+Euphemia and her train were already passing them on the opposite side of
+the long table. She had evidently recognized Grant, yet the two sisters
+were looking intently into each other's eyes when he raised his own.
+Then Euphemia met his bow with a momentary accession of color, a
+coquettish wave of her hand across the table, a slight exaggeration of
+her usual fascinating recklessness, and smilingly moved away. He turned
+to Clementina, but here an ominous tapping at the farther end of the
+long table revealed the fact that Mr. Harcourt was standing on a chair
+with oratorical possibilities in his face and attitude. There was
+another forward movement in the crowd and--silence. In that solid,
+black-broadclothed, respectable figure, that massive watchchain, that
+white waistcoat, that diamond pin glistening in the satin cravat,
+Euphemia might have seen the realization of her prophetic vision at
+Sidon five years before.
+
+He spoke for ten minutes with a fluency and comprehensive business-like
+directness that surprised Grant. He was not there, he said, to glorify
+what had been done by himself, his family, or his friends in Tasajara.
+Others who were to follow him might do that, or at least might be better
+able to explain and expatiate upon the advantages of the institution
+they had just opened, and its social, moral, and religious effect upon
+the community. He was there as a business man to demonstrate to
+them--as he had always done and always hoped to do--the money value
+of improvement; the profit--if they might choose to call it--of
+well-regulated and properly calculated speculation. The plot of land
+upon which they stood, of which the building occupied only one eighth,
+was bought two years before for ten thousand dollars. When the plans
+of the building were completed a month afterwards, the value of the
+remaining seven eighths had risen enough to defray the cost of the
+entire construction. He was in a position to tell them that only that
+morning the adjacent property, subdivided and laid out in streets and
+building-plots, had been admitted into the corporate limits of the city;
+and that on the next anniversary of the building they would approach
+it through an avenue of finished dwellings! An outburst of applause
+followed the speaker's practical climax; the fresh young faces of his
+auditors glowed with invincible enthusiasm; the afternoon trade-winds,
+freshening over the limitless plain beyond, tossed the bright banners
+at the windows as with sympathetic rejoicing, and a few odorous pine
+shavings, overlooked in a corner in the hurry of preparation, touched
+by an eddying zephyr, crept out and rolled in yellow ringlets across the
+floor.
+
+The Reverend Doctor Pilsbury arose in a more decorous silence. He had
+listened approvingly, admiringly, he might say even reverently, to the
+preceding speaker. But although his distinguished friend had, with his
+usual modesty, made light of his own services and those of his charming
+family, he, the speaker, had not risen to sing his praises. No; it
+was not in this Hall, projected by his foresight and raised by his
+liberality; in this town, called into existence by his energy and
+stamped by his attributes; in this county, developed by his genius and
+sustained by his capital; ay, in this very State whose grandeur was made
+possible by such giants as he,--it was not in any of these places that
+it was necessary to praise Daniel Harcourt, or that a panegyric of him
+would be more than idle repetition. Nor would he, as that distinguished
+man had suggested, enlarge upon the social, moral, and religious
+benefits of the improvement they were now celebrating. It was written
+on the happy, innocent faces, in the festive garb, in the decorous
+demeanor, in the intelligent eyes that sparkled around him, in the
+presence of those of his parishioners whom he could meet as freely here
+to-day as in his own church on Sunday. What then could he say? What then
+was there to say? Perhaps he should say nothing if it were not for
+the presence of the young before him.--He stopped and fixed his eyes
+paternally on the youthful Johnny Billings, who with a half dozen
+other Sunday-school scholars had been marshaled before the reverend
+speaker.--And what was to be the lesson THEY were to learn from it? They
+had heard what had been achieved by labor, enterprise, and diligence.
+Perhaps they would believe, and naturally too, that what labor,
+enterprise, and diligence had done could be done again. But was that
+all? Was there nothing behind these qualities--which, after all, were
+within the reach of every one here? Had they ever thought that back
+of every pioneer, every explorer, every pathfinder, every founder and
+creator, there was still another? There was no terra incognita so rare
+as to be unknown to one; no wilderness so remote as to be beyond a
+greater ken than theirs; no waste so trackless but that one had already
+passed that way! Did they ever reflect that when the dull sea ebbed and
+flowed in the tules over the very spot where they were now standing, who
+it was that also foresaw, conceived, and ordained the mighty change that
+would take place; who even guided and directed the feeble means employed
+to work it; whose spirit moved, as in still older days of which they had
+read, over the face of the stagnant waters? Perhaps they had. Who then
+was the real pioneer of Tasajara,--back of the Harcourts, the Peterses,
+the Billingses, and Wingates? The reverend gentleman gently paused for
+a reply. It was given in the clear but startled accents of the half
+frightened, half-fascinated Johnny Billings, in three words:--
+
+"'Lige Curtis, sir!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER VI
+
+
+The trade wind, that, blowing directly from the Golden Gate, seemed to
+concentrate its full force upon the western slope of Russian Hill,
+might have dismayed any climber less hopeful and sanguine than that most
+imaginative of newspaper reporters and most youthful of husbands, John
+Milton Harcourt. But for all that it was an honest wind, and its dry,
+practical energy and salt-pervading breath only seemed to sting him to
+greater and more enthusiastic exertions, until, quite at the summit of
+the hill and last of a straggling line of little cottages half submerged
+in drifting sand, he stood upon his own humble porch.
+
+"I was thinking, coming up the hill, Loo," he said, bursting into the
+sitting-room, pantingly, "of writing something about the future of the
+hill! How it will look fifty years from now, all terraced with houses
+and gardens!--and right up here a kind of Acropolis, don't you know. I
+had quite a picture of it in my mind just now."
+
+A plainly-dressed young woman with a pretty face, that, however, looked
+as if it had been prematurely sapped of color and vitality, here laid
+aside some white sewing she had in her lap, and said:--
+
+"But you did that once before, Milty, and you know the 'Herald' wouldn't
+take it because they said it was a free notice of Mr. Boorem's building
+lots, and he didn't advertise in the 'Herald.' I always told you that
+you ought to have seen Boorem first."
+
+The young fellow blinked his eyes with a momentary arrest of that
+buoyant hopefulness which was their peculiar characteristic, but
+nevertheless replied with undaunted cheerfulness, "I forgot. Anyhow,
+it's all the same, for I worked it into that 'Sunday Walk.' And it's
+just as easy to write it the other way, you see,--looking back, DOWN THE
+HILL, you know. Something about the old Padres toiling through the sand
+just before the Angelus; or as far back as Sir Francis Drake's time,
+and have a runaway boat's crew, coming ashore to look for gold that the
+Mexicans had talked of. Lord! that's easy enough! I tell you what, Loo,
+it's worth living up here just for the inspiration." Even while boyishly
+exhaling this enthusiasm he was also divesting himself of certain
+bundles whose contents seemed to imply that he had brought his
+dinner with him,--the youthful Mrs. Harcourt setting the table in a
+perfunctory, listless way that contrasted oddly with her husband's
+cheerful energy.
+
+"You haven't heard of any regular situation yet?" she asked
+abstractedly.
+
+"No,--not exactly," he replied. "But [buoyantly] it's a great deal
+better for me not to take anything in a hurry and tie myself to any
+particular line. Now, I'm quite free."
+
+"And I suppose you haven't seen that Mr. Fletcher again?" she continued.
+
+"No. He only wanted to know something about me. That's the way with them
+all, Loo. Whenever I apply for work anywhere it's always: 'So you're
+Dan'l Harcourt's son, eh? Quarreled with the old man? Bad job; better
+make it up! You'll make more stickin' to him. He's worth millions!'
+Everybody seems to think everything of HIM, as if I had no individuality
+beyond that, I've a good mind to change my name."
+
+"And pray what would mine be then?"
+
+There was so much irritation in her voice that he drew nearer her and
+gently put his arm around her waist. "Why, whatever mine was, darling,"
+he said with a tender smile. "You didn't fall in love with any
+particular name, did you, Loo?"
+
+"No, but I married a particular one," she said quickly.
+
+His eyelids quivered again, as if he was avoiding some unpleasantly
+staring suggestion, and she stopped.
+
+"You know what I mean, dear," she said, with a quick little laugh. "Just
+because your father's an old crosspatch, YOU haven't lost your rights to
+his name and property. And those people who say you ought to make it up
+perhaps know what's for the best."
+
+"But you remember what he said of you, Loo?" said the young man with a
+flashing eye. "Do you think I can ever forget that?"
+
+"But you DO forget it, dear; you forget it when you go in town among
+fresh faces and people; when you are looking for work. You forget it
+when you're at work writing your copy,--for I've seen you smile as
+you wrote. You forget it climbing up the dreadful sand, for you were
+thinking just now of what happened years ago, or is to happen years to
+come. And I want to forget it too, Milty. I don't want to sit here all
+day, thinking of it, with the wind driving the sand against the window,
+and nothing to look at but those white tombs in Lone Mountain Cemetery,
+and those white caps that might be gravestones too, and not a soul to
+talk to or even see pass by until I feel as if I were dead and buried
+also. If you were me--you--you--you--couldn't help crying too!"
+
+Indeed he was very near it now. For as he caught her in his arms,
+suddenly seeing with a lover's sympathy and the poet's swifter
+imagination all that she had seen and even more, he was aghast at the
+vision conjured. In her delicate health and loneliness how dreadful must
+have been these monotonous days, and this glittering, cruel sea! What
+a selfish brute he was! Yet as he stood there holding her, silently and
+rhythmically marking his tenderness and remorseful feelings by rocking
+her from side to side like a languid metronome, she quietly disengaged
+her wet lashes from his shoulder and said in quite another tone:--
+
+"So they were all at Tasajara last week?"
+
+"Who, dear?"
+
+"Your father and sisters."
+
+"Yes," said John Milton, hesitatingly.
+
+"And they've taken back your sister after her divorce?"
+
+The staring obtrusiveness of this fact apparently made her husband's
+bright sympathetic eye blink as before.
+
+"And if you were to divorce me, YOU would be taken back too," she
+added quickly, suddenly withdrawing herself with a pettish movement and
+walking to the window.
+
+But he followed. "Don't talk in that way, Loo! Don't look in that way,
+dear!" he said, taking her hand gently, yet not without a sense of some
+inconsistency in her conduct that jarred upon his own simple directness.
+"You know that nothing can part us now. I was wrong to let my little
+girl worry herself all alone here, but I--I--thought it was all so--so
+bright and free out on this hill,--looking far away beyond the Golden
+Gate,--as far as Cathay, you know, and such a change from those dismal
+flats of Tasajara and that awful stretch of tules. But it's all right
+now. And now that I know how you feel, we'll go elsewhere."
+
+She did not reply. Perhaps she found it difficult to keep up her injured
+attitude in the face of her husband's gentleness. Perhaps her attention
+had been attracted by the unusual spectacle of a stranger, who had just
+mounted the hill and was now slowly passing along the line of
+cottages with a hesitating air of inquiry. "He may be looking for this
+house,--for you," she said in an entirely new tone of interest. "Run out
+and see. It may be some one who wants"--
+
+"An article," said Milton cheerfully. "By Jove! he IS coming here."
+
+The stranger was indeed approaching the little cottage, and with
+apparently some confidence. He was a well-dressed, well-made man, whose
+age looked uncertain from the contrast between his heavy brown moustache
+and his hair, that, curling under the brim of his hat, was almost white
+in color. The young man started, and said, hurriedly: "I really believe
+it is Fletcher,--they say his hair turned white from the Panama fever."
+
+It was indeed Mr. Fletcher who entered and introduced himself,--a gentle
+reserved man, with something of that colorlessness of premature age
+in his speech which was observable in his hair. He had heard of Mr.
+Harcourt from a friend who had recommended him highly. As Mr. Harcourt
+had probably been told, he, the speaker, was about to embark some
+capital in a first-class newspaper in San Francisco, and should select
+the staff himself. He wanted to secure only first-rate talent,--but
+above all, youthfulness, directness, and originality. The "Clarion," for
+that was to be its name, was to have nothing "old fogy" about it. No. It
+was distinctly to be the organ of Young California! This and much more
+from the grave lips of the elderly young man, whose speech seemed to be
+divided between the pretty, but equally faded, young wife, and the one
+personification of invincible youth present,--her husband.
+
+"But I fear I have interrupted your household duties," he said
+pleasantly. "You were preparing dinner. Pray go on. And let me help
+you,--I'm not a bad cook,--and you can give me my reward by letting me
+share it with you, for the climb up here has sharpened my appetite. We
+can talk as we go on."
+
+It was in vain to protest; there was something paternal as well as
+practical in the camaraderie of this actual capitalist and possible
+Maecenas and patron as he quietly hung up his hat and overcoat, and
+helped to set the table with a practiced hand. Nor, as he suggested, did
+the conversation falter, and before they had taken their seats at the
+frugal board he had already engaged John Milton Harcourt as assistant
+editor of the "Clarion" at a salary that seemed princely to this son
+of a millionaire! The young wife meantime had taken active part in the
+discussion; whether it was vaguely understood that the possession of
+poetical and imaginative faculties precluded any capacity for business,
+or whether it was owing to the apparent superior maturity of Mrs.
+Harcourt and the stranger, it was certain that THEY arranged the
+practical details of the engagement, and that the youthful husband sat
+silent, merely offering his always hopeful and sanguine consent.
+
+"You'll take a house nearer to town, I suppose?" continued Mr. Fletcher
+to the lady, "though you've a charming view here. I suppose it was quite
+a change from Tasajara and your father-in-law's house? I daresay he had
+as fine a place there--on his own homestead--as he has here?"
+
+Young Harcourt dropped his sensitive eyelids again. It seemed hard that
+he could never get away from these allusions to his father! Perhaps it
+was only to that relationship that he was indebted for his visitor's
+kindness. In his simple honesty he could not bear the thought of such
+a misapprehension. "Perhaps, Mr. Fletcher, you do not know," he said,
+"that my father is not on terms with me, and that we neither expect
+anything nor could we ever take anything from him. Could we, Loo?" He
+added the useless question partly because he saw that his wife's face
+betrayed little sympathy with him, and partly that Fletcher was looking
+at her curiously, as if for confirmation. But this was another of John
+Milton's trials as an imaginative reporter; nobody ever seemed to care
+for his practical opinions or facts!
+
+"Mr. Fletcher is not interested in our little family differences,
+Milty," she said, looking at Mr. Fletcher, however, instead of him.
+"You're Daniel Harcourt's SON whatever happens."
+
+The cloud that had passed over the young man's face and eyes did not,
+however, escape Mr. Fletcher's attention, for he smiled, and added
+gayly, "And I hope my valued lieutenant in any case." Nevertheless John
+Milton was quite ready to avail himself of an inspiration to fetch some
+cigars for his guest from the bar of the Sea-View House on the slope of
+the hill beyond, and thereby avoid a fateful subject. Once in the fresh
+air again he promptly recovered his boyish spirits. The light flying
+scud had already effaced the first rising stars; the lower creeping
+sea-fog had already blotted out the western shore and sea; but below him
+to the east the glittering lights of the city seemed to start up with a
+new, mysterious, and dazzling brilliancy. It was the valley of diamonds
+that Sindbad saw lying almost at his feet! Perhaps somewhere there the
+light of his own fame and fortune was already beginning to twinkle!
+
+He returned to his humble roof joyous and inspired. As he entered the
+hall he heard his wife's voice and his own name mentioned, followed
+by that awkward, meaningless silence on his entrance which so plainly
+indicated either that he had been the subject of conversation or that it
+was not for his ears. It was a dismal reminder of his boyhood at Sidon
+and Tasajara. But he was too full of hope and ambition to heed it
+to-night, and later, when Mr. Fletcher had taken his departure, his
+pent-up enthusiasm burst out before his youthful partner. Had she
+realized that their struggles were over now, that their future was
+secure? They need no longer fear ever being forced to take bounty from
+the family; they were independent of them all! He would make a name for
+himself that should be distinct from his father's as he should make a
+fortune that would be theirs alone. The young wife smiled. "But all
+that need not prevent you, dear, from claiming your RIGHTS when the time
+comes."
+
+"But if I scorn to make the claim or take a penny of his, Loo?"
+
+"You say you scorn to take the money you think your father got by a mere
+trick,--at the best,--and didn't earn. And now you will be able to show
+you can live without it, and earn your own fortune. Well, dear, for that
+very reason why should you let your father and others enjoy and waste
+what is fairly your share? For it is YOUR share whether it came to your
+father fairly or not; and if not, it is still your duty, believing as
+you do, to claim it from him, that at least YOU may do with it what you
+choose. You might want to restore it--to--to--somebody."
+
+The young man laughed. "But, my dear Loo! suppose that I were weak
+enough to claim it, do you think my father would give it up? He has the
+right, and no law could force him to yield to me more than he chooses."
+
+"Not the law, but YOU could."
+
+"I don't understand you," he said quickly.
+
+"You could force him by simply telling him what you once told me."
+
+John Milton drew back, and his hand dropped loosely from his wife's.
+The color left his fresh young face; the light quivered for a moment
+and then became fixed and set in his eyes. For that moment he looked ten
+years her senior. "I was wrong ever to tell even you that, Loo," he said
+in a low voice. "You are wrong to ever remind me of it. Forget it
+from this moment, as you value our love and want it to live and be
+remembered. And forget, Loo, as I do,--and ever shall,--that you ever
+suggested to me to use my secret in the way you did just now."
+
+But here Mrs. Harcourt burst into tears, more touched by the alteration
+in her husband's manner, I fear, than by any contrition for wrongdoing.
+Of course if he wished to withdraw his confidences from her, just as he
+had almost confessed he wished to withdraw his NAME, she couldn't help
+it, but it was hard that when she sat there all day long trying to think
+what was best for them, she should be blamed! At which the quiet and
+forgiving John Milton smiled remorsefully and tried to comfort her.
+Nevertheless an occasional odd, indefinable chill seemed to creep
+across the feverish enthusiasm with which he was celebrating this day of
+fortune. And yet he neither knew nor suspected until long after that his
+foolish wife had that night half betrayed his secret to the stranger!
+
+The next day he presented a note of introduction from Mr. Fletcher to
+the business manager of the "Clarion," and the following morning was
+duly installed in office. He did not see his benefactor again; that
+single visit was left in the mystery and isolation of an angelic
+episode. It later appeared that other and larger interests in the San
+Jose valley claimed his patron's residence and attendance; only the
+capital and general purpose of the paper--to develop into a party
+organ in the interest of his possible senatorial aspirations in due
+season--was furnished by him. Grateful as John Milton felt towards him,
+he was relieved; it seemed probable that Mr. Fletcher HAD selected him
+on his individual merits, and not as the son of a millionaire.
+
+He threw himself into his work with his old hopeful enthusiasm,
+and perhaps an originality of method that was part of his singular
+independence. Without the student's training or restraint,--for his two
+years' schooling at Tasajara during his parents' prosperity came too
+late to act as a discipline,--he was unfettered by any rules, and guided
+only by an unerring instinctive taste that became near being genius.
+He was a brilliant and original, if not always a profound and accurate,
+reporter. By degrees he became an accustomed interest to the readers
+of the "Clarion;" then an influence. Actors themselves in many a fierce
+drama, living lives of devotion, emotion, and picturesque incident, they
+had satisfied themselves with only the briefest and most practical daily
+record of their adventure, and even at first were dazed and startled
+to find that many of them had been heroes and some poets. The stealthy
+boyish reader of romantic chronicle at Sidon had learned by heart the
+chivalrous story of the emigration. The second column of the "Clarion"
+became famous even while the figure of its youthful writer, unknown and
+unrecognized, was still nightly climbing the sands of Russian Hill, and
+even looking down as before on the lights of the growing city, without a
+thought that he had added to that glittering constellation.
+
+Cheerful and contented with the exercise of work, he would have been
+happy but for the gradual haunting of another dread which presently
+began to drag him at earlier hours up the steep path to his little home;
+to halt him before the door with the quickened breath of an anxiety he
+would scarcely confess to himself, and sometimes hold him aimlessly a
+whole day beneath his roof. For the pretty but delicate Mrs. Harcourt,
+like others of her class, had added a weak and ineffective maternity
+to their other conjugal trials, and one early dawn a baby was born that
+lingered with them scarcely longer than the morning mist and exhaled
+with the rising sun. The young wife regained her strength slowly,--so
+slowly that the youthful husband brought his work at times to the house
+to keep her company. And a singular change had come over her. She no
+longer talked of the past, nor of his family. As if the little life
+that had passed with that morning mist had represented some ascending
+expiatory sacrifice, it seemed to have brought them into closer
+communion.
