Prosperity had settled upon the plains of Tasajara. Not only had the embarcadero emerged from the tules of Tasajara Creek as a thriving town of steamboat wharves, warehouses, and outlying mills and factories, but in five years the transforming railroad had penetrated the great plain itself and revealed its undeveloped fertility. The low-lying lands that had been yearly overflowed by the creek, now drained and cultivated, yielded treasures of wheat and barley that were apparently inexhaustible. Even the helpless indolence of Sidon had been surprised into activity and change. There was nothing left of the straggling settlement to recall its former aspect. The site of Harkutt's old store and dwelling was lost and forgotten in the new mill and granary that rose along the banks of the creek. Decay leaves ruin and traces for the memory to linger over; prosperity is unrelenting in its complete and smiling obliteration of the past.
But Tasajara City, as the embarcadero was now called, had no previous record, and even the former existence of an actual settler like the forgotten Elijah Curtis was unknown to the present inhabitants. It was Daniel Harkutt's idea carried out in Daniel Harkutt's land, with Daniel Harkutt's capital and energy. But Daniel Harkutt had become Daniel Harcourt, and Harcourt Avenue, Harcourt Square, and Harcourt House, ostentatiously proclaimed the new spelling of his patronymic. When the change was made and for what reason, who suggested it and under what authority, were not easy to determine, as the sign on his former store had borne nothing but the legend, Goods and Provisions, and his name did not appear on written record until after the occupation of Tasajara; but it is presumed that it was at the instigation of his daughters, and there was no one to oppose it. Harcourt was a pretty name for a street, a square, or a hotel; even the few in Sidon who had called it Harkutt admitted that it was an improvement quite consistent with the change from the fever-haunted tules and sedges of the creek to the broad, level, and handsome squares of Tasajara City.
This might have been the opinion of a visitor at the Harcourt House, who arrived one summer afternoon from the Stockton boat, but whose shrewd, half-critical, half-professional eyes and quiet questionings betrayed some previous knowledge of the locality. Seated on the broad veranda of the Harcourt House, and gazing out on the well-kept green and young eucalyptus trees of the Harcourt Square or Plaza, he had elicited a counter question from a prosperous-looking citizen who had been lounging at his side.
“I reckon you look ez if you might have been here before, stranger.”
“Yes,” said the stranger quietly, “I have been. But it was when the tules grew in the square opposite, and the tide of the creek washed them.”
“Well,” said the Tasajaran, looking curiously at the stranger, “I call myself a pioneer of Tasajara. My name's Peters,—of Peters and Co.,—and those warehouses along the wharf, where you landed just now, are mine; but I was the first settler on Harcourt's land, and built the next cabin after him. I helped to clear out them tules and dredged the channels yonder. I took the contract with Harcourt to build the last fifteen miles o' railroad, and put up that depot for the company. Perhaps you were here before that?”
“I was,” returned the stranger quietly.
“I say,” said Peters, hitching his chair a little nearer to his companion, “you never knew a kind of broken-down feller, called Curtis—'Lige Curtis—who once squatted here and sold his right to Harkutt? He disappeared; it was allowed he killed hisself, but they never found his body, and, between you and me, I never took stock in that story. You know Harcourt holds under him, and all Tasajara rests on that title.”
“I've heard so,” assented the stranger carelessly, “but I never knew the original settler. Then Harcourt has been lucky?”
“You bet. He's got three millions right about HERE, or within this quarter section, to say nothing of his outside speculations.”
“And lives here?”
“Not for two years. That's his old house across the plaza, but his women-folks live mostly in 'Frisco and New York, where he's got houses too. They say they sorter got sick of Tasajara after his youngest daughter ran off with a feller.”
“Hallo!” said the stranger with undisguised interest. “I never heard of that! You don't mean that she eloped”—he hesitated.
“Oh, it was a square enough marriage. I reckon too square to suit some folks; but the fellow hadn't nothin', and wasn't worth shucks,—a sort of land surveyor, doin' odd jobs, you know; and the old man and old woman were agin it, and the tother daughter worse of all. It was allowed here—you know how women-folks talk!—that the surveyor had been sweet on Clementina, but had got tired of being played by her, and took up with Phemie out o' spite. Anyhow they got married, and Harcourt gave them to understand they couldn't expect anything from him. P'raps that's why it didn't last long, for only about two months ago she got a divorce from Rice and came back to her family again.”
