Chapter V: Part 5

“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.