A First Family of Tasajara Part 9

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 ash.o.r.e 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 pa.s.s 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sing 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-cla.s.s 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 appet.i.te. 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 a.s.sistant 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; n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.e 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.