+
+Yet her weak condition made him conceal another trouble that had come
+upon him. It was in the third month of his employment on the "Clarion"
+that one afternoon, while correcting some proofs on his chief's desk, he
+came upon the following editorial paragraph:--
+
+"The played-out cant of 'pioneer genius' and 'pioneer discovery' appears
+to have reached its climax in the attempt of some of our contemporaries
+to apply it to Dan Harcourt's new Tasajara Job before the legislature.
+It is perfectly well known in Harcourt's own district that, far from
+being a pioneer and settler HIMSELF he simply succeeded after a
+fashion to the genuine work of one Elijah Curtis, an actual pioneer
+and discoverer, years before, while Harcourt, we believe, was keeping a
+frontier doggery in Sidon, and dispensing 'tanglefoot' and salt junk
+to the hayfooted Pike Countians of his precinct. This would make him as
+much of the 'pioneer discoverer' as the rattlesnake who first takes up
+board and lodgings and then possession in a prairie dog's burrow. And if
+the traveler's tale is true that the rattlesnake sometimes makes a meal
+of his landlord, the story told at Sidon may be equally credible that
+the original pioneer mysteriously disappeared about the time that Dan
+Harcourt came into the property. From which it would seem that Harcourt
+is not in a position for his friends to invite very deep scrutiny into
+his 'pioneer' achievements."
+
+Stupefaction, a vague terror, and rising anger, rapidly succeeded each
+other in the young man's mind as he stood mechanically holding the
+paper in his hand. It was the writing of his chief editor, whose easy
+brutality he had sometimes even boyishly admired. Without stopping to
+consider their relative positions he sought him indignantly and laid the
+proof before him. The editor laughed. "But what's that to YOU? YOU'RE
+not on terms with the old man."
+
+"But he is my father!" said John Milton hotly.
+
+"Look here," said the editor good-naturedly, "I'd like to oblige
+you, but it isn't BUSINESS, you know,--and this IS, you
+understand,--PROPRIETOR'S BUSINESS too! Of course I see it might stand
+in the way of your making up to the old man afterwards and coming in for
+a million. Well! you can tell him it's ME. Say I WOULD put it in. Say
+I'm nasty--and I AM!"
+
+"Then it must go in?" said John Milton with a white face.
+
+"You bet."
+
+"Then I must go out!" And writing out his resignation, he laid it before
+his chief and left.
+
+But he could not bear to tell this to his wife when he climbed the hill
+that night, and he invented some excuse for bringing his work home. The
+invalid never noticed any change in his usual buoyancy, and indeed I
+fear, when he was fairly installed with his writing materials at the
+foot of her bed, he had quite forgotten the episode. He was recalled to
+it by a faint sigh.
+
+"What is it, dear?" he said looking up.
+
+"I like to see you writing, Milty. You always look so happy."
+
+"Always so happy, dear?"
+
+"Yes. You are happy, are you not?"
+
+"Always." He got up and kissed her. Nevertheless, when he sat down to
+his work again, his face was turned a little more to the window.
+
+Another serious incident--to be also kept from the invalid--shortly
+followed. The article in the "Clarion" had borne its fruit. The third
+day after his resignation a rival paper sharply retorted. "The cowardly
+insinuations against the record of a justly honored capitalist," said
+the "Pioneer," "although quite in keeping with the brazen 'Clarion,'
+might attract the attentions of the slandered party, if it were not
+known to his friends as well as himself that it may be traced almost
+directly to a cast-off member of his own family, who, it seems, is
+reduced to haunting the back doors of certain blatant journals to
+dispose of his cheap wares. The slanderer is secure from public exposure
+in the superior decency of his relations, who refrain from airing their
+family linen upon editorial lines."
+
+This was the journal to which John Milton had hopefully turned for work.
+When he read it there seemed but one thing for him to do--and he did
+it. Gentle and optimistic as was his nature, he had been brought up in
+a community where sincere directness of personal offense was followed by
+equally sincere directness of personal redress, and--he challenged the
+editor. The bearer of his cartel was one Jack Hamlin, I grieve to say a
+gambler by profession, but between whom and John Milton had sprung up an
+odd friendship of which the best that can be said is that it was to each
+equally and unselfishly unprofitable. The challenge was accepted, the
+preliminaries arranged. "I suppose," said Jack carelessly, "as the old
+man ought to do something for your wife in case of accident, you've made
+some sort of a will?"
+
+"I've thought of that," said John Milton, dubiously, "but I'm afraid
+it's no use. You see"--he hesitated--"I'm not of age."
+
+"May I ask how old you are, sonny?" said Jack with great gravity.
+
+"I'm almost twenty," said John Milton, coloring.
+
+"It isn't exactly vingt-et-un, but I'd stand on it; if I were you I
+wouldn't draw to such a hand," said Jack, coolly.
+
+The young husband had arranged to be absent from his home that night,
+and early morning found him, with Jack, grave, but courageous, in a
+little hollow behind the Mission Hills. To them presently approached his
+antagonist, jauntily accompanied by Colonel Starbottle, his second. They
+halted, but after the formal salutation were instantly joined by Jack
+Hamlin. For a few moments John Milton remained awkwardly alone--pending
+a conversation which even at that supreme moment he felt as being
+like the general attitude of his friends towards him, in its complete
+ignoring of himself. The next moment the three men stepped towards him.
+"We have come, sir," said Colonel Starbottle in his precisest speech but
+his jauntiest manner, "to offer you a full and ample apology--a personal
+apology--which only supplements that full public apology that my
+principal, sir, this gentleman," indicating the editor of the "Pioneer,"
+"has this morning made in the columns of his paper, as you will
+observe," producing a newspaper. "We have, sir," continued the
+colonel loftily, "only within the last twelve hours become aware of
+the--er--REAL circumstances of the case. We would regret that the affair
+had gone so far already, if it had not given us, sir, the opportunity
+of testifying to your gallantry. We do so gladly; and if--er--er--a FEW
+YEARS LATER, Mr. Harcourt, you should ever need--a friend in any matter
+of this kind, I am, sir, at your service." John Milton gazed half
+inquiringly, half uneasily at Jack.
+
+"It's all right, Milt," he said sotto voce. "Shake hands all round and
+let's go to breakfast. And I rather think that editor wants to employ
+you HIMSELF."
+
+It was true, for when that night he climbed eagerly the steep homeward
+hill he carried with him the written offer of an engagement on the
+"Pioneer." As he entered the door his wife's nurse and companion met him
+with a serious face. There had been a strange and unexpected change in
+the patient's condition, and the doctor had already been there twice.
+As he put aside his coat and hat and entered her room, it seemed to
+him that he had forever put aside all else of essay and ambition beyond
+those four walls. And with the thought a great peace came upon him. It
+seemed good to him to live for her alone.
+
+It was not for long. As each monotonous day brought the morning mist and
+evening fog regularly to the little hilltop where his whole being was
+now centred, she seemed to grow daily weaker, and the little circle of
+her life narrowed day by day. One morning when the usual mist appeared
+to have been withheld and the sun had risen with a strange and cruel
+brightness; when the waves danced and sparkled on the bay below and
+light glanced from dazzling sails, and even the white tombs on Lone
+Mountain glittered keenly; when cheery voices hailing each other on the
+hillside came to him clearly but without sense or meaning; when earth,
+sky, and sea seemed quivering with life and motion,--he opened the door
+of that one little house on which the only shadow seemed to have fallen,
+and went forth again into the world alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER VII.
+
+
+Mr. Daniel Harcourt's town mansion was also on an eminence, but it
+was that gentler acclivity of fashion known as Rincon Hill, and
+sunned itself on a southern slope of luxury. It had been described
+as "princely" and "fairy-like," by a grateful reporter; tourists and
+travelers had sung its praises in letters to their friends and in
+private reminiscences, for it had dispensed hospitality to most of the
+celebrities who had visited the coast. Nevertheless its charm was mainly
+due to the ruling taste of Miss Clementina Harcourt, who had astonished
+her father by her marvelous intuition of the nice requirements and
+elegant responsibilities of their position; and had thrown her mother
+into the pained perplexity of a matronly hen, who, among the ducks' eggs
+intrusted to her fostering care, had unwittingly hatched a graceful but
+discomposing cygnet.
+
+Indeed, after holding out feebly against the siege of wealth at Tasajara
+and San Francisco, Mrs. Harcourt had abandoned herself hopelessly to
+the horrors of its invasion; had allowed herself to be dragged from her
+kitchen by her exultant daughters and set up in black silk in a certain
+conventional respectability in the drawing-room. Strange to say, her
+commiserating hospitality, or hospital-like ministration, not only gave
+her popularity, but a certain kind of distinction. An exaltation
+so sorrowfully deprecated by its possessor was felt to be a sign of
+superiority. She was spoken of as "motherly," even by those who vaguely
+knew that there was somewhere a discarded son struggling in poverty
+with a helpless wife, and that she had sided with her husband in
+disinheriting a daughter who had married unwisely. She was sentimentally
+spoken of as a "true wife," while never opposing a single meanness of
+her husband, suggesting a single active virtue, nor questioning her
+right to sacrifice herself and her family for his sake. With nothing
+she cared to affect, she was quite free from affectation, and even the
+critical Lawrence Grant was struck with the dignity which her narrow
+simplicity, that had seemed small even in Sidon, attained in her
+palatial hall in San Francisco. It appeared to be a perfectly logical
+conclusion that when such unaffectedness and simplicity were forced to
+assume a hostile attitude to anybody, the latter must be to blame.
+
+Since the festival of Tasajara Mr. Grant had been a frequent visitor
+at Harcourt's, and was a guest on the eve of his departure from San
+Francisco. The distinguished position of each made their relations
+appear quite natural without inciting gossip as to any attraction in
+Harcourt's daughters. It was late one afternoon as he was passing the
+door of Harcourt's study that his host called him in. He found him
+sitting at his desk with some papers before him and a folded copy of the
+"Clarion." With his back to the fading light of the window his face was
+partly in shadow.
+
+"By the way, Grant," he began, with an assumption of carelessness
+somewhat inconsistent with the fact that he had just called him in, "it
+may be necessary for me to pull up those fellows who are blackguarding
+me in the 'Clarion.'"
+
+"Why, they haven't been saying anything new?" asked Grant, laughingly,
+as he glanced towards the paper.
+
+"No--that is--only a rehash of what they said before," returned Harcourt
+without opening the paper.
+
+"Well," said Grant playfully, "you don't mind their saying that you're
+NOT the original pioneer of Tasajara, for it's true; nor that that
+fellow 'Lige Curtis disappeared suddenly, for he did, if I remember
+rightly. But there's nothing in that to invalidate your rights to
+Tasajara, to say nothing of your five years' undisputed possession."
+
+"Of course there's no LEGAL question," said Harcourt almost sharply.
+"But as a matter of absurd report, I may want to contradict their
+insinuations. And YOU remember all the circumstances, don't you?"
+
+"I should think so! Why, my dear fellow, I've told it everywhere!--here,
+in New York, Newport, and in London; by Jove, it's one of my best
+stories! How a company sent me out with a surveyor to look up a railroad
+and agricultural possibilities in the wilderness; how just as I found
+them--and a rather big thing they made, too--I was set afloat by a
+flood and a raft, and drifted ashore on your bank, and practically
+demonstrated to you what you didn't know and didn't dare to hope
+for--that there could be a waterway straight to Sidon from the
+embarcadero. I've told what a charming evening we had with you and
+your daughters in the old house, and how I returned your hospitality by
+giving you a tip about the railroad; and how you slipped out while we
+were playing cards, to clinch the bargain for the land with that drunken
+fellow, 'Lige Curtis"--
+
+"What's that?" interrupted Harcourt, quickly.
+
+It was well that the shadow hid from Grant the expression of Harcourt's
+face, or his reply might have been sharper. As it was, he answered a
+little stiffly:--
+
+"I beg your pardon"--
+
+Harcourt recovered himself. "You're all wrong!" he said, "that bargain
+was made long BEFORE; I never saw 'Lige Curtis after you came to the
+house. It was before that, in the afternoon," he went on hurriedly,
+"that he was last in my store. I can prove it." Nevertheless he was so
+shocked and indignant at being confronted in his own suppressions and
+falsehoods by an even greater and more astounding misconception of
+fact, that for a moment he felt helpless. What, he reflected, if it were
+alleged that 'Lige had returned again after the loafers had gone, or had
+never left the store as had been said? Nonsense! There was John Milton,
+who had been there reading all the time, and who could disprove it. Yes,
+but John Milton was his discarded son,--his enemy,--perhaps even his
+very slanderer!
+
+"But," said Grant quietly, "don't you remember that your daughter
+Euphemia said something that evening about the land Lige had OFFERED
+you, and you snapped up the young lady rather sharply for letting out
+secrets, and THEN you went out? At least that's my impression."
+
+It was, however, more than an impression; with Grant's scientific memory
+for characteristic details he had noticed that particular circumstance
+as part of the social phenomena.
+
+"I don't know what Phemie SAID," returned Harcourt, impatiently. "I KNOW
+there was no offer pending; the land had been sold to me before I ever
+saw you. Why--you must have thought me up to pretty sharp practice with
+Curtis--eh?" he added, with a forced laugh.
+
+Grant smiled; he had been accustomed to hear of such sharp practice
+among his business acquaintance, although he himself by nature and
+profession was incapable of it, but he had not deemed Harcourt more
+scrupulous than others. "Perhaps so," he said lightly, "but for Heaven's
+sake don't ask me to spoil my reputation as a raconteur for the sake of
+a mere fact or two. I assure you it's a mighty taking story as I tell
+it--and it don't hurt you in a business way. You're the hero of it--hang
+it all!"
+
+"Yes," said Harcourt, without noticing Grant's half cynical superiority,
+"but you'll oblige me if you won't tell it again IN THAT WAY. There are
+men here mean enough to make the worst of it. It's nothing to me, of
+course, but my family--the girls, you know--are rather sensitive."
+
+"I had no idea they even knew it,--much less cared for it," said Grant,
+with sudden seriousness. "I dare say if those fellows in the 'Clarion'
+knew that they were annoying the ladies they'd drop it. Who's the
+editor? Look here--leave it to me; I'll look into it. Better that you
+shouldn't appear in the matter at all."
+
+"You understand that if it was a really serious matter, Grant," said
+Harcourt with a slight attitude, "I shouldn't allow any one to take my
+place."
+
+"My dear fellow, there'll be nobody 'called out' and no 'shooting at
+sight,' whatever is the result of my interference," returned Grant,
+lightly. "It'll be all right." He was quite aware of the power of his
+own independent position and the fact that he had been often appealed to
+before in delicate arbitration.
+
+Harcourt was equally conscious of this, but by a strange inconsistency
+now felt relieved at the coolness with which Grant had accepted the
+misconception which had at first seemed so dangerous. If he were ready
+to condone what he thought was SHARP PRACTICE, he could not be less
+lenient with the real facts that might come out,--of course always
+excepting that interpolated consideration in the bill of sale, which,
+however, no one but the missing Curtis could ever discover. The fact
+that a man of Grant's secure position had interested himself in this
+matter would secure him from the working of that personal vulgar
+jealousy which his humbler antecedents had provoked. And if, as he
+fancied, Grant really cared for Clementina--
+
+"As you like," he said, with half-affected lightness, "and now let us
+talk of something else. Clementina has been thinking of getting up
+a riding party to San Mateo for Mrs. Ashwood. We must show them some
+civility, and that Boston brother of hers, Mr. Shipley, will have to
+be invited also. I can't get away, and my wife, of course, will only
+be able to join them at San Mateo in the carriage. I reckon it would be
+easier for Clementina if you took my place, and helped her look after
+the riding party. It will need a man, and I think she'd prefer you--as
+you know she's rather particular--unless, of course, you'd be wanted for
+Mrs. Ashwood or Phemie, or somebody else."
+
+From his shadowed corner he could see that a pleasant light had sprung
+into Grant's eyes, although his reply was in his ordinary easy banter.
+"I shall be only too glad to act as Miss Clementina's vaquero, and lasso
+her runaways, or keep stragglers in the road."
+
+There seemed to be small necessity, however, for this active
+co-operation, for when the cheerful cavalcade started from the house
+a few mornings later, Mr. Lawrence Grant's onerous duties seemed to be
+simply confined to those of an ordinary cavalier at the side of Miss
+Clementina, a few paces in the rear of the party. But this safe distance
+gave them the opportunity of conversing without being overheard,--an
+apparently discreet precaution.
+
+"Your father was so exceedingly affable to me the other day that if I
+hadn't given you my promise to say nothing, I think I would have fallen
+on my knees to him then and there, revealed my feelings, asked for your
+hand and his blessing--or whatever one does at such a time. But how long
+do you intend to keep me in this suspense?"
+
+Clementina turned her clear eyes half abstractedly upon him, as if
+imperfectly recalling some forgotten situation. "You forget," she said,
+"that part of your promise was that you wouldn't even speak of it to me
+again without my permission."
+
+"But my time is so short now. Give me some definite hope before I go.
+Let me believe that when we meet in New York"--
+
+"You will find me just the same as now! Yes, I think I can promise THAT.
+Let that suffice. You said the other day you liked me because I had not
+changed for five years. You can surely trust that I will not alter in as
+many months."
+
+"If I only knew"--
+
+"Ah, if I only knew,--if WE ALL only knew. But we don't. Come, Mr.
+Grant, let it rest as it is. Unless you want to go still further back
+and have it as it WAS, at Sidon. There I think you fancied Euphemia
+most."
+
+"Clementina!"
+
+"That is my name, and those people ahead of us know it already."
+
+"You are called CLEMENTINA,--but you are not merciful!"
+
+"You are very wrong, for you might see that Mr. Shipley has twice
+checked his horse that he might hear what you are saying, and Phemie is
+always showing Mrs. Ashwood something in the landscape behind us."
+
+All this was the more hopeless and exasperating to Grant since in the
+young girl's speech and manner there was not the slightest trace of
+coquetry or playfulness. He could not help saying a little bitterly: "I
+don't think that any one would imagine from your manner that you were
+receiving a declaration."
+
+"But they might imagine from yours that you had the right to quarrel
+with me,--which would be worse."
+
+"We cannot part like this! It is too cruel to me."
+
+"We cannot part otherwise without the risk of greater cruelty."
+
+"But say at least, Clementina, that I have no rival. There is no other
+more favored suitor?"
+
+"That is so like a man--and yet so unlike the proud one I believed you
+to be. Why should a man like you even consider such a possibility? If I
+were a man I know I couldn't." She turned upon him a glance so clear and
+untroubled by either conscious vanity or evasion that he was hopelessly
+convinced of the truth of her statement, and she went on in a slightly
+lowered tone, "You have no right to ask me such a question,--but perhaps
+for that reason I am willing to answer you. There is none. Hush! For a
+good rider you are setting a poor example to the others, by crowding
+me towards the bank. Go forward and talk to Phemie, and tell her not to
+worry Mrs. Ashwood's horse nor race with her; I don't think he's quite
+safe, and Mrs. Ashwood isn't accustomed to using the Spanish bit.
+I suppose I must say something to Mr. Shipley, who doesn't seem to
+understand that I'M acting as chaperon, and YOU as captain of the
+party."
+
+She cantered forward as she spoke, and Grant was obliged to join her
+sister, who, mounted on a powerful roan, was mischievously exciting
+a beautiful quaker-colored mustang ridden by Mrs. Ashwood, already
+irritated by the unfamiliar pressure of the Eastern woman's hand upon
+his bit. The thick dust which had forced the party of twenty to close up
+in two solid files across the road compelled them at the first opening
+in the roadside fence to take the field in a straggling gallop. Grant,
+eager to escape from his own discontented self by doing something for
+others, reined in beside Euphemia and the fair stranger.
+
+"Let me take your place until Mrs. Ashwood's horse is quieted," he half
+whispered to Euphemia.
+
+"Thank you,--and I suppose it does not make any matter to Clem who
+quiets mine," she said, with provoking eyes and a toss of her head
+worthy of the spirited animal she was riding.
+
+"She thinks you quite capable of managing yourself and even others,"
+he replied with a playful glance at Shipley, who was riding somewhat
+stiffly on the other side.
+
+"Don't be too sure," retorted Phemie with another dangerous look; "I may
+give you trouble yet."