“Rice?” queried the stranger. “Was that her husband's name, Stephen Rice?”
“I reckon! You knew him?”
“Yes,—when the tide came up to the tules, yonder,” answered the stranger musingly. “And the other daughter,—I suppose she has made a good match, being a beauty and the sole heiress?”
The Tasajaran made a grimace. “Not much! I reckon she's waitin' for the Angel Gabriel,—there ain't another good enough to suit her here. They say she's had most of the big men in California waitin' in a line with their offers, like that cue the fellows used to make at the 'Frisco post-office steamer days—and she with nary a letter or answer for any of them.”
“Then Harcourt doesn't seem to have been as fortunate in his family affairs as in his speculations?”
Peters uttered a grim laugh. “Well, I reckon you know all about his son's stampeding with that girl last spring?”
“His son?” interrupted the stranger. “Do you mean the boy they called John Milton? Why, he was a mere child!”
“He was old enough to run away with a young woman that helped in his mother's house, and marry her afore a justice of the peace. The old man just snorted with rage, and swore he'd have the marriage put aside, for the boy was under age. He said it was a put-up job of the girl's; that she was older by two years, and only wanted to get what money might be comin' some day, but that they'd never see a red cent of it. Then, they say, John Milton up and sassed the old man to his face, and allowed that he wouldn't take his dirty money if he starved first, and that if the old man broke the marriage he'd marry her again next year; that true love and honorable poverty were better nor riches, and a lot more o' that stuff he picked out o' them ten-cent novels he was allus reading. My women-folks say that he actually liked the girl, because she was the only one in the house that was ever kind to him; they say the girls were just ragin' mad at the idea o' havin' a hired gal who had waited on 'em as a sister-in-law, and they even got old Mammy Harcourt's back up by sayin' that John's wife would want to rule the house, and run her out of her own kitchen. Some say he shook THEM, talked back to 'em mighty sharp, and held his head a heap higher nor them. Anyhow, he's livin' with his wife somewhere in 'Frisco, in a shanty on a sand lot, and workin' odd jobs for the newspapers. No! takin' it by and large—it don't look as if Harcourt had run his family to the same advantage that he has his land.”
“Perhaps he doesn't understand them as well,” said the stranger smiling.
“Mor'n likely the material ain't thar, or ain't as vallyble for a new country,” said Peters grimly. “I reckon the trouble is that he lets them two daughters run him, and the man who lets any woman or women do that, lets himself in for all their meannesses, and all he gets in return is a woman's result,—show!”
Here the stranger, who was slowly rising from his chair with the polite suggestion of reluctantly tearing himself from the speaker's spell, said: “And Harcourt spends most of his time in San Francisco, I suppose?”
“Yes! but to-day he's here to attend a directors' meeting and the opening of the Free Library and Tasajara Hall. I saw the windows open, and the blinds up in his house across the plaza as I passed just now.”
The stranger had by this time quite effected his courteous withdrawal. “Good-afternoon, Mr. Peters,” he said, smilingly lifting his hat, and turned away.
Peters, who was obliged to take his legs off the chair, and half rise to the stranger's politeness, here reflected that he did not know his interlocutor's name and business, and that he had really got nothing in return for his information. This must be remedied. As the stranger passed through the hall into the street, followed by the unwonted civilities of the spruce hotel clerk and the obsequious attentions of the negro porter, Peters stepped to the window of the office. “Who was that man who just passed out?” he asked.
The clerk stared in undisguised astonishment. “You don't mean to say you didn't know WHO he was—all the while you were talking to him?”
“No,” returned Peters, impatiently.
“Why, that was Professor Lawrence Grant!—THE Lawrence Grant—don't you know?—the biggest scientific man and recognized expert on the Pacific slope. Why, that's the man whose single word is enough to make or break the biggest mine or claim going! That man!—why, that's the man whose opinion's worth thousands, for it carries millions with it—and can't be bought. That's him who knocked the bottom outer El Dorado last year, and next day sent Eureka up booming! Ye remember that, sure?”
“Of course—but”—stammered Peters.
