A First Family of Tasajara Part 13

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 a.s.surance 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. n.o.body 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 ident.i.ty 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 a.s.sumption 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sage; 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-embarra.s.sed 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 G.o.ddess 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."

"Pa.s.s it over," said Jack Shipley good-humoredly, with his cigar between his lips. "I'll take it now."