+
+They were approaching the first undulation of the russet plain they had
+emerged upon,--an umbrageous slope that seemed suddenly to diverge
+in two defiles among the shaded hills. Grant had given a few words of
+practical advice to Mrs. Ashwood, and shown her how to guide her mustang
+by the merest caressing touch of the rein upon its sensitive neck. He
+had not been sympathetically inclined towards the fair stranger, a rich
+and still youthful widow, although he could not deny her unquestioned
+good breeding, mental refinement, and a certain languorous
+thoughtfulness that was almost melancholy, which accented her blonde
+delicacy. But he had noticed that her manner was politely reserved and
+slightly constrained towards the Harcourts, and he had already resented
+it with a lover's instinctive loyalty. He had at first attributed it
+to a want of sympathy between Mrs. Ashwood's more intellectual
+sentimentalities and the Harcourts' undeniable lack of any sentiment
+whatever. But there was evidently some other innate antagonism. He
+was very polite to Mrs. Ashwood; she responded with a gentlewoman's
+courtesy, and, he was forced to admit, even a broader comprehension
+of his own merits than the Harcourt girls had ever shown, but he could
+still detect that she was not in accord with the party.
+
+"I am afraid you do not like California, Mrs. Ashwood?" he said
+pleasantly. "You perhaps find the life here too unrestrained and
+unconventional?"
+
+She looked at him in quick astonishment. "Are you quite sincere? Why,
+it strikes me that this is just what it is NOT. And I have so longed
+for something quite different. From what I have been told about the
+originality and adventure of everything here, and your independence of
+old social forms and customs, I am afraid I expected the opposite
+of what I've seen. Why, this very party--except that the ladies are
+prettier and more expensively gotten up--is like any party that might
+have ridden out at Saratoga or New York."
+
+"And as stupid, you would say."
+
+"As CONVENTIONAL, Mr. Grant; always excepting this lovely creature
+beneath me, whom I can't make out and who doesn't seem to care that I
+should. There! look! I told you so!"
+
+Her mustang had suddenly bounded forward; but as Grant followed he
+could see that the cause was the example of Phemie, who had, in some
+mad freak, dashed out in a frantic gallop. A half-dozen of the
+younger people hilariously accepted the challenge; the excitement was
+communicated to the others, until the whole cavalcade was sweeping
+down the slope. Grant was still at Mrs. Ashwood's side, restraining
+her mustang and his own impatient horse when Clementina joined them.
+"Phemie's mare has really bolted, I fear," she said in a quick whisper,
+"ride on, and never mind us." Grant looked quickly ahead; Phemie's roan,
+excited by the shouts behind her and to all appearance ungovernable, was
+fast disappearing with her rider. Without a word, trusting to his own
+good horsemanship and better knowledge of the ground, he darted out of
+the cavalcade to overtake her.
+
+But the unfortunate result of this was to give further impulse to the
+now racing horses as they approached a point where the slope terminated
+in two diverging canyons. Mrs. Ashwood gave a sharp pull upon her
+bit. To her consternation the mustang stopped short almost
+instantly,--planting his two fore feet rigidly in the dust and even
+sliding forward with the impetus. Had her seat been less firm she might
+have been thrown, but she recovered herself, although in doing so
+she still bore upon the bit, when to her astonishment the mustang
+deliberately stiffened himself as if for a shock, and then began to back
+slowly, quivering with excitement. She did not know that her native-bred
+animal fondly believed that he was participating in a rodeo, and that to
+his equine intelligence his fair mistress had just lassoed something!
+In vain she urged him forward; he still waited for the shock! When the
+cloud of dust in which she had been enwrapped drifted away, she saw to
+her amazement that she was alone. The entire party had disappeared into
+one of the canyons,--but which one she could not tell!
+
+When she succeeded at last in urging her mustang forward again she
+determined to take the right-hand canyon and trust to being either met
+or overtaken. A more practical and less adventurous nature would have
+waited at the point of divergence for the return of some of the party,
+but Mrs. Ashwood was, in truth, not sorry to be left to herself and the
+novel scenery for a while, and she had no doubt but she would eventually
+find her way to the hotel at San Mateo, which could not be far away, in
+time for luncheon.
+
+The road was still well defined, although it presently began to wind
+between ascending ranks of pines and larches that marked the terraces
+of hills, so high that she wondered she had not noticed them from the
+plains. An unmistakable suggestion of some haunting primeval solitude,
+a sense of the hushed and mysterious proximity of a nature she had never
+known before, the strange half-intoxicating breath of unsunned foliage
+and untrodden grasses and herbs, all combined to exalt her as she
+cantered forward. Even her horse seemed to have acquired an intelligent
+liberty, or rather to have established a sympathy with her in his needs
+and her own longings; instinctively she no longer pulled him with the
+curb; the reins hung loosely on his self-arched and unfettered neck;
+secure in this loneliness she found herself even talking to him with
+barbaric freedom. As she went on, the vague hush of all things animate
+and inanimate around her seemed to thicken, until she unconsciously
+halted before a dim and pillared wood, and a vast and heathless opening
+on whose mute brown lips Nature seemed to have laid the finger of
+silence. She forgot the party she had left, she forgot the luncheon she
+was going to; more important still she forgot that she had already left
+the traveled track far behind her, and, tremulous with anticipation,
+rode timidly into that arch of shadow.
+
+As her horse's hoofs fell noiselessly on the elastic moss-carpeted aisle
+she forgot even more than that. She forgot the artificial stimulus and
+excitement of the life she had been leading so long; she forgot the
+small meannesses and smaller worries of her well-to-do experiences; she
+forgot herself,--rather she regained a self she had long forgotten.
+For in the sweet seclusion of this half darkened sanctuary the clinging
+fripperies of her past slipped from her as a tawdry garment. The
+petted, spoiled, and vapidly precocious girlhood which had merged into
+a womanhood of aimless triumphs and meaner ambitions; the worldly but
+miserable triumph of a marriage that had left her delicacy abused and
+her heart sick and unsatisfied; the wifehood without home, seclusion,
+or maternity; the widowhood that at last brought relief, but with it the
+consciousness of hopelessly wasted youth,--all this seemed to drop from
+her here as lightly as the winged needles or noiseless withered spray
+from the dim gray vault above her head. In the sovereign balm of that
+woodland breath her better spirit was restored; somewhere in these
+wholesome shades seemed to still lurk what should have been her innocent
+and nymph-like youth, and to come out once more and greet her. Old songs
+she had forgotten, or whose music had failed in the discords of her
+frivolous life, sang themselves to her again in that sweet, grave
+silence; girlish dreams that she had foolishly been ashamed of, or had
+put away with her childish toys, stole back to her once more and became
+real in this tender twilight; old fancies, old fragments of verse and
+childish lore, grew palpable and moved faintly before her. The boyish
+prince who should have come was there; the babe that should have been
+hers was there!--she stopped suddenly with flaming eyes and indignant
+color. For it appeared that a MAN was there too, and had just risen from
+the fallen tree where he had been sitting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER VIII.
+
+
+She had so far forgotten herself in yielding to the spell of the place,
+and in the revelation of her naked soul and inner nature, that it was
+with something of the instinct of outraged modesty that she seemed to
+shrink before this apparition of the outer world and outer worldliness.
+In an instant the nearer past returned; she remembered where she was,
+how she had come there, from whom she had come, and to whom she was
+returning. She could see that she had not only aimlessly wandered from
+the world but from the road; and for that instant she hated this man who
+had reminded her of it, even while she knew she must ask his assistance.
+It relieved her slightly to observe that he seemed as disturbed and
+impatient as herself, and as he took a pencil from between his lips and
+returned it to his pocket he scarcely looked at her.
+
+But with her return to the world of convenances came its repression,
+and with a gentlewoman's ease and modulated voice she leaned over her
+mustang's neck and said: "I have strayed from my party and am afraid I
+have lost my way. We were going to the hotel at San Mateo. Would you be
+kind enough to direct me there, or show me how I can regain the road by
+which I came?"
+
+Her voice and manner were quite enough to arrest him where he stood with
+a pleased surprise in his fresh and ingenuous face. She looked at him
+more closely. He was, in spite of his long silken mustache, so absurdly
+young; he might, in spite of that youth, be so absurdly man-like! What
+was he doing there? Was he a farmer's son, an artist, a surveyor, or a
+city clerk out for a holiday? Was there perhaps a youthful female of his
+species somewhere for whom he was waiting and upon whose tryst she was
+now breaking? Was he--terrible thought!--the outlying picket of some
+family picnic? His dress, neat, simple, free from ostentatious ornament,
+betrayed nothing. She waited for his voice.
+
+"Oh, you have left San Mateo miles away to the right," he said with
+quick youthful sympathy, "at least five miles! Where did you leave your
+party?"
+
+His voice was winning, and even refined, she thought. She answered it
+quite spontaneously: "At a fork of two roads. I see now I took the wrong
+turning."
+
+"Yes, you took the road to Crystal Spring. It's just down there in the
+valley, not more than a mile. You'd have been there now if you hadn't
+turned off at the woods."
+
+"I couldn't help it, it was so beautiful."
+
+"Isn't it?"
+
+"Perfect."
+
+"And such shadows, and such intensity of color."
+
+"Wonderful!--and all along the ridge, looking down that defile!"
+
+"Yes, and that point where it seems as if you had only to stretch out
+your hand to pick a manzanita berry from the other side of the canyon,
+half a mile across!"
+
+"Yes, and that first glimpse of the valley through the Gothic gateway of
+rocks!"
+
+"And the color of those rocks,--cinnamon and bronze with the light green
+of the Yerba buena vine splashing over them."
+
+"Yes, but for color DID you notice that hillside of yellow poppies
+pouring down into the valley like a golden Niagara?"
+
+"Certainly,--and the perfect clearness of everything."
+
+"And yet such complete silence and repose!"
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"Ah, yes!"
+
+They were both gravely nodding and shaking their heads with sparkling
+eyes and brightened color, looking not at each other but at the far
+landscape vignetted through a lozenge-shaped wind opening in the trees.
+Suddenly Mrs. Ashwood straightened herself in the saddle, looked grave,
+lifted the reins and apparently the ten years with them that had dropped
+from her. But she said in her easiest well-bred tones, and a half sigh,
+"Then I must take the road back again to where it forks?"
+
+"Oh, no! you can go by Crystal Spring. It's no further, and I'll show
+you the way. But you'd better stop and rest yourself and your horse for
+a little while at the Springs Hotel. It's a very nice place. Many people
+ride there from San Francisco to luncheon and return. I wonder that your
+party didn't prefer it; and if they are looking for you,--as they surely
+must be," he said, as if with a sudden conception of her importance,
+"they'll come there when they find you're not at San Mateo."
+
+This seemed reasonable, although the process of being "fetched" and
+taking the five miles ride, which she had enjoyed so much alone,
+in company was not attractive. "Couldn't I go on at once?" she said
+impulsively.
+
+"You would meet them sooner," he said thoughtfully.
+
+This was quite enough for Mrs. Ashwood. "I think I'll rest this poor
+horse, who is really tired," she, said with charming hypocrisy, "and
+stop at the hotel."
+
+She saw his face brighten. Perhaps he was the son of the hotel
+proprietor, or a youthful partner himself. "I suppose you live here?"
+she suggested gently. "You seem to know the place so well."
+
+"No," he returned quickly; "I only run down here from San Francisco when
+I can get a day off."
+
+A day off! He was in some regular employment. But he continued: "And I
+used to go to boarding-school near here, and know all these woods well."
+
+He must be a native! How odd! She had not conceived that there might
+be any other population here than the immigrants; perhaps that was what
+made him so interesting and different from the others. "Then your father
+and mother live here?" she said.
+
+His frank face, incapable of disguise, changed suddenly. "No," he said
+simply, but without any trace of awkwardness. Then after a slight
+pause he laid his hand--she noticed it was white and well kept--on her
+mustang's neck, and said, "If--if you care to trust yourself to me, I
+could lead you and your horse down a trail into the valley that is at
+least a third of the distance shorter. It would save you going back to
+the regular road, and there are one or two lovely views that I could
+show you. I should be so pleased, if it would not trouble you. There's a
+steep place or two--but I think there's no danger."
+
+"I shall not be afraid."
+
+She smiled so graciously, and, as she fully believed, maternally, that
+he looked at her the second time. To his first hurried impression of
+her as an elegant and delicately nurtured woman--one of the class of
+distinguished tourists that fashion was beginning to send thither--he
+had now to add that she had a quantity of fine silken-spun light hair
+gathered in a heavy braid beneath her gray hat; that her mouth was
+very delicately lipped and beautifully sensitive; that her soft skin,
+although just then touched with excitement, was a pale faded velvet, and
+seemed to be worn with ennui rather than experience; that her eyes
+were hidden behind a strip of gray veil whence only a faint glow was
+discernible. To this must still be added a poetic fancy all his own
+that, as she sat there, with the skirt of her gray habit falling from
+her long bodiced waist over the mustang's fawn-colored flanks, and with
+her slim gauntleted hands lightly swaying the reins, she looked like
+Queen Guinevere in the forest. Not that he particularly fancied Queen
+Guinevere, or that he at all imagined himself Launcelot, but it was
+quite in keeping with the suggestion-haunted brain of John Milton
+Harcourt, whom the astute reader has of course long since recognized.
+
+Preceding her through the soft carpeted vault with a woodman's
+instinct,--for there was apparently no trail to be seen,--the soft inner
+twilight began to give way to the outer stronger day, and presently she
+was startled to see the clear blue of the sky before her on apparently
+the same level as the brown pine-tessellated floor she was treading. Not
+only did this show her that she was crossing a ridge of the upland, but
+a few moments later she had passed beyond the woods to a golden hillside
+that sloped towards a leafy, sheltered, and exquisitely-proportioned
+valley. A tiny but picturesque tower, and a few straggling roofs and
+gables, the flashing of a crystal stream through the leaves, and a
+narrow white ribbon of road winding behind it indicated the hostelry
+they were seeking. So peaceful and unfrequented it looked, nestling
+between the hills, that it seemed as if they had discovered it.
+
+With his hand at times upon the bridle, at others merely caressing her
+mustang's neck, he led the way; there were a few breathless places where
+the crown of his straw hat appeared between her horse's reins, and again
+when she seemed almost slipping over on his shoulder, but they were
+passed with such frank fearlessness and invincible youthful confidence
+on the part of her escort that she felt no timidity. There were moments
+when a bit of the charmed landscape unfolding before them overpowered
+them both, and they halted to gaze,--sometimes without a word, or only a
+significant gesture of sympathy and attention. At one of those artistic
+manifestations Mrs. Ashwood laid her slim gloved fingers lightly but
+unwittingly on John Milton's arm, and withdrew them, however, with a
+quick girlish apology and a foolish color which annoyed her more than
+the appearance of familiarity. But they were now getting well down into
+the valley; the court of the little hotel was already opening before
+them; their unconventional relations in the idyllic world above had
+changed; the new one required some delicacy of handling, and she had an
+idea that even the simplicity of the young stranger might be confusing.
+
+"I must ask you to continue to act as my escort," she said, laughingly.
+"I am Mrs. Ashwood of Philadelphia, visiting San Francisco with my
+sister and brother, who are, I am afraid, even now hopelessly waiting
+luncheon for me at San Mateo. But as there seems to be no prospect of my
+joining them in time, I hope you will be able to give me the pleasure
+of your company, with whatever they may give us here in the way of
+refreshment."
+
+"I shall be very happy," returned John Milton with unmistakable candor;
+"but perhaps some of your friends will be arriving in quest of you, if
+they are not already here."
+
+"Then they will join us or wait," said Mrs. Ashwood incisively, with
+her first exhibition of the imperiousness of a rich and pretty woman.
+Perhaps she was a little annoyed that her elaborate introduction of
+herself had produced no reciprocal disclosure by her companion. "Will
+you please send the landlord to me?" she added.
+
+John Milton disappeared in the hotel as she cantered to the porch. In
+another moment she was giving the landlord her orders with the easy
+confidence of one who knew herself only as an always welcome and highly
+privileged guest, which was not without its effect. "And," she added
+carelessly, "when everything is ready you will please tell--Mr."--
+
+"Harcourt," suggested the landlord promptly.
+
+Mrs. Ashwood's perfectly trained face gave not the slightest sign of the
+surprise that had overtaken her. "Of course,--Mr. Harcourt."
+
+"You know he's the son of the millionaire," continued the landlord, not
+at all unwilling to display the importance of the habitues of Crystal
+Spring, "though they've quarreled and don't get on together."
+
+"I know," said the lady languidly, "and, if any one comes here for ME,
+ask them to wait in the parlor until I come."
+
+Then, submitting herself and her dusty habit to the awkward ministration
+of the Irish chambermaid, she was quite thrilled with a delightful
+curiosity. She vaguely remembered that she had heard something of the
+Harcourt family discord,--but that was the divorced daughter surely!
+And this young man was Harcourt's son, and they had quarreled! A quarrel
+with a frank, open, ingenuous fellow like that--a mere boy--could only
+be the father's fault. Luckily she had never mentioned the name of
+Harcourt! She would not now; he need not know that it was his father who
+had originated the party; why should she make him uncomfortable for the
+few moments they were together?
+
+There was nothing of this in her face as she descended and joined him.
+He thought that face handsome, well-bred, and refined. But this
+breeding and refinement seemed to him--in his ignorance of the world,
+possibly--as only a graceful concealment of a self of which he knew
+nothing; and he was not surprised to find that her pretty gray eyes, now
+no longer hidden by her veil, really told him no more than her lips.
+He was a little afraid of her, and now that she had lost her naive
+enthusiasm he was conscious of a vague remorsefulness for his
+interrupted work in the forest. What was he doing here? He who had
+avoided the cruel, selfish world of wealth and pleasure,--a world that
+this woman represented,--the world that had stood apart from him in the
+one dream of his life--and had let Loo die! His quickly responsive face
+darkened.
+
+"I am afraid I really interrupted you up there," she said gently,
+looking in his face with an expression of unfeigned concern; "you were
+at work of some kind, I know, and I have very selfishly thought only of
+myself. But the whole scene was so new to me, and I so rarely meet any
+one who sees things as I do, that I know you will forgive me." She bent
+her eyes upon him with a certain soft timidity. "You are an artist?"
+
+"I am afraid not," he said, coloring and smiling faintly; "I don't think
+I could draw a straight line."
+
+"Don't try to; they're not pretty, and the mere ability to draw them
+straight or curved doesn't make an artist. But you are a LOVER of
+nature, I know, and from what I have heard you say I believe you can do
+what lovers cannot do,--make others feel as they do,--and that is what I
+call being an artist. You write? You are a poet?"
+
+"Oh dear, no," he said with a smile, half of relief and half of naive
+superiority, "I'm a prose writer--on a daily newspaper."
+
+To his surprise she was not disconcerted; rather a look of animation lit
+up her face as she said brightly, "Oh, then, you can of course satisfy
+my curiosity about something. You know the road from San Francisco to
+the Cliff House. Except for the view of the sea-lions when one gets
+there it's stupid; my brother says it's like all the San Francisco
+excursions,--a dusty drive with a julep at the end of it. Well, one day
+we were coming back from a drive there, and when we were beginning to
+wind along the brow of that dreadful staring Lone Mountain Cemetery, I
+said I would get out and walk, and avoid the obtrusive glitter of those
+tombstones rising before me all the way. I pushed open a little gate and
+passed in. Once among these funereal shrubs and cold statuesque lilies
+everything was changed; I saw the staring tombstones no longer, for,
+like them, I seemed to be always facing the sea. The road had vanished;
+everything had vanished but the endless waste of ocean below me, and
+the last slope of rock and sand. It seemed to be the fittest place for
+a cemetery,--this end of the crumbling earth,--this beginning of the
+eternal sea. There! don't think that idea my own, or that I thought of
+it then. No,--I read it all afterwards, and that's why I'm telling you
+this."
+
+She could not help smiling at his now attentive face, and went on: "Some
+days afterwards I got hold of a newspaper four or six months old, and
+there was a description of all that I thought I had seen and felt,--only
+far more beautiful and touching, as you shall see, for I cut it out
+of the paper and have kept it. It seemed to me that it must be some
+personal experience,--as if the writer had followed some dear friend
+there,--although it was with the unostentation and indefiniteness of
+true and delicate feeling. It impressed me so much that I went back
+there twice or thrice, and always seemed to move to the rhythm of that
+beautiful funeral march--and I am afraid, being a woman, that I wandered
+around among the graves as though I could find out who it was that had
+been sung so sweetly, and if it were man or woman. I've got it here,"
+she said, taking a dainty ivory porte-monnaie from her pocket and
+picking out with two slim finger-tips a folded slip of newspaper; "and
+I thought that maybe you might recognize the style of the writer, and
+perhaps know something of his history. For I believe he has one. There!
+that is only a part of the article, of course, but it is the part that
+interested me. Just read from there," she pointed, leaning partly over
+his shoulder so that her soft breath stirred his hair, "to the end; it
+isn't long."