“And to think you didn't know him!” repeated the hotel clerk wonderingly. “And here I was reckoning you were getting points from him all the time! Why, some men would have given a thousand dollars for your chance of talking to him—yes!—of even being SEEN talking to him. Why, old Wingate once got a tip on his Prairie Flower lead worth five thousand dollars while just changing seats with him in the cars and passing the time of day, sociable like. Why, what DID you talk about?”
Peters, with a miserable conviction that he had thrown away a valuable opportunity in mere idle gossip, nevertheless endeavored to look mysterious as he replied, “Oh, business gin'rally.” Then in the faint hope of yet retrieving his blunder he inquired, “How long will he be here?”
“Don't know. I reckon he and Harcourt's got something on hand. He just asked if he was likely to be at home or at his office. I told him I reckoned at the house, for some of the family—I didn't get to see who they were—drove up in a carriage from the 3.40 train while you were sitting there.”
Meanwhile the subject of this discussion, quite unconscious of the sensation he had created, or perhaps like most heroes philosophically careless of it, was sauntering indifferently towards Harcourt's house. But he had no business with his former host, his only object was to pass an idle hour before his train left. He was, of course, not unaware that he himself was largely responsible for Harcourt's success; that it was HIS hint which had induced the petty trader of Sidon to venture his all in Tasajara; HIS knowledge of the topography and geology of the plain that had stimulated Harcourt's agricultural speculations; HIS hydrographic survey of the creek that had made Harcourt's plan of widening the channel to commerce practicable and profitable. This he could not help but know. But that it was chiefly owing to his own clear, cool, far-seeing, but never visionary, scientific observation,—his own accurate analysis, unprejudiced by even a savant's enthusiasm, and uninfluenced by any personal desire or greed of gain,—that Tasajara City had risen from the stagnant tules, was a speculation that had never occurred to him. There was a much more uneasy consciousness of what he had done in Mr. Harcourt's face a few moments later, when his visitor's name was announced, and it is to be feared that if that name had been less widely honored and respected than it was, no merely grateful recollection of it would have procured Grant an audience. As it was, it was with a frown and a touch of his old impatient asperity that he stepped to the threshold of an adjoining room and called, “Clemmy!”
Clementina appeared at the door.
“There's that man Grant in the parlor. What brings HIM here, I wonder? Who does he come to see?”
“Who did he ask for?”
“Me,—but that don't mean anything.”
“Perhaps he wants to see you on some business.”
“No. That isn't his high-toned style. He makes other people go to him for that,” he said bitterly. “Anyhow—don't you think it's mighty queer his coming here after his friend—for it was he who introduced Rice to us—had behaved so to your sister, and caused all this divorce and scandal?”
“Perhaps he may know nothing about it; he and Rice separated long ago, even before Grant became so famous. We never saw much of him, you know, after we came here. Suppose you leave him to ME. I'll see him.”
Mr. Harcourt reflected. “Didn't he used to be rather attentive to Phemie?”
Clementina shrugged her shoulders carelessly. “I dare say—but I don't think that NOW”—
“Who said anything about NOW?” retorted her father, with a return of his old abruptness. After a pause he said: “I'll go down and see him first, and then send for you. You can keep him for the opening and dinner, if you like.”
Meantime Lawrence Grant, serenely unsuspicious of these domestic confidences, had been shown into the parlor—a large room furnished in the same style as the drawing-room of the hotel he had just quitted. He had ample time to note that it was that wonderful Second Empire furniture which he remembered that the early San Francisco pioneers in the first flush of their wealth had imported directly from France, and which for years after gave an unexpected foreign flavor to the western domesticity and a tawdry gilt equality to saloons and drawing-rooms, public and private. But he was observant of a corresponding change in Harcourt, when a moment later he entered the room. That individuality which had kept the former shopkeeper of Sidon distinct from, although perhaps not superior to, his customers—was strongly marked. He was perhaps now more nervously alert than then; he was certainly more impatient than before,—but that was pardonable in a man of large affairs and action. Grant could not deny that he seemed improved,—rather perhaps that the setting of fine clothes, cleanliness, and the absence of petty worries, made his characteristics respectable. That which is ill breeding in homespun, is apt to become mere eccentricity in purple and fine linen; Grant felt that Harcourt jarred on him less than he did before, and was grateful without superciliousness. Harcourt, relieved to find that Grant was neither critical nor aggressively reminiscent, and above all not inclined to claim the credit of creating him and Tasajara, became more confident, more at his ease, and, I fear, in proportion more unpleasant. It is the repose and not the struggle of the parvenu that confounds us.
