by Harte, Bret
"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?"
"I think there was a year or two difference," said Grant quietly.
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."
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."
"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."
"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.
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!"
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.
"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?"
"Is that all?" asked Harcourt in a perfectly quiet, steady, voice.
"The 'Clarion'? That is the paper which began the attack?" said Harcourt.
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"-
"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?"
"You will stay to dinner? My wife and Clementina will expect you."
"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."
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.
"They tell me Mr. Grant has been here. Does he stay to dinner?"
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?"
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?"
"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."
"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."
"NOW! What do you mean? The man is dead!" said Harcourt starting.
"But why did he not make himself known in time to claim the property?"
"But this calumny is not like a man who loves you."
"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."
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?"
It seemed as startling as if it had fallen from the marble lips above him.
"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?"
"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.
"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.
"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?"
"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?"
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.
"It's a good idea," she said quickly. "I'll do it, and speak to mother now."
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."
"I was referred to you," said Grant, almost abruptly, "as the person responsible for a series of slanderous attacks against Mr. Daniel Harcourt in the 'Clarion,' of which paper I believe you are the proprietor. I was told that you declined to give the authority for your action, unless you were forced to by legal proceedings."
"That was your answer to the ambassador of Mr. Harcourt," said Grant, coldly, "and as such I delivered it to him; but I am here to-day to speak on my own account."
"That is for ME to judge, Mr. Fletcher," returned Grant, haughtily.
"It is because of that fact that I propose to keep it so."
"And may I ask in what way you wish me to assist you in so doing?"
Fletcher looked steadfastly at the speaker. "And if I decline?"
Grant rose instantly with a white face. "You will have a better opportunity of judging," he said, "when Colonel Starbottle has the honor of waiting upon you from me. Meantime, I thank you for reminding me of the indiscretion into which my folly, in still believing that this thing could be settled amicably, has led me."
He bowed coldly and withdrew. Nevertheless, as he mounted his horse and rode away, he felt his cheeks burning. Yet he had acted upon calm consideration; he knew that to the ordinary Californian experience there was nothing quixotic nor exaggerated in the attitude he had taken. Men had quarreled and fought on less grounds; he had even half convinced himself that he HAD been insulted, and that his own professional reputation demanded the withdrawal of the attack on Harcourt on purely business grounds; but he was not satisfied of the personal responsibility of Fletcher nor of his gratuitous malignity. Nor did the man look like a tool in the hands of some unscrupulous and hidden enemy. However, he had played his card. If he succeeded only in provoking a duel with Fletcher, he at least would divert the public attention from Harcourt to himself. He knew that his superior position would throw the lesser victim in the background. He would make the sacrifice; that was his duty as a gentleman, even if SHE would not care to accept it as an earnest of his unselfish love!
It was quite visible now-a low-walled, quadrangular mass of whitewashed adobe lying like a drift on the green hillside. The carriage and four had far preceded him, and was already half up the winding road towards the house. Later he saw them reach the courtyard and disappear within. He would be quite in time to speak with her before she retired to change her dress. He would simply say that while making a professional visit to Los Gatos Land Company office he had become aware of Fletcher's connection with it, and accidentally of his intended visit to Ramirez. His chance meeting with the carriage on the highway had determined his course.
Clementina's face betrayed no indication of the presence of her father's foe, and yet Grant
knew that she must have recognized his name, as she looked towards Fletcher with perfect self-possession. He was too much engaged in watching her to take note of Fletcher's manifest disturbance, or the evident effort with which he at last bowed to her. That this unexpected double meeting with the daughter of the man he had wronged, and the man who had espoused the quarrel, should be confounding to him appeared only natural. But he was unprepared to understand the feverish alacrity with which he accepted Dona Maria's invitation to chocolate, or the equally animated way in which Clementina threw herself into her hostess's Spanish levity. He knew it was an awkward situation, that must be surmounted without a scene; he was quite prepared in the presence of Clementina to be civil to Fletcher; but it was odd that in this feverish exchange of courtesies and compliments HE, Grant, should feel the greater awkwardness and be the most ill at ease. He sat down and took his part in the conversation; he let it transpire for Clementina's benefit that he had been to Los Gatos only on business, yet there was no opportunity for even a significant glance, and he had the added embarrassment of seeing that she exhibited no surprise nor seemed to attach the least importance to his inopportune visit. In a miserable indecision he allowed himself to be carried away by the high-flown hospitality of his Spanish hostess, and consented to stay to an early dinner. It was part of the infelicity of circumstance that the voluble Dona Maria-electing him as the distinguished stranger above the resident Fletcher-monopolized him and attached him to her side. She would do the honors of her house; she must show him the ruins of the old Mission beside the corral; Don Diego and Clementina would join them presently in the garden. He cast a despairing glance at the placidly smiling Clementina, who was apparently equally indifferent to the evident constraint and assumed ease of the man beside her, and turned away with Mrs. Ramirez.