+
+In the film that seemed to come across his eyes, suddenly the print
+appeared blurred and indistinct. But he knew that she had put into his
+hand something he had written after the death of his wife; something
+spontaneous and impulsive, when her loss still filled his days and
+nights and almost unconsciously swayed his pen. He remembered that his
+eyes had been as dim when he wrote it--and now--handed to him by this
+smiling, well-to-do woman, he was as shocked at first as if he had
+suddenly found her reading his private letters. This was followed by a
+sudden sense of shame that he had ever thus publicly bared his feelings,
+and then by the illogical but irresistible conviction that it was false
+and stupid. The few phrases she had pointed out appeared as cheap and
+hollow rhetoric amid the surroundings of their social tete-a-tete over
+the luncheon-table. There was small danger that this heady wine of
+woman's praise would make him betray himself; there was no sign of
+gratified authorship in his voice as he quietly laid down the paper and
+said dryly: "I am afraid I can't help you. You know it may be purely
+fanciful."
+
+"I don't think so," said Mrs. Ashwood thoughtfully. "At the same time it
+doesn't strike me as a very abiding grief for that very reason. It's TOO
+sympathetic. It strikes me that it might be the first grief of some one
+too young to be inured to sorrow or experienced enough to accept it as
+the common lot. But like all youthful impressions it is very sincere and
+true while it lasts. I don't know whether one gets anything more real
+when one gets older."
+
+With an insincerity he could not account for, he now felt inclined to
+defend his previous sentiment, although all the while conscious of a
+certain charm in his companion's graceful skepticism. He had in his
+truthfulness and independence hitherto always been quite free from that
+feeble admiration of cynicism which attacks the intellectually weak and
+immature, and his present predilection may have been due more to her
+charming personality. She was not at all like his sisters; she had
+none of Clementina's cold abstraction, and none of Euphemia's sharp
+and demonstrative effusiveness. And in his secret consciousness of her
+flattering foreknowledge of him, with her assurance that before they had
+ever met he had unwittingly influenced her, he began to feel more at his
+ease. His fair companion also, in the equally secret knowledge she had
+acquired of his history, felt as secure as if she had been formally
+introduced. Nobody could find fault with her for showing civility to
+the ostensible son of her host; it was not necessary that she should
+be aware of their family differences. There was a charm too in their
+enforced isolation, in what was the exceptional solitude of the little
+hotel that day, and the seclusion of their table by the window of the
+dining-room, which gave a charming domesticity to their repast. From
+time to time they glanced down the lonely canyon, losing itself in the
+afternoon shadow. Nevertheless Mrs. Ashwood's preoccupation with Nature
+did not preclude a human curiosity to hear something more of John
+Milton's quarrel with his father. There was certainly nothing of the
+prodigal son about him; there was no precocious evil knowledge in his
+frank eyes; no record of excesses in his healthy, fresh complexion;
+no unwholesome or disturbed tastes in what she had seen of his rural
+preferences and understanding of natural beauty. To have attempted any
+direct questioning that would have revealed his name and identity would
+have obliged her to speak of herself as his father's guest. She began
+indirectly; he had said he had been a reporter, and he was still a
+chronicler of this strange life. He had of course heard of many cases
+of family feuds and estrangements? Her brother had told her of some
+dreadful vendettas he had known in the Southwest, and how whole families
+had been divided. Since she had been here she had heard of odd cases of
+brothers meeting accidentally after long and unaccounted separations;
+of husbands suddenly confronted with wives they had deserted; of fathers
+encountering discarded sons!
+
+John Milton's face betrayed no uneasy consciousness. If anything it was
+beginning to glow with a boyish admiration of the grace and intelligence
+of the fair speaker, that was perhaps heightened by an assumption of
+half coquettish discomfiture.
+
+"You are laughing at me!" she said finally. "But inhuman and selfish as
+these stories may seem, and sometimes are, I believe that these curious
+estrangements and separations often come from some fatal weakness of
+temperament that might be strengthened, or some trivial misunderstanding
+that could be explained. It is separation that makes them seem
+irrevocable only because they are inexplicable, and a vague memory
+always seems more terrible than a definite one. Facts may be forgiven
+and forgotten, but mysteries haunt one always. I believe there are weak,
+sensitive people who dread to put their wrongs into shape; those are the
+kind who sulk, and when you add separation to sulking, reconciliation
+becomes impossible. I knew a very singular case of that kind once. If
+you like, I'll tell it to you. May be you will be able, some day, to
+weave it into one of your writings. And it's quite true."
+
+It is hardly necessary to say that John Milton had not been touched by
+any personal significance in his companion's speech, whatever she may
+have intended; and it is equally true that whether she had presently
+forgotten her purpose, or had become suddenly interested in her own
+conversation, her face grew more animated, her manner more confidential,
+and something of the youthful enthusiasm she had shown in the mountain
+seemed to come back to her.
+
+"I might say it happened anywhere and call the people M. or N., but it
+really did occur in my own family, and although I was much younger
+at the time it impressed me very strongly. My cousin, who had been
+my playmate, was an orphan, and had been intrusted to the care of my
+father, who was his guardian. He was always a clever boy, but singularly
+sensitive and quick to take offense. Perhaps it was because the little
+property his father had left made him partly dependent on my father, and
+that I was rich, but he seemed to feel the disparity in our positions.
+I was too young to understand it; I think it existed only in his
+imagination, for I believe we were treated alike. But I remember that he
+was full of vague threats of running away and going to sea, and that
+it was part of his weak temperament to terrify me with his extravagant
+confidences. I was always frightened when, after one of those scenes,
+he would pack his valise or perhaps only tie up a few things in a
+handkerchief, as in the advertisement pictures of the runaway slaves,
+and declare that we would never lay eyes upon him again. At first I
+never saw the ridiculousness of all this,--for I ought to have told you
+that he was a rather delicate and timid boy, and quite unfitted for a
+rough life or any exposure,--but others did, and one day I laughed at
+him and told him he was afraid. I shall never forget the expression of
+his face and never forgive myself for it. He went away,--but he returned
+the next day! He threatened once to commit suicide, left his clothes on
+the bank of the river, and came home in another suit of clothes he had
+taken with him. When I was sent abroad to school I lost sight of him;
+when I returned he was at college, apparently unchanged. When he
+came home for vacation, far from having been subdued by contact with
+strangers, it seemed that his unhappy sensitiveness had been only
+intensified by the ridicule of his fellows. He had even acquired a
+most ridiculous theory about the degrading effects of civilization, and
+wanted to go back to a state of barbarism. He said the wilderness was
+the only true home of man. My father, instead of bearing with what
+I believe was his infirmity, dryly offered him the means to try his
+experiment. He started for some place in Texas, saying we would never
+hear from him again. A month after he wrote for more money. My father
+replied rather impatiently, I suppose,--I never knew exactly what he
+wrote. That was some years ago. He had told the truth at last, for we
+never heard from him again."
+
+It is to be feared that John Milton was following the animated lips and
+eyes of the fair speaker rather than her story. Perhaps that was the
+reason why he said, "May he not have been a disappointed man?"
+
+"I don't understand," she said simply.
+
+"Perhaps," said John Milton with a boyish blush, "you may have
+unconsciously raised hopes in his heart--and"--
+
+"I should hardly attempt to interest a chronicler of adventure like you
+in such a very commonplace, every-day style of romance," she said,
+with a little impatience, "even if my vanity compelled me to make such
+confidences to a stranger. No,--it was nothing quite as vulgar as that.
+And," she added quickly, with a playfully amused smile as she saw the
+young fellow's evident distress, "I should have probably heard from him
+again. Those stories always end in that way."
+
+"And you think?"--said John Milton.
+
+"I think," said Mrs. Ashwood slowly, "that he actually did commit
+suicide--or effaced himself in some way, just as firmly as I believe he
+might have been saved by judicious treatment. Otherwise we should have
+heard from him. You'll say that's only a woman's reasoning--but I think
+our perceptions are often instinctive, and I knew his character."
+
+Still following the play of her delicate features into a romance of his
+own weaving, the imaginative young reporter who had seen so much from
+the heights of Russian Hill said earnestly, "Then I have your permission
+to use this material at any future time?"
+
+"Yes," said the lady smilingly.
+
+"And you will not mind if I should take some liberties with the text?"
+
+"I must of course leave something to your artistic taste. But you will
+let me see it?"
+
+There were voices outside now, breaking the silence of the veranda.
+They had been so preoccupied as not to notice the arrival of a horseman.
+Steps came along the passage; the landlord returned. Mrs. Ashwood turned
+quickly towards him.
+
+"Mr. Grant, of your party, ma'am, to fetch you."
+
+She saw an unmistakable change in her young friend's mobile face. "I
+will be ready in a moment," she said to the landlord. Then, turning
+to John Milton, the arch-hypocrite said sweetly: "My brother must have
+known instinctively that I was in good hands, as he didn't come. But I
+am sorry, for I should have so liked to introduce him to you--although
+by the way," with a bright smile, "I don't think you have yet told me
+your name. I know I couldn't have FORGOTTEN it."
+
+"Harcourt," said John Milton, with a half-embarrassed laugh.
+
+"But you must come and see me, Mr.--Mr. Harcourt," she said, producing
+a card from a case already in her fingers, "at my hotel, and let my
+brother thank you there for your kindness and gallantry to a stranger. I
+shall be here a few weeks longer before we go south to look for a place
+where my brother can winter. DO come and see me, although I cannot
+introduce you to anything as real and beautiful as what YOU have shown
+me to-day. Good-by, Mr. Harcourt; I won't trouble you to come down and
+bore yourself with my escort's questions and congratulations."
+
+She bent her head and allowed her soft eyes to rest upon his with a
+graciousness that was beyond her speech, pulled her veil over her eyes
+again, with a pretty suggestion that she had no further use for them,
+and taking her riding-skirt lightly in her hand seemed to glide from the
+room.
+
+On her way to San Mateo, where it appeared the disorganized party had
+prolonged their visit to accept an invitation to dine with a local
+magnate, she was pleasantly conversational with the slightly abstracted
+Grant. She was so sorry to have given them all this trouble and anxiety!
+Of course she ought to have waited at the fork of the road, but she had
+never doubted but she could rejoin them presently on the main road. She
+was glad that Miss Euphemia's runaway horse had been stopped without
+accident; it would have been dreadful if anything had happened to HER;
+Mr. Harcourt seemed so wrapped up in his girls. It was a pity they never
+had a son--Ah? Indeed! Then there was a son? So--and father and son had
+quarreled? That was so sad. And for some trifling cause, no doubt?
+
+"I believe he married the housemaid," said Grant grimly. "Be
+careful!--Allow me."
+
+"It's no use!" said Mrs. Ashwood, flushing with pink impatience, as she
+recovered her seat, which a sudden bolt of her mustang had imperiled, "I
+really can't make out the tricks of this beast! Thank you," she added,
+with a sweet smile, "but I think I can manage him now. I can't see
+why he stopped. I'll be more careful. You were saying the son was
+married--surely not that boy!"
+
+"Boy!" echoed Grant. "Then you know?"--
+
+"I mean of course he must be a boy--they all grew up here--and it was
+only five or six years ago that their parents emigrated," she retorted a
+little impatiently. "And what about this creature?"
+
+"Your horse?"
+
+"You know I mean the woman he married. Of course she was older than
+he--and caught him?"
+
+"I think there was a year or two difference," said Grant quietly.
+
+"Yes, but your gallantry keeps you from telling the truth; which is that
+the women, in cases of this kind, are much older and more experienced."
+
+"Are they? Well, perhaps she is, NOW. She is dead."
+
+Mrs. Ashwood walked her horse. "Poor thing," she said. Then a sudden
+idea took possession of her and brought a film to her eyes. "How long
+ago?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+"About six or seven months, I think. I believe there was a baby who died
+too."
+
+She continued to walk her horse slowly, stroking its curved neck. "I
+think it's perfectly shameful!" she said suddenly.
+
+"Not so bad as that, Mrs. Ashwood, surely. The girl may have loved
+him--and he"--
+
+"You know perfectly what I mean, Mr. Grant. I speak of the conduct of
+the mother and father and those two sisters!"
+
+Grant slightly elevated his eyebrows. "But you forget, Mrs. Ashwood. It
+was young Harcourt and his wife's own act. They preferred to take their
+own path and keep it."
+
+"I think," said Mrs. Ashwood authoritatively, "that the idea of leaving
+those two unfortunate children to suffer and struggle on alone--out
+there--on the sand hills of San Francisco--was simply disgraceful!"
+
+Later that evening she was unreasonably annoyed to find that her
+brother, Mr. John Shipley, had taken advantage of the absence of Grant
+to pay marked attention to Clementina, and had even prevailed upon that
+imperious goddess to accompany him after dinner on a moonlight stroll
+upon the veranda and terraces of Los Pajaros. Nevertheless she seemed to
+recover her spirits enough to talk volubly of the beautiful scenery
+she had discovered in her late perilous abandonment in the wilds of the
+Coast Range; to aver her intention to visit it again; to speak of it in
+a severely practical way as offering a far better site for the cottages
+of the young married couples just beginning life than the outskirts of
+towns or the bleak sand hills of San Francisco; and thence by graceful
+degrees into a dissertation upon popular fallacies in regard to hasty
+marriages, and the mistaken idea of some parents in not accepting the
+inevitable and making the best of it. She still found time to enter
+into an appreciative and exhaustive criticism upon the literature and
+journalistic enterprise of the Pacific Coast with the proprietor of the
+"Pioneer," and to cause that gentleman to declare that whatever people
+might say about rich and fashionable Eastern women, that Mrs. Ashwood's
+head was about as level as it was pretty.
+
+The next morning found her more thoughtful and subdued, and when her
+brother came upon her sitting on the veranda, while the party were
+preparing to return, she was reading a newspaper slip that she had taken
+from her porte-monnaie, with a face that was partly shadowed.
+
+"What have you struck there, Conny?" said her brother gayly. "It looks
+too serious for a recipe."
+
+"Something I should like you to read some time, Jack," she said, lifting
+her lashes with a slight timidity, "if you would take the trouble. I
+really wonder how it would impress you."
+
+"Pass it over," said Jack Shipley good-humoredly, with his cigar between
+his lips. "I'll take it now."
+
+She handed him the slip and turned partly away; he took it, glanced at
+it sideways, turned it over, and suddenly his look grew concentrated,
+and he took the cigar from his lips.
+
+"Well," she said playfully, turning to him again. "What do you think of
+it?"
+
+"Think of it?" he said with a rising color. "I think it's infamous! Who
+did it?"
+
+She stared at him, then glanced quickly at the slip. "What are you
+reading?" she said.
+
+"This, of course," he said impatiently. "What you gave me." But he was
+pointing to THE OTHER SIDE of the newspaper slip.
+
+She took it from him impatiently and read for the first time the
+printing on the reverse side of the article she had treasured so long.
+It was the concluding paragraph of an apparently larger editorial. "One
+thing is certain, that a man in Daniel Harcourt's position cannot afford
+to pass over in silence accusations like the above, that affect not only
+his private character, but the integrity of his title to the land that
+was the foundation of his fortune. When trickery, sharp practice, and
+even criminality in the past are more than hinted at, they cannot be
+met by mere pompous silence or allusions to private position, social
+prestige, or distinguished friends in the present."
+
+Mrs. Ashwood turned the slip over with scornful impatience, a pretty
+uplifting of her eyebrows and a slight curl of her lip. "I suppose none
+of those people's beginnings can bear looking into--and they certainly
+should be the last ones to find fault with anybody. But, good gracious,
+Jack! what has this to do with you?"
+
+"With me?" said Shipley angrily. "Why, I proposed to Clementina last
+night!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER IX.
+
+
+The wayfarers on the Tasajara turnpike, whom Mr. Daniel Harcourt
+passed with his fast trotting mare and sulky, saw that their great
+fellow-townsman was more than usually preoccupied and curt in his
+acknowledgment of their salutations. Nevertheless as he drew near
+the creek, he partly checked his horse, and when he reached a slight
+acclivity of the interminable plain--which had really been the bank of
+the creek in bygone days--he pulled up, alighted, tied his horse to a
+rail fence, and clambering over the inclosure made his way along the
+ridge. It was covered with nettles, thistles, and a few wiry dwarf
+larches of native growth; dust from the adjacent highway had invaded
+it, with a few scattered and torn handbills, waste paper, rags, empty
+provision cans, and other suburban debris. Yet it was the site of 'Lige
+Curtis's cabin, long since erased and forgotten. The bed of the old
+creek had receded; the last tules had been cleared away; the channel and
+embarcadero were half a mile from the bank and log whereon the pioneer
+of Tasajara had idly sunned himself.
+
+Mr. Harcourt walked on, occasionally turning over the scattered objects
+with his foot, and stopping at times to examine the ground more closely.
+It had not apparently been disturbed since he himself, six years ago,
+had razed the wretched shanty and carried off its timbers to aid in the
+erection of a larger cabin further inland. He raised his eyes to the
+prospect before him,--to the town with its steamboats lying at the
+wharves, to the grain elevator, the warehouses, the railroad station
+with its puffing engines, the flagstaff of Harcourt House and the
+clustering roofs of the town, and beyond, the painted dome of his last
+creation, the Free Library. This was all HIS work, HIS planning, HIS
+foresight, whatever they might say of the wandering drunkard from whose
+tremulous fingers he had snatched the opportunity. They could not take
+THAT from him, however they might follow him with envy and reviling,
+any more than they could wrest from him the five years of peaceful
+possession. It was with something of the prosperous consciousness with
+which he had mounted the platform on the opening of the Free Library,
+that he now climbed into his buggy and drove away.
+
+Nevertheless he stopped at his Land Office as he drove into town,
+and gave a few orders. "I want a strong picket fence put around the
+fifty-vara lot in block fifty-seven, and the ground cleared up at once.
+Let me know when the men get to work, and I'll overlook them."
+
+Re-entering his own house in the square, where Mrs. Harcourt and
+Clementina--who often accompanied him in those business visits--were
+waiting for him with luncheon, he smiled somewhat superciliously as the
+servant informed him that "Professor Grant had just arrived." Really
+that man was trying to make the most of his time with Clementina!
+Perhaps the rival attractions of that Boston swell Shipley had something
+to do with it! He must positively talk to Clementina about this. In
+point of fact he himself was a little disappointed in Grant, who, since
+his offer to take the task of hunting down his calumniators, had really
+done nothing. He turned into his study, but was slightly astonished to
+find that Grant, instead of paying court to Clementina in the adjoining
+drawing-room, was sitting rather thoughtfully in his own armchair.
+
+He rose as Harcourt entered. "I didn't let them announce me to the
+ladies," he said, "as I have some important business with you first, and
+we may find it necessary that I should take the next train back to town.
+You remember that a few weeks ago I offered to look into the matter of
+those slanders against you. I apprehended it would be a trifling matter
+of envy or jealousy on the part of your old associates or neighbors
+which could be put straight with a little good feeling; but I must be
+frank with you, Harcourt, and say at the beginning that it turns out
+to be an infernally ugly business. Call it conspiracy if you like, or
+organized hostility, I'm afraid it will require a lawyer rather than
+an arbitrator to manage it, and the sooner the better. For the most
+unpleasant thing about it is, that I can't find out exactly HOW BAD it
+is!"
+
+Unfortunately the weaker instinct of Harcourt's nature was first roused;
+the vulgar rage which confounds the bearer of ill news with the
+news itself filled his breast. "And this is all that your confounded
+intermeddling came to?" he said brutally.
+
+"No," said Grant quietly, with a preoccupied ignoring of the insult that
+was more hopeless for Harcourt. "I found out that it is claimed that
+this 'Lige Curtis was not drowned nor lost that night; but that he
+escaped, and for three years has convinced another man that you are
+wrongfully in possession of this land; that these two naturally hold you
+in their power, and that they are only waiting for you to be forced into
+legal proceedings for slander to prove all their charges. Until
+then, for some reason best known to themselves, Curtis remains in the
+background."
+
+"Does he deny the deed under which I hold the property?" said Harcourt
+savagely.
+
+"He says it was only a security for a trifling loan, and not an actual
+transfer."
+
+"And don't those fools know that his security could be forfeited?"
+
+"Yes, but not in the way it is recorded in the county clerk's office.
+They say that the record shows that there was an interpolation in the
+paper he left with you--which was a forgery. Briefly, Harcourt, you are
+accused of that. More,--it is intimated that when he fell into the creek
+that night, and escaped on a raft that was floating past, that he had
+been first stunned by a blow from some one interested in getting rid of
+him."