“And YOU, Grant,—you have made yourself famous, and, I hear, have got pretty much your own prices for your opinions ever since it was known that you—you—er—were connected with the growth of Tasajara.”
Grant smiled; he was not quite prepared for this; but it was amusing and would pass the time. He murmured a sentence of half ironical deprecation, and Mr. Harcourt continued:—
“I haven't got my San Francisco house here to receive you in, but I hope some day, sir, to see you there. We are only here for the day and night, but if you care to attend the opening ceremonies at the new hall, we can manage to give you dinner afterwards. You can escort my daughter Clementina,—she's here with me.”
The smile of apologetic declination which had begun to form on Grant's lips was suddenly arrested. “Then your daughter is here?” he asked, with unaffected interest.
“Yes,—she is in fact a patroness of the library and sewing-circle, and takes the greatest interest in it. The Reverend Doctor Pilsbury relies upon her for everything. She runs the society, even to the training of the young ladies, sir. You shall see their exercises.”
This was certainly a new phase of Clementina's character. Yet why should she not assume the role of Lady Bountiful with the other functions of her new condition. “I should have thought Miss Harcourt would have found this rather difficult with her other social duties,” he said, “and would have left it to her married sister.” He thought it better not to appear as if avoiding reference to Euphemia, although quietly ignoring her late experiences. Mr. Harcourt was less easy in his response.
“Now that Euphemia is again with her own family,” he said ponderously, with an affectation of social discrimination that was in weak contrast to his usual direct business astuteness, “I suppose she may take her part in these things, but just now she requires rest. You may have heard some rumor that she is going abroad for a time? The fact is she hasn't the least intention of doing so, nor do we consider there is the slightest reason for her going.” He paused as if to give great emphasis to a statement that seemed otherwise unimportant. “But here's Clementina coming, and I must get you to excuse ME. I've to meet the trustees of the church in ten minutes, but I hope she'll persuade you to stay, and I'll see you later at the hall.”
As Clementina entered the room her father vanished and, I fear, as completely dropped out of Mr. Grant's mind. For the daughter's improvement was greater than her father's, yet so much more refined as to be at first only delicately perceptible. Grant had been prepared for the vulgar enhancement of fine clothes and personal adornment, for the specious setting of luxurious circumstances and surroundings, for the aplomb that came from flattery and conscious power. But he found none of these; her calm individuality was intensified rather than subdued; she was dressed simply, with an economy of ornament, rich material, and jewelry, but an accuracy of taste that was always dominant. Her plain gray merino dress, beautifully fitting her figure, suggested, with its pale blue facings, some uniform, as of the charitable society she patronized. She came towards him with a graceful movement of greeting, yet her face showed no consciousness of the interval that had elapsed since they met; he almost fancied himself transported back to the sitting-room at Sidon with the monotonous patter of the leaves outside, and the cool moist breath of the bay and alder coming in at the window.
“Father says that you are only passing through Tasajara to-day, as you did through Sidon five years ago,” she said with a smiling earnestness that he fancied however was the one new phase of her character. “But I won't believe it! At least we will not accept another visit quite as accidental as that, even though you brought us twice the good fortune you did then. You see, we have not forgotten it if you have, Mr. Grant. And unless you want us to believe that your fairy gifts will turn some day to leaves and ashes, you will promise to stay with us tonight, and let me show you some of the good we have done with them. Perhaps you don't know, or don't want to know, that it was I who got up this 'Library and Home Circle of the Sisters of Tasajara' which we are to open to-day. And can you imagine why? You remember—or have you forgotten—that you once affected to be concerned at the social condition of the young ladies on the plains of Sidon? Well, Mr. Grant, this is gotten up in order that the future Mr. Grants who wander may find future Miss Billingses who are worthy to converse with them and entertain them, and who no longer wear men's hats and live on the public road.”
