A First Family of Tasajara Part 10

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 cla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude 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 princ.i.p.al, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sume a hostile att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sumption 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 ash.o.r.e 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 circ.u.mstance 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.