+
+He paused and glanced out of the window.
+
+"Is that all?" asked Harcourt in a perfectly quiet, steady, voice.
+
+"All!" replied Grant, struck with the change in his companion's manner,
+and turning his eyes upon him quickly.
+
+The change indeed was marked and significant. Whether from relief at
+knowing the worst, or whether he was experiencing the same reaction from
+the utter falsity of this last accusation that he had felt when Grant
+had unintentionally wronged him in his previous recollection, certain it
+is that some unknown reserve of strength in his own nature, of which
+he knew nothing before, suddenly came to his aid in this extremity. It
+invested him with an uncouth dignity that for the first time excited
+Grant's respect.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Grant, for the hasty way I spoke to you a moment
+ago, for I thank you, and appreciate thoroughly and sincerely what you
+have done. You are right; it is a matter for fighting and not fussing
+over. But I must have a head to hit. Whose is it?"
+
+"The man who holds himself legally responsible is Fletcher,--the
+proprietor of the 'Clarion,' and a man of property."
+
+"The 'Clarion'? That is the paper which began the attack?" said
+Harcourt.
+
+"Yes, and it is only fair to tell you here that your son threw up his
+place on it in consequence of its attack upon you."
+
+There was perhaps the slightest possible shrinking in Harcourt's
+eyelids--the one congenital likeness to his discarded son--but his
+otherwise calm demeanor did not change. Grant went on more cheerfully:
+"I've told you all I know. When I spoke of an unknown WORST, I did not
+refer to any further accusation, but to whatever evidence they might
+have fabricated or suborned to prove any one of them. It is only the
+strength and fairness of the hands they hold that is uncertain.
+Against that you have your certain uncontested possession, the peculiar
+character and antecedents of this 'Lige Curtis, which would make his
+evidence untrustworthy and even make it difficult for them to establish
+his identity. I am told that his failure to contest your appropriation
+of his property is explained by the fact of his being absent from the
+country most of the time; but again, this would not account for their
+silence until within the last six months, unless they have been waiting
+for further evidence to establish it. But even then they must have known
+that the time of recovery had passed. You are a practical man, Harcourt;
+I needn't tell you therefore what your lawyer will probably tell you,
+that practically, so far as your rights are concerned, you remain
+as before these calumnies; that a cause of action unprosecuted or
+in abeyance is practically no cause, and that it is not for you to
+anticipate one. BUT"--
+
+He paused and looked steadily at Harcourt. Harcourt met his look with a
+dull, ox-like stolidity. "I shall begin the suit at once," he said.
+
+"And I," said Grant, holding out his hand, "will stand by you. But tell
+me now what you knew of this man Curtis,--his character and disposition;
+it may be some clue as to what are his methods and his intentions."
+
+Harcourt briefly sketched 'Lige Curtis as he knew him and understood
+him. It was another indication of his reserved power that the
+description was so singularly clear, practical, unprejudiced, and
+impartial that it impressed Grant with its truthfulness.
+
+"I can't make him out," he said; "you have drawn a weak, but neither a
+dishonest nor malignant man. There must have been somebody behind him.
+Can you think of any personal enemy?"
+
+"I have been subjected to the usual jealousy and envy of my old
+neighbors, I suppose, but nothing more. I have harmed no one knowingly."
+
+Grant was silent; it had flashed across him that Rice might have
+harbored revenge for his father-in-law's interference in his brief
+matrimonial experience. He had also suddenly recalled his conversation
+with Billings on the day that he first arrived at Tasajara. It would not
+be strange if this man had some intimation of the secret. He would try
+to find him that evening. He rose.
+
+"You will stay to dinner? My wife and Clementina will expect you."
+
+"Not to-night; I am dining at the hotel," said Grant, smilingly; "but I
+will come in later in the evening if I may." He paused hesitatingly for
+a moment. "Have your wife and daughter ever expressed any opinion on
+this matter?"
+
+"No," said Harcourt. "Mrs. Harcourt knows nothing of anything that does
+not happen IN the house; Euphemia knows only the things that happen out
+of it where she is visiting--and I suppose that young men prefer to
+talk to her about other things than the slanders of her father. And
+Clementina--well, you know how calm and superior to these things SHE
+is."
+
+"For that very reason I thought that perhaps she might be able to see
+them more clearly,--but no matter! I dare say you are quite right in
+not discussing them at home." This was the fact, although Grant had not
+forgotten that Harcourt had put forward his daughters as a reason for
+stopping the scandal some weeks before,--a reason which, however, seemed
+never to have been borne out by any apparent sensitiveness of the girls
+themselves.
+
+When Grant had left, Harcourt remained for some moments steadfastly
+gazing from the window over the Tasajara plain. He had not lost his
+look of concentrated power, nor his determination to fight. A struggle
+between himself and the phantoms of the past had become now a necessary
+stimulus for its own sake,--for the sake of his mental and physical
+equipoise. He saw before him the pale, agitated, irresolute features of
+'Lige Curtis,--not the man HE had injured, but the man who had injured
+HIM, whose spirit was aimlessly and wantonly--for he had never
+attempted to get back his possessions in his lifetime, nor ever tried
+to communicate with the possessor--striking at him in the shadow. And
+it was THAT man, that pale, writhing, frightened wretch whom he had once
+mercifully helped! Yes, whose LIFE he had even saved that night from
+exposure and delirium tremens when he had given him the whiskey. And
+this life he had saved, only to have it set in motion a conspiracy to
+ruin him! Who knows that 'Lige had not purposely conceived what they had
+believed to be an attempt at suicide, only to cast suspicion of murder
+on HIM! From which it will be perceived that Harcourt's powers of moral
+reasoning had not improved in five years, and that even the impartiality
+he had just shown in his description of 'Lige to Grant had been
+swallowed up in this new sense of injury. The founder of Tasajara, whose
+cool business logic, unfailing foresight, and practical deductions were
+never at fault, was once more childishly adrift in his moral ethics.
+
+And there was Clementina, of whose judgment Grant had spoken so
+persistently,--could she assist him? It was true, as he had said, he
+had never talked to her of his affairs. In his sometimes uneasy
+consciousness of her superiority he had shrunk from even revealing his
+anxieties, much less his actual secret, and from anything that might
+prejudice the lofty paternal attitude he had taken towards his daughters
+from the beginning of his good fortune. He was never quite sure if her
+acceptance of it was real; he was never entirely free from a certain
+jealousy that always mingled with his pride in her superior rectitude;
+and yet his feeling was distinct from the good-natured contempt he
+had for his wife's loyalty, the anger and suspicion that his son's
+opposition had provoked, and the half-affectionate toleration he had
+felt for Euphemia's waywardness. However he would sound Clementina
+without betraying himself.
+
+He was anticipated by a slight step in the passage and the pushing open
+of his study door. The tall, graceful figure of the girl herself stood
+in the opening.
+
+"They tell me Mr. Grant has been here. Does he stay to dinner?"
+
+"No, he has an engagement at the hotel, but he will probably drop in
+later. Come in, Clemmy, I want to talk to you. Shut the door and sit
+down."
+
+She slipped in quietly, shut the door, took a seat on the sofa, softly
+smoothed down her gown, and turned her graceful head and serenely
+composed face towards him. Sitting thus she looked like some finely
+finished painting that decorated rather than belonged to the room,--not
+only distinctly alien to the flesh and blood relative before her, but
+to the house, and even the local, monotonous landscape beyond the window
+with the shining new shingles and chimneys that cut the new blue sky.
+These singular perfections seemed to increase in Harcourt's mind the
+exasperating sense of injury inflicted upon him by 'Lige's exposures.
+With a daughter so incomparably gifted,--a matchless creation that was
+enough in herself to ennoble that fortune which his own skill and genius
+had lifted from the muddy tules of Tasajara where this 'Lige had left
+it,--that SHE should be subjected to this annoyance seemed an infamy
+that Providence could not allow! What was his mere venial transgression
+to this exaggerated retribution?
+
+"Clemmy, girl, I'm going to ask you a question. Listen, pet." He had
+begun with a reminiscent tenderness of the epoch of her childhood, but
+meeting the unresponding maturity of her clear eyes he abandoned it.
+"You know, Clementina, I have never interfered in your affairs, nor
+tried to influence your friendships for anybody. Whatever people may
+have to say of me they can't say that! I've always trusted you, as I
+would myself, to choose your own associates; I have never regretted it,
+and I don't regret it now. But I'd like to know--I have reasons to-day
+for asking--how matters stand between you and Grant."
+
+The Parian head of Minerva on the bookcase above her did not offer the
+spectator a face less free from maidenly confusion than Clementina's
+at that moment. Her father had certainly expected none, but he was not
+prepared for the perfect coolness of her reply.
+
+"Do you mean, have I ACCEPTED him?"
+
+"No,--well--yes."
+
+"No, then! Is that what he wished to see you about? It was understood
+that he was not to allude again to the subject to any one."
+
+"He has not to ME. It was only my own idea. He had something very
+different to tell me. You may not know, Clementina," he begun
+cautiously, "that I have been lately the subject of some anonymous
+slanders, and Grant has taken the trouble to track them down for me. It
+is a calumny that goes back as far as Sidon, and I may want your level
+head and good memory to help me to refute it." He then repeated calmly
+and clearly, with no trace of the fury that had raged within him a
+moment before, the substance of Grant's revelation.
+
+The young girl listened without apparent emotion. When he had finished
+she said quickly: "And what do you want me to recollect?"
+
+The hardest part of Harcourt's task was coming. "Well, don't you
+remember that I told you the day the surveyors went away--that--I had
+bought this land of 'Lige Curtis some time before?"
+
+"Yes, I remember your saying so, but"--
+
+"But what?"
+
+"I thought you only meant that to satisfy mother."
+
+Daniel Harcourt felt the blood settling round his heart, but he was
+constrained by an irresistible impulse to know the worst. "Well, what
+did YOU think it really was?"
+
+"I only thought that 'Lige Curtis had simply let you have it, that's
+all."
+
+Harcourt breathed again. "But what for? Why should he?"
+
+"Well--ON MY ACCOUNT."
+
+"On YOUR account! What in Heaven's name had YOU to do with it?"
+
+"He loved me." There was not the slightest trace of vanity,
+self-consciousness or coquetry in her quiet, fateful face, and for this
+very reason Harcourt knew that she was speaking the truth.
+
+"Loved YOU!--you, Clementina!--my daughter! Did he ever TELL you so?"
+
+"Not in words. He used to walk up and down on the road when I was at the
+back window or in the garden, and often hung about the bank of the creek
+for hours, like some animal. I don't think the others saw him, and when
+they did they thought it was Parmlee for Euphemia. Even Euphemia thought
+so too, and that was why she was so conceited and hard to Parmlee
+towards the end. She thought it was Parmlee that night when Grant and
+Rice came; but it was 'Lige Curtis who had been watching the window
+lights in the rain, and who must have gone off at last to speak to
+you in the store. I always let Phemie believe that it was Parmlee,--it
+seemed to please her."
+
+There was not the least tone of mischief or superiority, or even of
+patronage in her manner. It was as quiet and cruel as the fate that
+might have led 'Lige to his destruction. Even her father felt a slight
+thrill of awe as she paused. "Then he never really spoke to you?" he
+asked hurriedly.
+
+"Only once. I was gathering swamp lilies all alone, a mile below the
+bend of the creek, and he came upon me suddenly. Perhaps it was that I
+didn't jump or start--I didn't see anything to jump or start at--that he
+said, 'You're not frightened at me, Miss Harcourt, like the other girls?
+You don't think I'm drunk or half mad--as they do?' I don't remember
+exactly what I said, but it meant that whether he was drunk or half mad
+or sober I didn't see any reason to be afraid of him. And then he told
+me that if I was fond of swamp lilies I might have all I wanted at his
+place, and for the matter of that the place too, as he was going away,
+for he couldn't stand the loneliness any longer. He said that he had
+nothing in common with the place and the people--no more than I had--and
+that was what he had always fancied in me. I told him that if he felt
+in that way about his place he ought to leave it, or sell it to some one
+who cared for it, and go away. That must have been in his mind when he
+offered it to you,--at least that's what I thought when you told us you
+had bought it. I didn't know but what he might have told you, but you
+didn't care to say it before mother."
+
+Mr. Harcourt sat gazing at her with breathless amazement. "And
+you--think that--'Lige Curtis--lov--liked you?"
+
+"Yes, I think he did--and that he does now!"
+
+"NOW! What do you mean? The man is dead!" said Harcourt starting.
+
+"That's just what I don't believe."
+
+"Impossible! Think of what you are saying."
+
+"I never could quite understand or feel that he was dead when everybody
+said so, and now that I've heard this story I KNOW that he is living."
+
+"But why did he not make himself known in time to claim the property?"
+
+"Because he did not care for it."
+
+"What did he care for, then?"
+
+"Me, I suppose."
+
+"But this calumny is not like a man who loves you."
+
+"It is like a JEALOUS one."
+
+With an effort Harcourt threw off his bewildered incredulity and grasped
+the situation. He would have to contend with his enemy in the flesh and
+blood, but that flesh and blood would be very weak in the hands of the
+impassive girl beside him. His face lightened.
+
+The same idea might have been in Clementina's mind when she spoke again,
+although her face had remained unchanged. "I do not see why YOU should
+bother yourself further about it," she said. "It is only a matter
+between myself and him; you can leave it to me."
+
+"But if you are mistaken and he should not be living?"
+
+"I am not mistaken. I am even certain now that I have seen him."
+
+"Seen him!"
+
+"Yes," said the girl with the first trace of animation in her face.
+"It was four or five months ago when we were visiting the Briones at
+Monterey. We had ridden out to the old Mission by moonlight. There were
+some Mexicans lounging around the posada, and one of them attracted my
+attention by the way he seemed to watch me, without revealing any more
+of his face than I could see between his serape and the black silk
+handkerchief that was tied around his head under his sombrero. But I
+knew he was an American--and his eyes were familiar. I believe it was
+he."
+
+"Why did you not speak of it before?"
+
+The look of animation died out of the girl's face. "Why should I?" she
+said listlessly. "I did not know of these reports then. He was nothing
+more to us. You wouldn't have cared to see him again." She rose,
+smoothed out her skirt and stood looking at her father. "There is one
+thing, of course, that you'll do at once."
+
+Her voice had changed so oddly that he said quickly: "What's that?"
+
+"Call Grant off the scent. He'll only frighten or exasperate your game,
+and that's what you don't want."
+
+Her voice was as imperious as it had been previously listless. And it
+was the first time he had ever known her to use slang.
+
+It seemed as startling as if it had fallen from the marble lips above
+him.
+
+"But I've promised him that we should go together to my lawyer
+to-morrow, and begin a suit against the proprietors of the 'Clarion.'"
+
+"Do nothing of the kind. Get rid of Grant's assistance in this matter;
+and see the 'Clarion' proprietor yourself. What sort of a man is he? Can
+you invite him to your house?"
+
+"I have never seen him; I believe he lives at San Jose. He is a wealthy
+man and a large land owner there. You understand that after the first
+article appeared in his paper, and I knew that he had employed your
+brother--although Grant says that he had nothing to do with it and left
+Fletcher on account of it--I could have no intercourse with him. Even if
+I invited him he would not come."
+
+"He MUST come. Leave it to ME." She stopped and resumed her former
+impassive manner. "I had something to say to you too, father. Mr.
+Shipley proposed to me the day we went to San Mateo."
+
+Her father's eyes lit with an eager sparkle. "Well," he said quickly.
+
+"I reminded him that I had known him only a few weeks, and that I wanted
+time to consider."
+
+"Consider! Why, Clemmy, he's one of the oldest Boston families, rich
+from his father and grandfather--rich when I was a shopkeeper and your
+mother"--
+
+"I thought you liked Grant?" she said quietly.
+
+"Yes, but if YOU have no choice nor feeling in the matter, why Shipley
+is far the better man. And if any of the scandal should come to his
+ears"--
+
+"So much the better that the hesitation should come from me. But if you
+think it better, I can sit down here and write to him at once declining
+the offer." She moved towards the desk.
+
+"No! No! I did not mean that," said Harcourt quickly. "I only thought
+that if he did hear anything it might be said that he had backed out."
+
+"His sister knows of his offer, and though she don't like it nor me, she
+will not deny the fact. By the way, you remember when she was lost that
+day on the road to San Mateo?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, she was with your son, John Milton, all the time, and they
+lunched together at Crystal Spring. It came out quite accidentally
+through the hotel-keeper."
+
+Harcourt's brow darkened. "Did she know him before?"
+
+"I can't say; but she does now."
+
+Harcourt's face was heavy with distrust. "Taking Shipley's offer and
+these scandals into consideration, I don't like the look of this,
+Clementina."
+
+"I do," said the girl simply.
+
+Harcourt gazed at her keenly and with the shadow of distrust still upon
+him. It seemed to be quite impossible, even with what he knew of her
+calmly cold nature, that she should be equally uninfluenced by Grant or
+Shipley. Had she some steadfast, lofty ideal, or perhaps some already
+absorbing passion of which he knew nothing? She was not a girl to betray
+it--they would only know it when it was too late. Could it be possible
+that there was still something between her and 'Lige that he knew
+nothing of? The thought struck a chill to his breast. She was walking
+towards the door, when he recalled himself with an effort.
+
+"If you think it advisable to see Fletcher, you might run down to San
+Jose for a day or two with your mother, and call on the Ramirez.
+They may know him or somebody who does. Of course if YOU meet him and
+casually invite him it would be different."
+
+"It's a good idea," she said quickly. "I'll do it, and speak to mother
+now."
+
+He was struck by the change in her face and voice; they had both
+nervously lightened, as oddly and distinctly as they had before seemed
+to grow suddenly harsh and aggressive. She passed out of the room with
+girlish brusqueness, leaving him alone with a new and vague fear in his
+consciousness.
+
+
+A few hours later Clementina was standing before the window of the
+drawing-room that overlooked the outskirts of the town. The moonlight
+was flooding the vast bluish Tasajara levels with a faint lustre, as if
+the waters of the creek had once more returned to them. In the shadow of
+the curtain beside her Grant was facing her with anxious eyes.
+
+"Then I must take this as your final answer, Clementina?"
+
+"You must. And had I known of these calumnies before, had you been frank
+with me even the day we went to San Mateo, my answer would have been as
+final then, and you might have been spared any further suspense. I am
+not blaming you, Mr. Grant; I am willing to believe that you thought
+it best to conceal this from me,--even at that time when you had just
+pledged yourself to find out its truth or falsehood,--yet my answer
+would have been the same. So long as this stain rests on my father's
+name I shall never allow that name to be coupled with yours in marriage
+or engagement; nor will my pride or yours allow us to carry on a simple
+friendship after this. I thank you for your offer of assistance, but
+I cannot even accept that which might to others seem to allow some
+contingent claim. I would rather believe that when you proposed this
+inquiry and my father permitted it, you both knew that it put an end to
+any other relations between us."
+
+"But, Clementina, you are wrong, believe me! Say that I have been
+foolish, indiscreet, mad,--still the few who knew that I made these
+inquiries on your father's behalf know nothing of my hopes of YOU!"
+
+"But I do, and that is enough for me."
+
+Even in the hopeless preoccupation of his passion he suddenly looked
+at her with something of his old critical scrutiny. But she stood there
+calm, concentrated, self-possessed and upright. Yes! it was possible
+that the pride of this Southwestern shopkeepers daughter was greater
+than his own.
+
+"Then you banish me, Clementina?"
+
+"It is we whom YOU have banished."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+"Good-by."
+
+He bent for an instant over her cold hand, and then passed out into the
+hall. She remained listening until the front door closed behind him.
+Then she ran swiftly through the hall and up the staircase, with an
+alacrity that seemed impossible to the stately goddess of a moment
+before. When she had reached her bedroom and closed the door, so
+exuberant still and so uncontrollable was her levity and action, that
+without going round the bed which stood before her in the centre of
+the room, she placed her two hands upon it and lightly vaulted sideways
+across it to reach the window. There she watched the figure of Grant
+crossing the moonlit square. Then turning back into the half-lit room,
+she ran to the small dressing-glass placed at an angle on a toilet table
+against the wall. With her palms grasping her knees she stooped
+down suddenly and contemplated the mirror. It showed what no one but
+Clementina had ever seen,--and she herself only at rare intervals,--the
+laughing eyes and soul of a self-satisfied, material-minded, ordinary
+country-girl!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER X.