It was such a long speech for one so taciturn as he remembered Clementina to have been; so unexpected in tone considering her father's attitude towards him, and so unlooked for in its reference to a slight incident of the past, that Grant's critical contemplation of her gave way to a quiet and grateful glance of admiration. How could he have been so mistaken in her character? He had always preferred the outspoken Euphemia, and yet why should he not have been equally mistaken in her? Without having any personal knowledge of Rice's matrimonial troubles—for their intimate companionship had not continued after the survey—he had been inclined to blame him; now he seemed to find excuses for him. He wondered if she really had liked him as Peters had hinted; he wondered if she knew that he, Grant, was no longer intimate with him and knew nothing of her affairs. All this while he was accepting her proffered hospitality and sending to the hotel for his luggage. Then he drifted into a conversation, which he had expected would be brief, pointless, and confined to a stupid resume of their mutual and social progress since they had left Sidon. But here he was again mistaken; she was talking familiarly of present social topics, of things that she knew clearly and well, without effort or attitude. She had been to New York and Boston for two winters; she had spent the previous summer at Newport; it might have been her whole youth for the fluency, accuracy, and familiarity of her detail, and the absence of provincial enthusiasm. She was going abroad, probably in the spring. She had thought of going to winter in Italy, but she would wait now until her sister was ready to go with her. Mr. Grant of course knew that Euphemia was separated from Mr. Rice—no—not until her father told him? Well—the marriage had been a wild and foolish thing for both. But Euphemia was back again with them in the San Francisco house; she had talked of coming to Tasajara to-day, perhaps she might be there tonight. And, good heavens! it was actually three o'clock already, and they must start at once for the Hall. She would go and get her hat and return instantly.
It was true; he had been talking with her an hour—pleasantly, intelligently, and yet with a consciousness of an indefinite satisfaction beyond all this. It must have been surprise at her transformation, or his previous misconception of her character. He had been watching her features and wondering why he had ever thought them expressionless. There was also the pleasant suggestion—common to humanity in such instances—that he himself was in some way responsible for the change; that it was some awakened sympathy to his own nature that had breathed into this cold and faultless statue the warmth of life. In an odd flash of recollection he remembered how, five years ago, when Rice had suggested to her that she was “hard to please,” she had replied that she “didn't know, but that she was waiting to see.” It did not occur to him to wonder why she had not awakened then, or if this awakening had anything to do with her own volition. It was not probable that they would meet again after to-day, or if they did, that she would not relapse into her former self and fail to impress him as she had now. But—here she was—a paragon of feminine promptitude—already standing in the doorway, accurately gloved and booted, and wearing a demure gray hat that modestly crowned her decorously elegant figure.
They crossed the plaza side by side, in the still garish sunlight that seemed to mock the scant shade of the youthful eucalyptus trees, and presently fell in with the stream of people going in their direction. The former daughters of Sidon, the Billingses, the Peterses, and Wingates, were there bourgeoning and expanding in the glare of their new prosperity, with silk and gold; there were newer faces still, and pretty ones,—for Tasajara as a “Cow County” had attracted settlers with large families,—and there were already the contrasting types of East and West. Many turned to look after the tall figure of the daughter of the Founder of Tasajara,—a spectacle lately rare to the town; a few glanced at her companion, equally noticeable as a stranger. Thanks, however, to some judicious preliminary advertising from the hotel clerk, Peters, and Daniel Harcourt himself, by the time Grant and Miss Harcourt had reached the Hall his name and fame were already known, and speculation had already begun whether this new stroke of Harcourt's shrewdness might not unite Clementina to a renowned and profitable partner.
The Hall was in one of the further and newly opened suburbs, and its side and rear windows gave immediately upon the outlying and illimitable plain of Tasajara. It was a tasteful and fair-seeming structure of wood, surprisingly and surpassingly new. In fact that was its one dominant feature; nowhere else had youth and freshness ever shown itself as unconquerable and all-conquering. The spice of virgin woods and trackless forests still rose from its pine floors, and breathed from its outer shell of cedar that still oozed its sap, and redwood that still dropped its life-blood. Nowhere else were the plastered walls and ceilings as white and dazzling in their unstained purity, or as redolent of the outlying quarry in their clear cool breath of lime and stone. Even the turpentine of fresh and spotless paint added to this sense of wholesome germination, and as the clear and brilliant Californian sunshine swept through the open windows west and east, suffusing the whole palpitating structure with its searching and resistless radiance, the very air seemed filled with the aroma of creation.
The fresh colors of the young Republic, the bright blazonry of the newest State, the coat-of-arms of the infant County of Tasajara—(a vignette of sunset-tules cloven by the steam of an advancing train)—hanging from the walls, were all a part of this invincible juvenescence. Even the newest silks, ribbons and prints of the latest holiday fashions made their first virgin appearance in the new building as if to consecrate it, until it was stirred by the rustle of youth, as with the sound and movement of budding spring.