+
+
+But Mr. Lawrence Grant's character in certain circumstances would seem
+to have as startling and inexplicable contradictions as Clementina
+Harcourt's, and three days later he halted his horse at the entrance of
+Los Gatos Rancho. The Home of the Cats--so called from the catamounts
+which infested the locality--which had for over a century lazily basked
+before one of the hottest canyons in the Coast Range, had lately been
+stirred into some activity by the American, Don Diego Fletcher, who had
+bought it, put up a saw-mill, and deforested the canyon. Still there
+remained enough suggestion of a feline haunt about it to make Grant
+feel as if he had tracked hither some stealthy enemy, in spite of the
+peaceful intimation conveyed by the sign on a rough boarded shed at the
+wayside, that the "Los Gatos Land and Lumber Company" held their office
+there.
+
+A cigarette-smoking peon lounged before the door. Yes; Don Diego was
+there, but as he had arrived from Santa Clara only last night and was
+going to Colonel Ramirez that afternoon, he was engaged. Unless the
+business was important--but the cool, determined manner of Grant, even
+more than his words, signified that it WAS important, and the servant
+led the way to Don Diego's presence.
+
+There certainly was nothing in the appearance of this sylvan proprietor
+and newspaper capitalist to justify Grant's suspicion of a surreptitious
+foe. A handsome man scarcely older than himself, in spite of a wavy
+mass of perfectly white hair which contrasted singularly with his brown
+mustache and dark sunburned face. So disguising was the effect of these
+contradictions, that he not only looked unlike anybody else, but even
+his nationality seemed to be a matter of doubt. Only his eyes, light
+blue and intelligent, which had a singular expression of gentleness and
+worry, appeared individual to the man. His manner was cultivated and
+easy. He motioned his visitor courteously to a chair.
+
+"I was referred to you," said Grant, almost abruptly, "as the person
+responsible for a series of slanderous attacks against Mr. Daniel
+Harcourt in the 'Clarion,' of which paper I believe you are the
+proprietor. I was told that you declined to give the authority for your
+action, unless you were forced to by legal proceedings."
+
+Fletcher's sensitive blue eyes rested upon Grant's with an expression
+of constrained pain and pity. "I heard of your inquiries, Mr. Grant; you
+were making them on behalf of this Mr. Harcourt or Harkutt"--he made the
+distinction with intentional deliberation--"with a view, I believe, to
+some arbitration. The case was stated to you fairly, I think; I believe
+I have nothing to add to it."
+
+"That was your answer to the ambassador of Mr. Harcourt," said Grant,
+coldly, "and as such I delivered it to him; but I am here to-day to
+speak on my own account."
+
+What could be seen of Mr. Fletcher's lips appeared to curl in an odd
+smile. "Indeed, I thought it was--or would be--all in the family."
+
+Grant's face grew more stern, and his gray eyes glittered. "You'll find
+my status in this matter so far independent that I don't propose,
+like Mr. Harcourt, either to begin a suit or to rest quietly under the
+calumny. Briefly, Mr. Fletcher, as you or your informant knows, I was
+the surveyor who revealed to Mr. Harcourt the value of the land to which
+he claimed a title from your man, this Elijah or 'Lige Curtis as you
+call him,"--he could not resist this imitation of his adversary's
+supercilious affectation of precise nomenclature,--"and it was upon
+my representation of its value as an investment that he began the
+improvements which have made him wealthy. If this title was fraudulently
+obtained, all the facts pertaining to it are sufficiently related to
+connect me with the conspiracy."
+
+"Are you not a little hasty in your presumption, Mr. Grant?" said
+Fletcher, with unfeigned surprise.
+
+"That is for ME to judge, Mr. Fletcher," returned Grant, haughtily.
+
+"But the name of Professor Grant is known to all California as beyond
+the breath of calumny or suspicion."
+
+"It is because of that fact that I propose to keep it so."
+
+"And may I ask in what way you wish me to assist you in so doing?"
+
+"By promptly and publicly retracting in the 'Clarion' every word of this
+slander against Harcourt."
+
+Fletcher looked steadfastly at the speaker. "And if I decline?"
+
+"I think you have been long enough in California, Mr. Fletcher, to know
+the alternative expected of a gentleman," said Grant, coldly.
+
+Mr. Fletcher kept his gentle blue eyes--in which surprise still
+overbalanced their expression of pained concern--on Grant's face.
+
+"But is not this more in the style of Colonel Starbottle than Professor
+Grant?" he asked, with a faint smile.
+
+Grant rose instantly with a white face. "You will have a better
+opportunity of judging," he said, "when Colonel Starbottle has the honor
+of waiting upon you from me. Meantime, I thank you for reminding me of
+the indiscretion into which my folly, in still believing that this thing
+could be settled amicably, has led me."
+
+He bowed coldly and withdrew. Nevertheless, as he mounted his horse
+and rode away, he felt his cheeks burning. Yet he had acted upon calm
+consideration; he knew that to the ordinary Californian experience there
+was nothing quixotic nor exaggerated in the attitude he had taken. Men
+had quarreled and fought on less grounds; he had even half convinced
+himself that he HAD been insulted, and that his own professional
+reputation demanded the withdrawal of the attack on Harcourt on
+purely business grounds; but he was not satisfied of the personal
+responsibility of Fletcher nor of his gratuitous malignity. Nor did the
+man look like a tool in the hands of some unscrupulous and hidden enemy.
+However, he had played his card. If he succeeded only in provoking a
+duel with Fletcher, he at least would divert the public attention from
+Harcourt to himself. He knew that his superior position would throw the
+lesser victim in the background. He would make the sacrifice; that was
+his duty as a gentleman, even if SHE would not care to accept it as an
+earnest of his unselfish love!
+
+He had reached the point where the mountain track entered the Santa
+Clara turnpike when his attention was attracted by a handsome but
+old-fashioned carriage drawn by four white mules, which passed down the
+road before him and turned suddenly off into a private road. But it was
+not this picturesque gala equipage of some local Spanish grandee that
+brought a thrill to his nerves and a flash to his eye; it was the
+unmistakable, tall, elegant figure and handsome profile of Clementina,
+reclining in light gauzy wraps against the back seat! It was no fanciful
+resemblance, the outcome of his reverie,--there never was any one like
+her!--it WAS she herself! But what was she doing here?
+
+A vaquero cantered from the cross road where the dust of the vehicle
+still hung. Grant hailed him. Ah! it was a fine carroza de cuatro mulas
+that he had just passed! Si, Senor, truly; it was of Don Jose Ramirez,
+who lived just under the hill. It was bringing company to the casa.
+
+Ramirez! That was where Fletcher was going! Had Clementina known that
+he was one of Fletcher's friends? Might she not be exposed to
+unpleasantness, marked coolness, or even insult in that unexpected
+meeting? Ought she not to be warned or prepared for it? She had banished
+Grant from her presence until this stain was removed from her father's
+name, but could she blame him for trying to save her from contact with
+her father's slanderer? No! He turned his horse abruptly into the cross
+road and spurred forward in the direction of the casa.
+
+It was quite visible now--a low-walled, quadrangular mass of whitewashed
+adobe lying like a drift on the green hillside. The carriage and four
+had far preceded him, and was already half up the winding road towards
+the house. Later he saw them reach the courtyard and disappear within.
+He would be quite in time to speak with her before she retired to change
+her dress. He would simply say that while making a professional visit
+to Los Gatos Land Company office he had become aware of Fletcher's
+connection with it, and accidentally of his intended visit to Ramirez.
+His chance meeting with the carriage on the highway had determined his
+course.
+
+As he rode into the courtyard he observed that it was also approached
+by another road, evidently nearer Los Gatos, and probably the older
+and shorter communication between the two ranchos. The fact was
+significantly demonstrated a moment later. He had given his horse to a
+servant, sent in his card to Clementina, and had dropped listlessly on
+one of the benches of the gallery surrounding the patio, when a horseman
+rode briskly into the opposite gateway, and dismounted with a familiar
+air. A waiting peon who recognized him informed him that the Dona was
+engaged with a visitor, but that they were both returning to the gallery
+for chocolate in a moment. The stranger was the man he had left only an
+hour before--Don Diego Fletcher!
+
+In an instant the idiotic fatuity of his position struck him fully. His
+only excuse for following Clementina had been to warn her of the coming
+of this man who had just entered, and who would now meet her as quickly
+as himself. For a brief moment the idea of quietly slipping out to the
+corral, mounting his horse again, and flying from the rancho, crossed
+his mind; but the thought that he would be running away from the man he
+had just challenged, and perhaps some new hostility that had sprung up
+in his heart against him, compelled him to remain. The eyes of both men
+met; Fletcher's in half-wondering annoyance, Grant's in ill-concealed
+antagonism. What they would have said is not known, for at that moment
+the voices of Clementina and Mrs. Ramirez were heard in the passage, and
+they both entered the gallery. The two men were standing together; it
+was impossible to see one without the other.
+
+And yet Grant, whose eyes were instantly directed to Clementina, thought
+that she had noted neither. She remained for an instant standing in the
+doorway in the same self-possessed, coldly graceful pose he remembered
+she had taken on the platform at Tasajara. Her eyelids were slightly
+downcast, as if she had been arrested by some sudden thought or some shy
+maiden sensitiveness; in her hesitation Mrs. Ramirez passed impatiently
+before her.
+
+"Mother of God!" said that lively lady, regarding the two speechless
+men, "is it an indiscretion we are making here--or are you dumb? You,
+Don Diego, are loud enough when you and Don Jose are together; at least
+introduce your friend."
+
+Grant quickly recovered himself. "I am afraid," he said, coming forward,
+"unless Miss Harcourt does, that I am a mere trespasser in your house,
+Senora. I saw her pass in your carriage a few moments ago, and having a
+message for her I ventured to follow her here."
+
+"It is Mr. Grant, a friend of my father's," said Clementina, smiling
+with equanimity, as if just awakening from a momentary abstraction,
+yet apparently unconscious of Grant's imploring eyes; "but the other
+gentleman I have not the pleasure of knowing."
+
+"Ah! Don Diego Fletcher, a countryman of yours; and yet I think he knows
+you not."
+
+Clementina's face betrayed no indication of the presence of her father's
+foe, and yet Grant knew that she must have recognized his name, as she
+looked towards Fletcher with perfect self-possession. He was too much
+engaged in watching her to take note of Fletcher's manifest disturbance,
+or the evident effort with which he at last bowed to her. That this
+unexpected double meeting with the daughter of the man he had wronged,
+and the man who had espoused the quarrel, should be confounding to him
+appeared only natural. But he was unprepared to understand the feverish
+alacrity with which he accepted Dona Maria's invitation to chocolate,
+or the equally animated way in which Clementina threw herself into her
+hostess's Spanish levity. He knew it was an awkward situation, that must
+be surmounted without a scene; he was quite prepared in the presence of
+Clementina to be civil to Fletcher; but it was odd that in this feverish
+exchange of courtesies and compliments HE, Grant, should feel the
+greater awkwardness and be the most ill at ease. He sat down and took
+his part in the conversation; he let it transpire for Clementina's
+benefit that he had been to Los Gatos only on business, yet there was
+no opportunity for even a significant glance, and he had the added
+embarrassment of seeing that she exhibited no surprise nor seemed to
+attach the least importance to his inopportune visit. In a miserable
+indecision he allowed himself to be carried away by the high-flown
+hospitality of his Spanish hostess, and consented to stay to an early
+dinner. It was part of the infelicity of circumstance that the voluble
+Dona Maria--electing him as the distinguished stranger above the
+resident Fletcher--monopolized him and attached him to her side. She
+would do the honors of her house; she must show him the ruins of the
+old Mission beside the corral; Don Diego and Clementina would join them
+presently in the garden. He cast a despairing glance at the placidly
+smiling Clementina, who was apparently equally indifferent to the
+evident constraint and assumed ease of the man beside her, and turned
+away with Mrs. Ramirez.
+
+A silence fell upon the gallery so deep that the receding voices and
+footsteps of Grant and his hostess in the long passage were distinctly
+heard until they reached the end. Then Fletcher arose with an
+inarticulate exclamation. Clementina instantly put her finger to her
+lips, glanced around the gallery, extended her hand to him, and saying
+"Come," half-led, half-dragged him into the passage. To the right
+she turned and pushed open the door of a small room that seemed a
+combination of boudoir and oratory, lit by a French window opening to
+the garden, and flanked by a large black and white crucifix with a prie
+Dieu beneath it. Closing the door behind them she turned and faced
+her companion. But it was no longer the face of the woman who had been
+sitting in the gallery; it was the face that had looked back at her
+from the mirror at Tasajara the night that Grant had left her--eager,
+flushed, material with commonplace excitement!
+
+"'Lige Curtis," she said.
+
+"Yes," he answered passionately, "Lige Curtis, whom you thought dead!
+'Lige Curtis, whom you once pitied, condoled with and despised! 'Lige
+Curtis, whose lands and property have enriched you! 'Lige Curtis, who
+would have shared it with you freely at the time, but whom your father
+juggled and defrauded of it! 'Lige Curtis, branded by him as a drunken
+outcast and suicide! 'Lige Curtis"--
+
+"Hush!" She clapped her little hand over his mouth with a quick but
+awkward schoolgirl gesture, inconceivable to any who had known her usual
+languid elegance of motion, and held it there. He struggled angrily,
+impatiently, reproachfully, and then, with a sudden characteristic
+weakness that seemed as much of a revelation as her once hoydenish
+manner, kissed it, when she let it drop. Then placing both her hands
+still girlishly on her slim waist and curtseying grotesquely before
+him, she said: "'Lige Curtis! Oh, yes! 'Lige Curtis, who swore to do
+everything for me! 'Lige Curtis, who promised to give up liquor for
+me,--who was to leave Tasajara for me! 'Lige Curtis, who was to reform,
+and keep his land as a nest-egg for us both in the future, and then
+who sold it--and himself--and me--to dad for a glass of whiskey! 'Lige
+Curtis, who disappeared, and then let us think he was dead, only that he
+might attack us out of the ambush of his grave!"
+
+"Yes, but think what I have suffered all these years; not for the
+cursed land--you know I never cared for that--but for YOU,--you,
+Clementina,--YOU rich, admired by every one; idolized, held far above
+me,--ME, the forgotten outcast, the wretched suicide--and yet the man
+to whom you had once plighted your troth. Which of those greedy
+fortune-hunters whom my money--my life-blood as you might have thought
+it was--attracted to you, did you care to tell that you had ever slipped
+out of the little garden gate at Sidon to meet that outcast! Do you
+wonder that as the years passed and YOU were happy, I did not choose to
+be so forgotten? Do you wonder that when YOU shut the door on the past
+I managed to open it again--if only a little way--that its light might
+startle you?"
+
+Yet she did not seem startled or disturbed, and remained only looking at
+him critically.
+
+"You say that you have suffered," she replied with a smile. "You don't
+look it! Your hair is white, but it is becoming to you, and you are a
+handsomer man, 'Lige Curtis, than you were when I first met you; you are
+finer," she went on, still regarding him, "stronger and healthier
+than you were five years ago; you are rich and prosperous, you have
+everything to make you happy, but"--here she laughed a little, held
+out both her hands, taking his and holding his arms apart in a rustic,
+homely fashion--"but you are still the same old 'Lige Curtis! It was
+like you to go off and hide yourself in that idiotic way; it was like
+you to let the property slide in that stupid, unselfish fashion; it was
+like you to get real mad, and say all those mean, silly things to dad,
+that didn't hurt him--in your regular looney style; for rich or poor,
+drunk or sober, ragged or elegant, plain or handsome,--you're always the
+same 'Lige Curtis!"
+
+In proportion as that material, practical, rustic self--which nobody
+but 'Lige Curtis had ever seen--came back to her, so in proportion the
+irresolute, wavering, weak and emotional vagabond of Sidon came out to
+meet it. He looked at her with a vague smile; his five years of childish
+resentment, albeit carried on the shoulders of a man mentally and
+morally her superior, melted away. He drew her towards him, yet at the
+same moment a quick suspicion returned.
+
+"Well, and what are you doing here? Has this man who has followed you
+any right, any claim upon you?"
+
+"None but what you in your folly have forced upon him! You have made him
+father's ally. I don't know why he came here. I only know why I did--to
+find YOU!"
+
+"You suspected then?"
+
+"I KNEW! Hush!"
+
+The returning voices of Grant and of Mrs. Ramirez were heard in the
+courtyard. Clementina made a warning yet girlishly mirthful gesture,
+again caught his hand, drew him quickly to the French window, and
+slipped through it with him into the garden, where they were quickly
+lost in the shadows of a ceanothus hedge.
+
+"They have probably met Don Jose in the orchard, and as he and Don Diego
+have business together, Dona Clementina has without doubt gone to her
+room and left them. For you are not very entertaining to the ladies
+to-day,--you two caballeros! You have much politics together, eh?--or
+you have discussed and disagreed, eh? I will look for the Senorita, and
+let you go, Don Distraido!"
+
+It is to be feared that Grant's apologies and attempts to detain her
+were equally feeble,--as it seemed to him that this was the only chance
+he might have of seeing Clementina except in company with Fletcher. As
+Mrs. Ramirez left he lit a cigarette and listlessly walked up and
+down the gallery. But Clementina did not come, neither did his hostess
+return. A subdued step in the passage raised his hopes,--it was only
+the grizzled major domo, to show him his room that he might prepare for
+dinner.
+
+He followed mechanically down the long passage to a second corridor.
+There was a chance that he might meet Clementina, but he reached his
+room without encountering any one. It was a large vaulted apartment with
+a single window, a deep embrasure in the thick wall that seemed to focus
+like a telescope some forgotten, sequestered part of the leafy garden.
+While washing his hands, gazing absently at the green vignette framed by
+the dark opening, his attention was drawn to a movement of the foliage,
+stirred apparently by the rapid passage of two half-hidden figures. The
+quick flash of a feminine skirt seemed to indicate the coy flight of
+some romping maid of the casa, and the pursuit and struggle of her
+vaquero swain. To a despairing lover even the spectacle of innocent,
+pastoral happiness in others is not apt to be soothing, and Grant was
+turning impatiently away when he suddenly stopped with a rigid face and
+quickly approached the window. In her struggles with the unseen Corydon,
+the clustering leaves seemed to have yielded at the same moment with the
+coy Chloris, and parting--disclosed a stolen kiss! Grant's hand lay like
+ice against the wall. For, disengaging Fletcher's arm from her waist
+and freeing her skirt from the foliage, it was the calm, passionless
+Clementina herself who stepped out, and moved pensively towards the
+casa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER XI.
+
+
+"Readers of the 'Clarion' will have noticed that allusion has been
+frequently made in these columns to certain rumors concerning the early
+history of Tasajara which were supposed to affect the pioneer record of
+Daniel Harcourt. It was deemed by the conductors of this journal to be
+only consistent with the fearless and independent duty undertaken by the
+'Clarion' that these rumors should be fully chronicled as part of the
+information required by the readers of a first-class newspaper, unbiased
+by any consideration of the social position of the parties, but simply
+as a matter of news. For this the 'Clarion' does not deem it necessary
+to utter a word of apology. But for that editorial comment or attitude
+which the proprietors felt was justified by the reliable sources of
+their information they now consider it only due in honor to themselves,
+their readers, and Mr. Harcourt to fully and freely apologize. A patient
+and laborious investigation enables them to state that the alleged facts
+published by the 'Clarion' and copied by other journals are utterly
+unsupported by testimony, and the charges--although more or less
+vague--which were based upon them are equally untenable. We are now
+satisfied that one 'Elijah Curtis,' a former pioneer of Tasajara who
+disappeared five years ago, and was supposed to be drowned, has not only
+made no claim to the Tasajara property, as alleged, but has given no
+sign of his equally alleged resuscitation and present existence, and
+that on the minutest investigation there appears nothing either in his
+disappearance, or the transfer of his property to Daniel Harcourt,
+that could in any way disturb the uncontested title to Tasajara or the
+unimpeachable character of its present owner. The whole story now seems
+to have been the outcome of one of those stupid rural hoaxes too common
+in California."
+
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Ashwood, laying aside the 'Clarion' with a skeptical
+shrug of her pretty shoulders, as she glanced up at her brother; "I
+suppose this means that you are going to propose again to the young
+lady?"
+
+"I have," said Jack Shipley, "that's the worst of it--and got my answer
+before this came out."
+
+"Jack!" said Mrs. Ashwood, thoroughly surprised.
+
+"Yes! You see, Conny, as I told you three weeks ago, she said she wanted
+time to consider,--that she scarcely knew me, and all that! Well, I
+thought it wasn't exactly a gentleman's business to seem to stand off
+after that last attack on her father, and so, last week, I went down
+to San Jose, where she was staying, and begged her not to keep me in
+suspense. And, by Jove! she froze me with a look, and said that with
+these aspersions on her father's character, she preferred not to be
+under obligations to any one."
+
+"And you believed her?"
+
+"Oh, hang it all! Look here, Conny,--I wish you'd just try for once to
+find out some good in that family, besides what that sentimental
+young widower John Milton may have. You seem to think because they've
+quarreled with HIM there isn't a virtue left among them."
+
+Far from seeming to offer any suggestion of feminine retaliation, Mrs.
+Ashwood smiled sweetly. "My dear Jack, I have no desire to keep you from
+trying your luck again with Miss Clementina, if that's what you mean,
+and indeed I shouldn't be surprised if a family who felt a mesalliance
+as sensitively as the Harcourts felt that affair of their son's, would
+be as keenly alive to the advantages of a good match for their daughter.
+As to young Mr. Harcourt, he never talked to me of the vices of his
+family, nor has he lately troubled me much with the presence of his own
+virtues. I haven't heard from him since we came here."
+
+"I suppose he is satisfied with the government berth you got for him,"
+returned her brother dryly.
+
+"He was very grateful to Senator Flynn, who appreciates his talents,
+but who offered it to him as a mere question of fitness," replied Mrs.
+Ashwood with great precision of statement. "But you don't seem to know
+he declined it on account of his other work."
+
+"Preferred his old Bohemian ways, eh? You can't change those fellows,
+Conny. They can't get over the fascinations of vagabondage. Sorry your
+lady-patroness scheme didn't work. Pity you couldn't have promoted him
+in the line of his profession, as the Grand Duchess of Girolstein did
+Fritz."
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Jack, go to Clementina! You may not be successful,
+but there at least the perfect gentlemanliness and good taste of your
+illustrations will not be thrown away."
+
+"I think of going to San Francisco tomorrow, anyway," returned Jack with
+affected carelessness. "I'm getting rather bored with this wild seaside
+watering place and its glitter of ocean and hopeless background of
+mountain. It's nothing to me that 'there's no land nearer than Japan'
+out there. It may be very healthful to the tissues, but it's weariness
+to the spirit, and I don't see why we can't wait at San Francisco till
+the rains send us further south, as well as here."
+
+He had walked to the balcony of their sitting-room in the little seaside
+hotel where this conversation took place, and gazed discontentedly over
+the curving bay and sandy shore before him. After a slight pause Mrs.
+Ashwood stepped out beside him.
+
+"Very likely I may go with you," she said, with a perceptible tone of
+weariness. "We will see after the post arrives."
+
+"By the way, there is a little package for you in my room, that came
+this morning. I brought it up, but forgot to give it to you. You'll find
+it on my table."
+
+Mrs. Ashwood abstractedly turned away and entered her brother's room
+from the same balcony. The forgotten parcel, which looked like a roll
+of manuscript, was lying on his dressing-table. She gazed attentively at
+the handwriting on the wrapper and then gave a quick glance around her.
+A sudden and subtle change came over her. She neither flushed nor paled,
+nor did the delicate lines of expression in her face quiver or change.
+But as she held the parcel in her hand her whole being seemed to undergo
+some exquisite suffusion. As the medicines which the Arabian physician
+had concealed in the hollow handle of the mallet permeated the languid
+royal blood of Persia, so some volatile balm of youth seemed to flow
+in upon her with the contact of that strange missive and transform her
+weary spirit.
+
+"Jack!" she called, in a high clear voice. But Jack had already gone
+from the balcony when she reached it with an elastic step and a quick
+youthful swirl and rustling of her skirt. He was lighting his cigar in
+the garden.
+
+"Jack," she said, leaning half over the railing, "come back here in an
+hour and we'll talk over that matter of yours again."
+
+Jack looked up eagerly and as if he might even come up then, but she
+added quickly, "In about an hour--I must think it over," and withdrew.
+
+She re-entered the sitting-room, shut the door carefully and locked it,
+half pulled down the blind, walking once or twice around the table on
+which the parcel lay, with one eye on it like a graceful cat. Then she
+suddenly sat down, took it up with a grave practical face, examined the
+postmark curiously, and opened it with severe deliberation. It contained
+a manuscript and a letter of four closely written pages. She glanced at
+the manuscript with bright approving eyes, ran her fingers through its
+leaves and then laid it carefully and somewhat ostentatiously on the
+table beside her. Then, still holding the letter in her hand, she rose
+and glanced out of the window at her bored brother lounging towards the
+beach and at the heaving billows beyond, and returned to her seat. This
+apparently important preliminary concluded, she began to read.
+
+There were, as already stated, four blessed pages of it! All vital,
+earnest, palpitating with youthful energy, preposterous in premises,
+precipitate in conclusions,--yet irresistible and convincing to every
+woman in their illogical sincerity. There was not a word of love in it,
+yet every page breathed a wholesome adoration; there was not an epithet
+or expression that a greater prude than Mrs. Ashwood would have objected
+to, yet every sentence seemed to end in a caress. There was not a
+line of poetry in it, and scarcely a figure or simile, and yet it was
+poetical. Boyishly egotistic as it was in attitude, it seemed to be
+written less OF himself than TO her; in its delicate because unconscious
+flattery, it made her at once the provocation and excuse. And yet so
+potent was its individuality that it required no signature. No one but
+John Milton Harcourt could have written it. His personality stood out of
+it so strongly that once or twice Mrs. Ashwood almost unconsciously
+put up her little hand before her face with a half mischievous,
+half-deprecating smile, as if the big honest eyes of its writer were
+upon her.
+
+It began by an elaborate apology for declining the appointment offered
+him by one of her friends, which he was bold enough to think had been
+prompted by her kind heart. That was like her, but yet what she might
+do to any one; and he preferred to think of her as the sweet and gentle
+lady who had recognized his merit without knowing him, rather than the
+powerful and gracious benefactress who wanted to reward him when she did
+know him. The crown that she had all unconsciously placed upon his head
+that afternoon at the little hotel at Crystal Spring was more to him
+than the Senator's appointment; perhaps he was selfish, but he could not
+bear that she who had given so much should believe that he could accept
+a lesser gift. All this and much more! Some of it he had wanted to say
+to her in San Francisco at times when they had met, but he could not
+find the words. But she had given him the courage to go on and do the
+only thing he was fit for, and he had resolved to stick to that, and
+perhaps do something once more that might make him hear again her voice
+as he had heard it that day, and again see the light that had shone in
+her eyes as she sat there and read. And this was why he was sending her
+a manuscript. She might have forgotten that she had told him a strange
+story of her cousin who had disappeared--which she thought he might
+at some time work up. Here it was. Perhaps she might not recognize it
+again, in the way he had written it here; perhaps she did not really
+mean it when she had given him permission to use it, but he remembered
+her truthful eyes and believed her--and in any event it was hers to do
+with what she liked. It had been a great pleasure for him to write it
+and think that she would see it; it was like seeing her himself--that
+was in HIS BETTER SELF--more worthy the companionship of a beautiful and
+noble woman than the poor young man she would have helped. This was why
+he had not called the week before she went away. But for all that, she
+had made his life less lonely, and he should be ever grateful to her. He
+could never forget how she unconsciously sympathized with him that day
+over the loss that had blighted his life forever,--yet even then he did
+not know that she, herself, had passed through the same suffering. But
+just here the stricken widow of thirty, after a vain attempt to keep up
+the knitted gravity of her eyebrows, bowed her dimpling face over
+the letter of the blighted widower of twenty, and laughed so long and
+silently that the tears stood out like dew on her light-brown eyelashes.
+
+But she became presently severe again, and finished her reading of the
+letter gravely. Then she folded it carefully, deposited it in a box on
+her table, which she locked. After a few minutes, however, she unlocked
+the box again and transferred the letter to her pocket. The serenity
+of her features did not relax again, although her previous pretty
+prepossession of youthful spirit was still indicated in her movements.
+Going into her bedroom, she reappeared in a few minutes with a light
+cloak thrown over her shoulders and a white-trimmed broad-brimmed hat.
+Then she rolled up the manuscript in a paper, and called her French
+maid. As she stood there awaiting her with the roll in her hand, she
+might have been some young girl on her way to her music lesson.
+
+"If my brother returns before I do, tell him to wait."
+
+"Madame is going"--
+
+"Out," said Mrs. Ashwood blithely, and tripped downstairs.
+
+She made her way directly to the shore where she remembered there was
+a group of rocks affording a shelter from the northwest trade winds.
+It was reached at low water by a narrow ridge of sand, and here she had
+often basked in the sun with her book. It was here that she now unrolled
+John Milton's manuscript and read.
+
+It was the story she had told him, but interpreted by his poetry and
+adorned by his fancy until the facts as she remembered them seemed to
+be no longer hers, or indeed truths at all. She had always believed
+her cousin's unhappy temperament to have been the result of a moral and
+physical idiosyncrasy,--she found it here to be the effect of a lifelong
+and hopeless passion for herself! The ingenious John Milton had given a
+poet's precocity to the youth whom she had only known as a suspicious,
+moody boy, had idealized him as a sensitive but songless Byron, had
+given him the added infirmity of pulmonary weakness, and a handkerchief
+that in moments of great excitement, after having been hurriedly pressed
+to his pale lips, was withdrawn "with a crimson stain." Opposed to this
+interesting figure--the more striking to her as she had been hitherto
+haunted by the impression that her cousin during his boyhood had been
+subject to facial eruption and boils--was her own equally idealized
+self. Cruelly kind to her cousin and gentle with his weaknesses while
+calmly ignoring their cause, leading him unconsciously step by step in
+his fatal passion, he only became aware by accident that she nourished
+an ideal hero in the person of a hard, proud, middle-aged practical
+man of the world,--her future husband! At this picture of the late Mr.
+Ashwood, who had really been an indistinctive social bon vivant, his
+amiable relict grew somewhat hysterical. The discovery of her real
+feelings drove the consumptive cousin into a secret, self-imposed exile
+on the shores of the Pacific, where he hoped to find a grave. But the
+complete and sudden change of life and scene, the balm of the wild woods
+and the wholesome barbarism of nature, wrought a magical change in his
+physical health and a philosophical rest in his mind. He married the
+daughter of an Indian chief. Years passed, the heroine--a rich and
+still young and beautiful widow--unwittingly sought the same medicinal
+solitude. Here in the depth of the forest she encountered her former
+playmate; the passion which he had fondly supposed was dead revived in
+her presence, and for the first time she learned from his bearded lips
+the secret of his passion. Alas! not SHE alone! The contiguous forest
+could not be bolted out, and the Indian wife heard all. Recognizing the
+situation with aboriginal directness of purpose, she committed suicide
+in the fond belief that it would reunite the survivors. But in vain; the
+cousins parted on the spot to meet no more.
+
+Even Mrs. Ashwood's predilection for the youthful writer could not
+overlook the fact that the denouement was by no means novel nor the
+situation human, but yet it was here that she was most interested and
+fascinated. The description of the forest was a description of the wood
+where she had first met Harcourt; the charm of it returned, until she
+almost seemed to again inhale its balsamic freshness in the pages before
+her. Now, as then, her youth came back with the same longing and regret.
+But more bewildering than all, it was herself that moved there, painted
+with the loving hand of the narrator. For the first time she experienced
+the delicious flattery of seeing herself as only a lover could see her.
+The smallest detail of her costume was suggested with an accuracy that
+pleasantly thrilled her feminine sense. The grace of her figure slowly
+moving through the shadow, the curves of her arm and the delicacy of her
+hand that held the bridle rein, the gentle glow of her softly rounded
+cheek, the sweet mystery of her veiled eyes and forehead, and the
+escaping gold of her lovely hair beneath her hat were all in turn
+masterfully touched or tenderly suggested. And when to this was added
+the faint perfume of her nearer presence--the scent she always used--the
+delicate revelations of her withdrawn gauntlet, the bracelet clasping
+her white wrist, and at last the thrilling contact of her soft hand on
+his arm,--she put down the manuscript and blushed like a very girl. Then
+she started.
+
+A shout!--HIS voice surely!--and the sound of oars in their rowlocks.
+
+An instant revulsion of feeling overtook her. With a quick movement she
+instantly hid the manuscript beneath her cloak and stood up erect and
+indignant. Not twenty yards away, apparently advancing from the opposite
+shore of the bay, was a boat. It contained only John Milton, resting on
+his oars and scanning the group of rocks anxiously. His face, which was
+quite strained with anxiety, suddenly flushed when he saw her, and then
+recognizing the unmistakable significance of her look and attitude,
+paled once more. He bent over his oars again; a few strokes brought him
+close to the rock.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said hesitatingly, as he turned towards her and
+laid aside his oars, "but--I thought--you were--in danger."
+
+She glanced quickly round her. She had forgotten the tide! The ledge
+between her and the shore was already a foot under brown sea-water. Yet
+if she had not thought that it would look ridiculous, she would have
+leaped down even then and waded ashore.
+
+"It's nothing," she said coldly, with the air of one to whom the
+situation was an everyday occurrence; "it's only a few steps and a
+slight wetting--and my brother would have been here in a moment more."
+
+John Milton's frank eyes made no secret of his mortification. "I ought
+not to have disturbed you, I know," he said quickly, "I had no right.
+But I was on the other shore opposite and I saw you come down here--that
+is"--he blushed prodigiously--"I thought it MIGHT BE you--and I
+ventured--I mean--won't you let me row you ashore?"
+
+There seemed to be no reasonable excuse for refusing. She slipped
+quickly into the boat without waiting for his helping hand, avoiding
+that contact which only a moment ago she was trying to recall.
+
+A few strokes brought them ashore. He continued his explanation with the
+hopeless frankness and persistency of youth and inexperience. "I only
+came here the day before yesterday. I would not have come, but Mr.
+Fletcher, who has a cottage on the other shore, sent for me to offer
+me my old place on the 'Clarion.' I had no idea of intruding upon your
+privacy by calling here without permission."
+
+Mrs. Ashwood had resumed her conventional courtesy without however
+losing her feminine desire to make her companion pay for the agitation
+he had caused her. "We would have been always pleased to see you," she
+said vaguely, "and I hope, as you are here now, you will come with me to
+the hotel. My brother"--
+
+But he still retained his hold of the boat-rope without moving, and
+continued, "I saw you yesterday, through the telescope, sitting in your
+balcony; and later at night I think it was your shadow I saw near the
+blue shaded lamp in the sitting-room by the window,--I don't mean the
+RED LAMP that you have in your own room. I watched you until you put out
+the blue lamp and lit the red one. I tell you this--because--because--I
+thought you might be reading a manuscript I sent you. At least," he
+smiled faintly, "I LIKED to think it so."
+
+In her present mood this struck her only as persistent and somewhat
+egotistical. But she felt herself now on ground where she could deal
+firmly with him.
+
+"Oh, yes," she said gravely. "I got it and thank you very much for it. I
+intended to write to you."
+
+"Don't," he said, looking at her fixedly. "I can see you don't like it."
+
+"On the contrary," she said promptly, "I think it beautifully written,
+and very ingenious in plot and situation. Of course it isn't the story I
+told you--I didn't expect that, for I'm not a genius. The man is not at
+all like my cousin, you know, and the woman--well really, to tell the
+truth, SHE is simply inconceivable!"
+
+"You think so?" he said gravely. He had been gazing abstractedly at some
+shining brown seaweed in the water, and when he raised his eyes to hers
+they seemed to have caught its color.
+
+"Think so? I'm positive! There's no such a woman; she isn't HUMAN. But
+let us walk to the hotel."
+
+"Thank you, but I must go back now."
+
+"But at least let my brother thank you for taking his place--in rescuing
+me. It was so thoughtful in you to put off at once when you saw I was
+surrounded. I might have been in great danger."
+
+"Please don't make fun of me, Mrs. Ashwood," he said with a faint
+return of his boyish smile. "You know there was no danger. I have
+only interrupted you in a nap or a reverie--and I can see now that you
+evidently came here to be alone."
+
+Holding the manuscript more closely hidden under the folds of her cloak,
+she smiled enigmatically. "I think I DID, and it seems that the tide
+thought so too, and acted upon it. But you will come up to the hotel
+with me, surely?"
+
+"No, I am going back now." There was a sudden firmness about the young
+fellow which she had never before noticed. This was evidently the
+creature who had married in spite of his family.
+
+"Won't you come back long enough to take your manuscript? I will point
+out the part I refer to, and--we will talk it over."
+
+"There is no necessity. I wrote to you that you might keep it; it is
+yours; it was written for you and none other. It is quite enough for me
+to know that you were good enough to read it. But will you do one thing
+more for me? Read it again! If you find anything in it the second time
+to change your views--if you find"--
+
+"I will let you know," she said quickly. "I will write to you as I
+intended."
+
+"No, I didn't mean that. I meant that if you found the woman less
+inconceivable and more human, don't write to me, but put your red lamp
+in your window instead of the blue one. I will watch for it and see it."
+
+"I think I will be able to explain myself much better with simple pen
+and ink," she said dryly, "and it will be much more useful to you."
+
+He lifted his hat gravely, shoved off the boat, leaped into it, and
+before she could hold out her hand was twenty feet away. She turned and
+ran quickly up the rocks. When she reached the hotel, she could see the
+boat already half across the bay.
+
+Entering her sitting-room she found that her brother, tired of waiting
+for her, had driven out. Taking the hidden manuscript from her cloak
+she tossed it with a slight gesture of impatience on the table. Then she
+summoned the landlord.
+
+"Is there a town across the bay?"
+
+"No! the whole mountain-side belongs to Don Diego Fletcher. He lives
+away back in the coast range at Los Gatos, but he has a cottage and mill
+on the beach."
+
+"Don Diego Fletcher--Fletcher! Is he a Spaniard then?"
+
+"Half and half, I reckon; he's from the lower country, I believe."
+
+"Is he here often?"
+
+"Not much; he has mills at Los Gatos, wheat ranches at Santa Clara, and
+owns a newspaper in 'Frisco! But he's here now. There were lights in his
+house last night, and his cutter lies off the point."
+
+"Could you get a small package and note to him?"
+
+"Certainly; it is only a row across the bay."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+Without removing her hat and cloak she sat down at the table and began a
+letter to Don Diego Fletcher. She begged to inclose to him a manuscript
+which she was satisfied, for the interests of its author, was better in
+his hands than hers. It had been given to her by the author, Mr. J. M.
+Harcourt, whom she understood was engaged on Mr. Fletcher's paper, the
+"Clarion." In fact, it had been written at HER suggestion, and from an
+incident in real life of which she was cognizant. She was sorry to say
+that on account of some very foolish criticism of her own as to the
+FACTS, the talented young author had become so dissatisfied with it as
+to make it possible that, if left to himself, this very charming and
+beautifully written story would remain unpublished. As an admirer of
+Mr. Harcourt's genius, and a friend of his family, she felt that such an
+event would be deplorable, and she therefore begged to leave it to
+Mr. Fletcher's delicacy and tact to arrange with the author for its
+publication. She knew that Mr. Fletcher had only to read it to be
+convinced of its remarkable literary merit, and she again would impress
+upon him the fact that her playful and thoughtless criticism--which was
+personal and confidential--was only based upon the circumstances that
+the author had really made a more beautiful and touching story than the
+poor facts which she had furnished seemed to warrant. She had only
+just learned the fortunate circumstance that Mr. Fletcher was in the
+neighborhood of the hotel where she was staying with her brother.
+
+With the same practical, business-like directness, but perhaps a certain
+unbusiness-like haste superadded, she rolled up the manuscript and
+dispatched it with the letter.
+
+This done, however, a slight reaction set in, and having taken off her
+hat and shawl, she dropped listlessly on a chair by the window, but as
+suddenly rose and took a seat in the darker part of the room. She felt
+that she had done right, that highest but most depressing of human
+convictions! It was entirely for his good. There was no reason why his
+best interests should suffer for his folly. If anybody was to suffer
+it was she. But what nonsense was she thinking! She would write to him
+later when she was a little cooler,--as she had said. But then he had
+distinctly told her, and very rudely too, that he didn't want her to
+write. Wanted her to make SIGNALS to him,--the idiot! and probably was
+even now watching her with a telescope. It was really too preposterous!
+
+The result was that her brother found her on his return in a somewhat
+uncertain mood, and, as a counselor, variable and conflicting in
+judgment. If this Clementina, who seemed to have the family qualities of
+obstinacy and audacity, really cared for him, she certainly wouldn't let
+delicacy stand in the way of letting him know it--and he was therefore
+safe to wait a little. A few moments later, she languidly declared that
+she was afraid that she was no counselor in such matters; really she
+was getting too old to take any interest in that sort of thing, and she
+never had been a matchmaker! By the way now, wasn't it odd that
+this neighbor, that rich capitalist across the bay, should be called
+Fletcher, and "James Fletcher" too, for Diego meant "James" in Spanish.