A strain from the new organ—whose heart, however, had prematurely learned its own bitterness—and a thin, clear, but somewhat shrill chanting from a choir of young ladies were followed by a prayer from the Reverend Mr. Pilsbury. Then there was a pause of expectancy, and Grant's fair companion, who up to that moment had been quietly acting as guide and cicerone to her father's guest, excused herself with a little grimace of mock concern and was led away by one of the committee. Grant's usually keen eyes were wandering somewhat abstractedly over the agitated and rustling field of ribbons, flowers and feathers before him, past the blazonry of banner on the walls, and through the open windows to the long sunlit levels beyond, when he noticed a stir upon the raised dais or platform at the end of the room, where the notables of Tasajara were formally assembled. The mass of black coats suddenly parted and drew back against the wall to allow the coming forward of a single graceful figure. A thrill of nervousness as unexpected as unaccountable passed over him as he recognized Clementina. In the midst of a sudden silence she read the report of the committee from a paper in her hand, in a clear, untroubled voice—the old voice of Sidon—and formally declared the building opened. The sunlight, nearly level, streamed through the western window across the front of the platform where she stood and transfigured her slight but noble figure. The hush that had fallen upon the Hall was as much the effect of that tranquil, ideal presence as of the message with which it was charged. And yet that apparition was as inconsistent with the clear, searching light which helped to set it off, as it was with the broad new blazonry of decoration, the yet unsullied record of the white walls, or even the frank, animated and pretty faces that looked upon it. Perhaps it was some such instinct that caused the applause which hesitatingly and tardily followed her from the platform to appear polite and half restrained rather than spontaneous.
Nevertheless Grant was honestly and sincerely profuse in his congratulations. “You were far cooler and far more self-contained than I should have been in your place,” he said, “than in fact I actually WAS, only as your auditor. But I suppose you have done it before?”
She turned her beautiful eyes on his wonderingly. “No,—this is the first time I ever appeared in public,—not even at school, for even there I was always a private pupil.”
“You astonish me,” said Grant; “you seemed like an old hand at it.”
“Perhaps I did, or rather as if I didn't think anything of it myself,—and that no doubt is why the audience didn't think anything of it either.”
So she HAD noticed her cold reception, and yet there was not the slightest trace of disappointment, regret, or wounded vanity in her tone or manner. “You must take me to the refreshment room now,” she said pleasantly, “and help me to look after the young ladies who are my guests. I'm afraid there are still more speeches to come, and father and Mr. Pilsbury are looking as if they confidently expected something more would be 'expected' of them.”
Grant at once threw himself into the task assigned to him, with his natural gallantry and a certain captivating playfulness which he still retained. Perhaps he was the more anxious to please in order that his companion might share some of his popularity, for it was undeniable that Miss Harcourt still seemed to excite only a constrained politeness among those with whom she courteously mingled. And this was still more distinctly marked by the contrast of a later incident.
For some moments the sound of laughter and greeting had risen near the door of the refreshment room that opened upon the central hall, and there was a perceptible movement of the crowd—particularly of youthful male Tasajara—in that direction. It was evident that it announced the unexpected arrival of some popular resident. Attracted like the others, Grant turned and saw the company making way for the smiling, easy, half-saucy, half-complacent entry of a handsomely dressed young girl. As she turned from time to time to recognize with rallying familiarity or charming impertinence some of her admirers, there was that in her tone and gesture which instantly recalled to him the past. It was unmistakably Euphemia! His eyes instinctively sought Clementina's. She was gazing at him with such a grave, penetrating look,—half doubting, half wistful,—a look so unlike her usual unruffled calm that he felt strangely stirred. But the next moment, when she rejoined him, the look had entirely gone. “You have not seen my sister since you were at Sidon, I believe?” she said quietly. “She would be sorry to miss you.” But Euphemia and her train were already passing them on the opposite side of the long table. She had evidently recognized Grant, yet the two sisters were looking intently into each other's eyes when he raised his own. Then Euphemia met his bow with a momentary accession of color, a coquettish wave of her hand across the table, a slight exaggeration of her usual fascinating recklessness, and smilingly moved away. He turned to Clementina, but here an ominous tapping at the farther end of the long table revealed the fact that Mr. Harcourt was standing on a chair with oratorical possibilities in his face and attitude. There was another forward movement in the crowd and—silence. In that solid, black-broadclothed, respectable figure, that massive watchchain, that white waistcoat, that diamond pin glistening in the satin cravat, Euphemia might have seen the realization of her prophetic vision at Sidon five years before.