+Exactly the same name as poor "Cousin Jim" who disappeared. Did he
+remember her old playmate Jim? But her brother thought something else
+was a deuced sight more odd, namely, that this same Don Diego Fletcher
+was said to be very sweet on Clementina now, and was always in her
+company at the Ramirez. And that, with this "Clarion" apology on the top
+of it, looked infernally queer.
+
+Mrs. Ashwood felt a sudden consternation. Here had she--Jack's
+sister--just been taking Jack's probable rival into confidential
+correspondence! She turned upon Jack sharply:--
+
+"Why didn't you say that before?"
+
+"I did tell you," he said gloomily, "but you didn't listen. But what
+difference does it make to you now?"
+
+"None whatever," said Mrs. Ashwood calmly as she walked out of the room.
+
+Nevertheless the afternoon passed wearily, and her usual ride into the
+upland canyon did not reanimate her. For reasons known best to herself
+she did not take her after-dinner stroll along the shore to watch the
+outlying fog. At a comparatively early hour, while there was still a
+roseate glow in the western sky, she appeared with grim deliberation,
+and the blue lamp-shade in her hand, and placed it over the lamp which
+she lit and stood on her table beside the window. This done she sat down
+and began to write with bright-eyed but vicious complacency.
+
+"But you don't want that light AND the window, Constance," said Jack
+wonderingly.
+
+Mrs. Ashwood could not stand the dreadful twilight.
+
+"But take away your lamp and you'll have light enough from the sunset,"
+responded Jack.
+
+That was just what she didn't want! The light from the window was that
+horrid vulgar red glow which she hated. It might be very romantic and
+suit lovers like Jack, but as SHE had some work to do, she wanted the
+blue shade of the lamp to correct that dreadful glare.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER XII.
+
+
+John Milton had rowed back without lifting his eyes to Mrs. Ashwood's
+receding figure. He believed that he was right in declining her
+invitation, although he had a miserable feeling that it entailed seeing
+her for the last time. With all that he believed was his previous
+experience of the affections, he was still so untutored as to be
+confused as to his reasons for declining, or his right to have been
+shocked and disappointed at her manner. It seemed to him sufficiently
+plain that he had offended the most perfect woman he had ever known
+without knowing more. The feeling he had for her was none the
+less powerful because, in his great simplicity, it was vague and
+unformulated. And it was a part of this strange simplicity that in his
+miserable loneliness his thoughts turned unconsciously to his dead wife
+for sympathy and consolation. Loo would have understood him!
+
+Mr. Fletcher, who had received him on his arrival with singular
+effusiveness and cordiality, had put off their final arrangements until
+after dinner, on account of pressing business. It was therefore with
+some surprise that an hour before the time he was summoned to Fletcher's
+room. He was still more surprised to find him sitting at his desk, from
+which a number of business papers and letters had been hurriedly thrust
+aside to make way for a manuscript. A single glance at it was enough
+to show the unhappy John Milton that it was the one he had sent to Mrs.
+Ashwood. The color flashed to his cheek and he felt a mist before his
+eyes. His employer's face, on the contrary, was quite pale, and his
+eyes were fixed on Harcourt with a singular intensity. His voice too,
+although under great control, was hard and strange.
+
+"Read that," he said, handing the young man a letter.
+
+The color again streamed into John Milton's face as he recognized the
+hand of Mrs. Ashwood, and remained there while he read it. When he put
+it down, however, he raised his frank eyes to Fletcher's, and said with
+a certain dignity and manliness: "What she says is the truth, sir. But
+it is I alone who am at fault. This manuscript is merely MY stupid idea
+of a very simple story she was once kind enough to tell me when we were
+talking of strange occurrences in real life, which she thought I might
+some time make use of in my work. I tried to embellish it, and failed.
+That's all. I will take it back,--it was written only for her."
+
+There was such an irresistible truthfulness and sincerity in his voice
+and manner, that any idea of complicity with the sender was dismissed
+from Fletcher's mind. As Harcourt, however, extended his hand for the
+manuscript Fletcher interfered.
+
+"You forget that you gave it to her, and she has sent it to me. If I
+don't keep it, it can be returned to her only. Now may I ask who is this
+lady who takes such an interest in your literary career? Have you known
+her long? Is she a friend of your family?"
+
+The slight sneer that accompanied his question restored the natural
+color to the young man's face, but kindled his eye ominously.
+
+"No," he said briefly. "I met her accidentally about two months ago and
+as accidentally found out that she had taken an interest in one of the
+first things I ever wrote for your paper. She neither knew you nor me.
+It was then that she told me this story; she did not even then know who
+I was, though she had met some of my family. She was very good and has
+generously tried to help me."
+
+Fletcher's eyes remained fixed upon him.
+
+"But this tells me only WHAT she is, not WHO she is."
+
+"I am afraid you must inquire of her brother, Mr. Shipley," said
+Harcourt curtly.
+
+"Shipley?"
+
+"Yes; he is traveling with her for his health, and they are going
+south when the rains come. They are wealthy Philadelphians, I believe,
+and--and she is a widow."
+
+Fletcher picked up her note and glanced again at the signature,
+"Constance Ashwood." There was a moment of silence, when he resumed in
+quite a different voice: "It's odd I never met them nor they me."
+
+As he seemed to be waiting for a response, John Milton said simply:
+"I suppose it's because they have not been here long, and are somewhat
+reserved."
+
+Mr. Fletcher laid aside the manuscript and letter, and took up his
+apparently suspended work.
+
+"When you see this Mrs.--Mrs. Ashwood again, you might say"--
+
+"I shall not see her again," interrupted John Milton hastily.
+
+Mr. Fletcher shrugged his shoulders. "Very well," he said with a
+peculiar smile, "I will write to her. Now, Mr. Harcourt," he continued
+with a sudden business brevity, "if you please, we'll drop this affair
+and attend to the matter for which I just summoned you. Since yesterday
+an important contract for which I have been waiting is concluded, and
+its performance will take me East at once. I have made arrangements that
+you will be left in the literary charge of the 'Clarion.' It is only a
+fitting recompense that the paper owes to you and your father,--to whom
+I hope to see you presently reconciled. But we won't discuss that now!
+As my affairs take me back to Los Gatos within half an hour, I am sorry
+I cannot dispense my hospitality in person,--but you will dine and
+sleep here to-night. Good-by. As you go out will you please send up Mr.
+Jackson to me." He nodded briefly, seemed to plunge instantly into his
+papers again, and John Milton was glad to withdraw.
+
+The shock he had felt at Mrs. Ashwood's frigid disposition of his wishes
+and his manuscript had benumbed him to any enjoyment or appreciation of
+the change in his fortune. He wandered out of the house and descended
+to the beach in a dazed, bewildered way, seeing only the words of her
+letter to Fletcher before him, and striving to grasp some other meaning
+from them than their coldly practical purport. Perhaps this was her
+cruel revenge for his telling her not to write to him. Could she not
+have divined it was only his fear of what she might say! And now it
+was all over! She had washed her hands of him with the sending of that
+manuscript and letter, and he would pass out of her memory as a foolish,
+conceited ingrate,--perhaps a figure as wearily irritating and stupid to
+her as the cousin she had known. He mechanically lifted his eyes to the
+distant hotel; the glow was still in the western sky, but the blue lamp
+was already shining in the window. His cheek flushed quickly, and he
+turned away as if she could have seen his face. Yes--she despised him,
+and THAT was his answer!
+
+When he returned, Mr. Fletcher had gone. He dragged through a dinner
+with Mr. Jackson, Fletcher's secretary, and tried to realize his good
+fortune in listening to the subordinate's congratulations. "But I
+thought," said Jackson, "you had slipped up on your luck to-day, when
+the old man sent for you. He was quite white, and ready to rip out about
+something that had just come in. I suppose it was one of those anonymous
+things against your father,--the old man's dead set against 'em now."
+But John Milton heard him vaguely, and presently excused himself for a
+row on the moonlit bay.
+
+The active exertion, with intervals of placid drifting along the
+land-locked shore, somewhat soothed him. The heaving Pacific beyond
+was partly hidden in a low creeping fog, but the curving bay was softly
+radiant. The rocks whereon she sat that morning, the hotel where she
+was now quietly reading, were outlined in black and silver. In this
+dangerous contiguity it seemed to him that her presence returned,--not
+the woman who had met him so coldly; who had penned those lines; the
+woman from whom he was now parting forever, but the blameless ideal he
+had worshiped from the first, and which he now felt could never pass out
+of his life again! He recalled their long talks, their rarer rides and
+walks in the city; her quick appreciation and ready sympathy; her pretty
+curiosity and half-maternal consideration of his foolish youthful past;
+even the playful way that she sometimes seemed to make herself younger
+as if to better understand him. Lingering at times in the shadow of the
+headland, he fancied he saw the delicate nervous outlines of her face
+near his own again; the faint shading of her brown lashes, the soft
+intelligence of her gray eyes. Drifting idly in the placid moonlight,
+pulling feverishly across the swell of the channel, or lying on his oars
+in the shallows of the rocks, but always following the curves of the
+bay, like a bird circling around a lighthouse, it was far in the night
+before he at last dragged his boat upon the sand. Then he turned to look
+once more at her distant window. He would be away in the morning and he
+should never see it again! It was very late, but the blue light seemed
+to be still burning unalterably and inflexibly.
+
+But even as he gazed, a change came over it. A shadow seemed to pass
+before the blind; the blue shade was lifted; for an instant he could see
+the colorless star-like point of the light itself show clearly. It was
+over now; she was putting out the lamp. Suddenly he held his breath!
+A roseate glow gradually suffused the window like a burning blush; the
+curtain was drawn aside, and the red lamp-shade gleamed out surely and
+steadily into the darkness.
+
+Transfigured and breathless in the moonlight, John Milton gazed on it.
+It seemed to him the dawn of Love!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER XIII.
+
+
+The winter rains had come. But so plenteously and persistently, and
+with such fateful preparation of circumstance, that the long looked for
+blessing presently became a wonder, an anxiety, and at last a slowly
+widening terror. Before a month had passed every mountain, stream, and
+watercourse, surcharged with the melted snows of the Sierras, had become
+a great tributary; every tributary a great river, until, pouring their
+great volume into the engorged channels of the American and Sacramento
+rivers, they overleaped their banks and became as one vast inland sea.
+Even to a country already familiar with broad and striking catastrophe,
+the flood was a phenomenal one. For days the sullen overflow lay in the
+valley of the Sacramento, enormous, silent, currentless--except where
+the surplus waters rolled through Carquinez Straits, San Francisco Bay,
+and the Golden Gate, and reappeared as the vanished Sacramento River, in
+an outflowing stream of fresh and turbid water fifty miles at sea.
+
+Across the vast inland expanse, brooded over by a leaden sky, leaden
+rain fell, dimpling like shot the sluggish pools of the flood; a
+cloudy chaos of fallen trees, drifting barns and outhouses, wagons and
+agricultural implements moved over the surface of the waters, or circled
+slowly around the outskirts of forests that stood ankle deep in ooze and
+the current, which in serried phalanx they resisted still. As night fell
+these forms became still more vague and chaotic, and were interspersed
+with the scattered lanterns and flaming torches of relief-boats, or
+occasionally the high terraced gleaming windows of the great steamboats,
+feeling their way along the lost channel. At times the opening of a
+furnace-door shot broad bars of light across the sluggish stream and
+into the branches of dripping and drift-encumbered trees; at times
+the looming smoke-stacks sent out a pent-up breath of sparks that
+illuminated the inky chaos for a moment, and then fell as black and
+dripping rain. Or perhaps a hoarse shout from some faintly outlined hulk
+on either side brought a quick response from the relief-boats, and the
+detaching of a canoe with a blazing pine-knot in its bow into the outer
+darkness.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when Lawrence Grant, from the deck of one
+of the larger tugs, sighted what had been once the estuary of Sidon
+Creek. The leader of a party of scientific observation and relief, he
+had kept a tireless watch of eighteen hours, keenly noticing the work of
+devastation, the changes in the channel, the prospects of abatement, and
+the danger that still threatened. He had passed down the length of the
+submerged Sacramento valley, through the Straits of Carquinez, and was
+now steaming along the shores of the upper reaches of San Francisco Bay.
+Everywhere the same scene of desolation,--vast stretches of tule land,
+once broken up by cultivation and dotted with dwellings, now clearly
+erased on that watery chart; long lines of symmetrical perspective,
+breaking the monotonous level, showing orchards buried in the flood;
+Indian mounds and natural eminences covered with cattle or hastily
+erected camps; half submerged houses, whose solitary chimneys, however,
+still gave signs of an undaunted life within; isolated groups of trees,
+with their lower branches heavy with the unwholesome fruit of the
+flood, in wisps of hay and straw, rakes and pitchforks, or pathetically
+sheltering some shivering and forgotten household pet. But everywhere
+the same dull, expressionless, placid tranquillity of destruction,--a
+horrible leveling of all things in one bland smiling equality of
+surface, beneath which agony, despair, and ruin were deeply buried and
+forgotten; a catastrophe without convulsion,--a devastation voiceless,
+passionless, and supine.
+
+The boat had slowed up before what seemed to be a collection of
+disarranged houses with the current flowing between lines that indicated
+the existence of thoroughfares and streets. Many of the lighter wooden
+buildings were huddled together on the street corners with their gables
+to the flow; some appeared as if they had fallen on their knees, and
+others lay complacently on their sides, like the houses of a child's
+toy village. An elevator still lifted itself above the other warehouses;
+from the centre of an enormous square pond, once the plaza, still arose
+a "Liberty pole," or flagstaff, which now supported a swinging lantern,
+and in the distance appeared the glittering dome of some public
+building. Grant recognized the scene at once. It was all that was left
+of the invincible youth of Tasajara!
+
+As this was an objective point of the scheme of survey and relief for
+the district, the boat was made fast to the second story of one of the
+warehouses. It was now used as a general store and depot, and bore a
+singular resemblance in its interior to Harcourt's grocery at Sidon.
+This suggestion was the more fatefully indicated by the fact that half
+a dozen men were seated around a stove in the centre, more or less
+given up to a kind of philosophical and lazy enjoyment of their enforced
+idleness. And when to this was added the more surprising coincidence
+that the party consisted of Billings, Peters, and Wingate,--former
+residents of Sidon and first citizens of Tasajara,--the resemblance was
+complete.
+
+They were ruined,--but they accepted their common fate with a certain
+Indian stoicism and Western sense of humor that for the time lifted
+them above the vulgar complacency of their former fortunes. There was a
+deep-seated, if coarse and irreverent resignation in their philosophy.
+At the beginning of the calamity it had been roughly formulated by
+Billings in the statement that "it wasn't anybody's fault; there was
+nobody to kill, and what couldn't be reached by a Vigilance Committee
+there was no use resolootin' over." When the Reverend Doctor Pilsbury
+had suggested an appeal to a Higher Power, Peters had replied, good
+humoredly, that "a Creator who could fool around with them in that style
+was above being interfered with by prayer." At first the calamity had
+been a thing to fight against; then it became a practical joke, the
+sting of which was lost in the victims' power of endurance and assumed
+ignorance of its purport. There was something almost pathetic in their
+attempts to understand its peculiar humor.
+
+"How about that Europ-e-an trip o' yours, Peters?" said Billings,
+meditatively, from the depths of his chair. "Looks as if those
+Crowned Heads over there would have to wait till the water goes down
+considerable afore you kin trot out your wife and darters before 'em!"
+
+"Yes," said Peters, "it rather pints that way; and ez far ez I kin see,
+Mame Billings ain't goin' to no Saratoga, neither, this year."
+
+"Reckon the boys won't hang about old Harcourt's Free Library to see
+the girls home from lectures and singing-class much this year," said
+Wingate. "Wonder if Harcourt ever thought o' this the day he opened it,
+and made that rattlin' speech o' his about the new property? Clark
+says everything built on that made ground has got to go after the water
+falls. Rough on Harcourt after all his other losses, eh? He oughter
+have closed up with that scientific chap, Grant, and married him to
+Clementina while the big boom was on"--
+
+"Hush!" said Peters, indicating Grant, who had just entered quietly.
+
+"Don't mind me, gentlemen," said Grant, stepping towards the group
+with a grave but perfectly collected face; "on the contrary, I am very
+anxious to hear all the news of Harcourt's family. I left for New York
+before the rainy season, and have only just got back."
+
+His speech and manner appeared to be so much in keeping with the
+prevailing grim philosophy that Billings, after a glance at the others,
+went on. "Ef you left afore the first rains," said he, "you must have
+left only the steamer ahead of Fletcher, when he run off with Clementina
+Harcourt, and you might have come across them on their wedding trip in
+New York."
+
+Not a muscle of Grant's face changed under their eager and cruel
+scrutiny. "No, I didn't," he returned quietly. "But why did she run
+away? Did the father object to Fletcher? If I remember rightly he was
+rich and a good match."
+
+"Yes, but I reckon the old man hadn't quite got over the 'Clarion'
+abuse, for all its eating humble-pie and taking back its yarns of him.
+And may be he might have thought the engagement rather sudden. They say
+that she'd only met Fletcher the day afore the engagement."
+
+"That be d----d," said Peters, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and
+startling the lazy resignation of his neighbors by taking his feet from
+the stove and sitting upright. "I tell ye, gentlemen, I'm sick o' this
+sort o' hog-wash that's been ladled round to us. That gal Clementina
+Harcourt and that feller Fletcher had met not only once, but MANY times
+afore--yes! they were old friends if it comes to that, a matter of six
+years ago."
+
+Grant's eyes were fixed eagerly on the speaker, although the others
+scarcely turned their heads.
+
+"You know, gentlemen," said Peters, "I never took stock in this yer
+story of the drownin' of 'Lige Curtis. Why? Well, if you wanter know--in
+my opinion--there never was any 'Lige Curtis!"
+
+Billings lifted his head with difficulty; Wingate turned his face to the
+speaker.
+
+"There never was a scrap o' paper ever found in his cabin with the
+name o' 'Lige Curtis on it; there never was any inquiry made for 'Lige
+Curtis; there never was any sorrowin' friends comin' after 'Lige Curtis.
+For why?--There never was any 'Lige Curtis. The man who passed himself
+off in Sidon under that name--was that man Fletcher. That's how he knew
+all about Harcourt's title; that's how he got his best holt on Harcourt.
+And he did it all to get Clementina Harcourt, whom the old man had
+refused to him in Sidon."
+
+A grunt of incredulity passed around the circle. Such is the fate of
+historical innovation! Only Grant listened attentively.
+
+"Ye ought to tell that yarn to John Milton," said Wingate ironically;
+"it's about in the style o' them stories he slings in the 'Clarion.'"
+
+"He's made a good thing outer that job. Wonder what he gets for them?"
+said Peters.
+
+It was Billings's time to rise, and, under the influence of some strong
+cynical emotion, to even rise to his feet. "Gets for 'em!--GETS for 'em!
+I'll tell you WHAT he gets for 'em! It beats this story o' Peters's,--it
+beats the flood. It beats me! Ye know that boy, gentlemen; ye know how
+he uster lie round his father's store, reading flapdoodle stories and
+sich! Ye remember how I uster try to give him good examples and knock
+some sense into him? Ye remember how, after his father's good luck,
+he spiled all his own chances, and ran off with his father's waiter
+gal--all on account o' them flapdoodle books he read? Ye remember how
+he sashayed round newspaper offices in 'Frisco until he could write a
+flapdoodle story himself? Ye wanter know what he gets for 'em. I'll tell
+you. He got an interduction to one of them high-toned, highfalutin',
+'don't-touch-me' rich widders from Philadelfy,--that's what he gets for
+'em! He got her dead set on him and his stories, that's what he gets for
+'em! He got her to put him up with Fletcher in the 'Clarion,'--that's
+what he gets for 'em. And darn my skin!--ef what they say is true, while
+we hard-working men are sittin' here like drowned rats--that air John
+Milton, ez never did a stitch o' live work like me yere; ez never
+did anythin' but spin yarns about US ez did WORK, is now 'gittin' for
+'em'--what? Guess! Why, he's gittin' THE RICH WIDDER HERSELF and HALF A
+MILLION DOLLARS WITH HER! Gentlemen! lib'ty is a good thing--but thar's
+some things ye gets too much lib'ty of in this country--and that's this
+yer LIB'TY OF THE PRESS!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A First Family of Tasajara, by Bret Harte
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