He spoke for ten minutes with a fluency and comprehensive business-like directness that surprised Grant. He was not there, he said, to glorify what had been done by himself, his family, or his friends in Tasajara. Others who were to follow him might do that, or at least might be better able to explain and expatiate upon the advantages of the institution they had just opened, and its social, moral, and religious effect upon the community. He was there as a business man to demonstrate to them—as he had always done and always hoped to do—the money value of improvement; the profit—if they might choose to call it—of well-regulated and properly calculated speculation. The plot of land upon which they stood, of which the building occupied only one eighth, was bought two years before for ten thousand dollars. When the plans of the building were completed a month afterwards, the value of the remaining seven eighths had risen enough to defray the cost of the entire construction. He was in a position to tell them that only that morning the adjacent property, subdivided and laid out in streets and building-plots, had been admitted into the corporate limits of the city; and that on the next anniversary of the building they would approach it through an avenue of finished dwellings! An outburst of applause followed the speaker's practical climax; the fresh young faces of his auditors glowed with invincible enthusiasm; the afternoon trade-winds, freshening over the limitless plain beyond, tossed the bright banners at the windows as with sympathetic rejoicing, and a few odorous pine shavings, overlooked in a corner in the hurry of preparation, touched by an eddying zephyr, crept out and rolled in yellow ringlets across the floor.
The Reverend Doctor Pilsbury arose in a more decorous silence. He had listened approvingly, admiringly, he might say even reverently, to the preceding speaker. But although his distinguished friend had, with his usual modesty, made light of his own services and those of his charming family, he, the speaker, had not risen to sing his praises. No; it was not in this Hall, projected by his foresight and raised by his liberality; in this town, called into existence by his energy and stamped by his attributes; in this county, developed by his genius and sustained by his capital; ay, in this very State whose grandeur was made possible by such giants as he,—it was not in any of these places that it was necessary to praise Daniel Harcourt, or that a panegyric of him would be more than idle repetition. Nor would he, as that distinguished man had suggested, enlarge upon the social, moral, and religious benefits of the improvement they were now celebrating. It was written on the happy, innocent faces, in the festive garb, in the decorous demeanor, in the intelligent eyes that sparkled around him, in the presence of those of his parishioners whom he could meet as freely here to-day as in his own church on Sunday. What then could he say? What then was there to say? Perhaps he should say nothing if it were not for the presence of the young before him.—He stopped and fixed his eyes paternally on the youthful Johnny Billings, who with a half dozen other Sunday-school scholars had been marshaled before the reverend speaker.—And what was to be the lesson THEY were to learn from it? They had heard what had been achieved by labor, enterprise, and diligence. Perhaps they would believe, and naturally too, that what labor, enterprise, and diligence had done could be done again. But was that all? Was there nothing behind these qualities—which, after all, were within the reach of every one here? Had they ever thought that back of every pioneer, every explorer, every pathfinder, every founder and creator, there was still another? There was no terra incognita so rare as to be unknown to one; no wilderness so remote as to be beyond a greater ken than theirs; no waste so trackless but that one had already passed that way! Did they ever reflect that when the dull sea ebbed and flowed in the tules over the very spot where they were now standing, who it was that also foresaw, conceived, and ordained the mighty change that would take place; who even guided and directed the feeble means employed to work it; whose spirit moved, as in still older days of which they had read, over the face of the stagnant waters? Perhaps they had. Who then was the real pioneer of Tasajara,—back of the Harcourts, the Peterses, the Billingses, and Wingates? The reverend gentleman gently paused for a reply. It was given in the clear but startled accents of the half frightened, half-fascinated Johnny Billings, in three words:—
“'Lige Curtis, sir!”
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 ashore 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 pass 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 attitude 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 passing 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-class 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 appetite. 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 assistant 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; nobody 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 passed 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 shore 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.
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 class, 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 passed 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 attitude 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 principal, 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 circumstances 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.