A First Family of Tasajara

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With the same practical, business-like directness, but perhaps a certain
unbusiness-like haste superadded, she rolled up the manuscript and
dispatched it with the letter.

This done, however, a slight reaction set in, and having taken off her
hat and shawl, she dropped listlessly on a chair by the window, but as
suddenly rose and took a seat in the darker part of the room. She felt
that she had done right, that highest but most depressing of human
convictions! It was entirely for his good. There was no reason why his
best interests should suffer for his folly. If anybody was to suffer
it was she. But what nonsense was she thinking! She would write to him
later when she was a little cooler,--as she had said. But then he had
distinctly told her, and very rudely too, that he didn't want her to
write. Wanted her to make SIGNALS to him,--the idiot! and probably was
even now watching her with a telescope. It was really too preposterous!

The result was that her brother found her on his return in a somewhat
uncertain mood, and, as a counselor, variable and conflicting in
judgment. If this Clementina, who seemed to have the family qualities of
obstinacy and audacity, really cared for him, she certainly wouldn't let
delicacy stand in the way of letting him know it--and he was therefore
safe to wait a little. A few moments later, she languidly declared that
she was afraid that she was no counselor in such matters; really she
was getting too old to take any interest in that sort of thing, and she
never had been a matchmaker! By the way now, wasn't it odd that
this neighbor, that rich capitalist across the bay, should be called
Fletcher, and "James Fletcher" too, for Diego meant "James" in Spanish.
Exactly the same name as poor "Cousin Jim" who disappeared. Did he
remember her old playmate Jim? But her brother thought something else
was a deuced sight more odd, namely, that this same Don Diego Fletcher
was said to be very sweet on Clementina now, and was always in her
company at the Ramirez. And that, with this "Clarion" apology on the top
of it, looked infernally queer.

Mrs. Ashwood felt a sudden consternation. Here had she--Jack's
sister--just been taking Jack's probable rival into confidential
correspondence! She turned upon Jack sharply:--

"Why didn't you say that before?"

"I did tell you," he said gloomily, "but you didn't listen. But what
difference does it make to you now?"

"None whatever," said Mrs. Ashwood calmly as she walked out of the room.

Nevertheless the afternoon passed wearily, and her usual ride into the
upland canyon did not reanimate her. For reasons known best to herself
she did not take her after-dinner stroll along the shore to watch the
outlying fog. At a comparatively early hour, while there was still a
roseate glow in the western sky, she appeared with grim deliberation,
and the blue lamp-shade in her hand, and placed it over the lamp which
she lit and stood on her table beside the window. This done she sat down
and began to write with bright-eyed but vicious complacency.

"But you don't want that light AND the window, Constance," said Jack
wonderingly.

Mrs. Ashwood could not stand the dreadful twilight.

"But take away your lamp and you'll have light enough from the sunset,"
responded Jack.

That was just what she didn't want! The light from the window was that
horrid vulgar red glow which she hated. It might be very romantic and
suit lovers like Jack, but as SHE had some work to do, she wanted the
blue shade of the lamp to correct that dreadful glare.




CHAPER XII.


John Milton had rowed back without lifting his eyes to Mrs. Ashwood's
receding figure. He believed that he was right in declining her
invitation, although he had a miserable feeling that it entailed seeing
her for the last time. With all that he believed was his previous
experience of the affections, he was still so untutored as to be
confused as to his reasons for declining, or his right to have been
shocked and disappointed at her manner. It seemed to him sufficiently
plain that he had offended the most perfect woman he had ever known
without knowing more. The feeling he had for her was none the
less powerful because, in his great simplicity, it was vague and
unformulated. And it was a part of this strange simplicity that in his
miserable loneliness his thoughts turned unconsciously to his dead wife
for sympathy and consolation. Loo would have understood him!

Mr. Fletcher, who had received him on his arrival with singular
effusiveness and cordiality, had put off their final arrangements until
after dinner, on account of pressing business. It was therefore with
some surprise that an hour before the time he was summoned to Fletcher's
room. He was still more surprised to find him sitting at his desk, from
which a number of business papers and letters had been hurriedly thrust
aside to make way for a manuscript. A single glance at it was enough
to show the unhappy John Milton that it was the one he had sent to Mrs.
Ashwood. The color flashed to his cheek and he felt a mist before his
eyes. His employer's face, on the contrary, was quite pale, and his
eyes were fixed on Harcourt with a singular intensity. His voice too,
although under great control, was hard and strange.

"Read that," he said, handing the young man a letter.

The color again streamed into John Milton's face as he recognized the
hand of Mrs. Ashwood, and remained there while he read it. When he put
it down, however, he raised his frank eyes to Fletcher's, and said with
a certain dignity and manliness: "What she says is the truth, sir. But
it is I alone who am at fault. This manuscript is merely MY stupid idea
of a very simple story she was once kind enough to tell me when we were
talking of strange occurrences in real life, which she thought I might
some time make use of in my work. I tried to embellish it, and failed.
That's all. I will take it back,--it was written only for her."

There was such an irresistible truthfulness and sincerity in his voice
and manner, that any idea of complicity with the sender was dismissed
from Fletcher's mind. As Harcourt, however, extended his hand for the
manuscript Fletcher interfered.

"You forget that you gave it to her, and she has sent it to me. If I
don't keep it, it can be returned to her only. Now may I ask who is this
lady who takes such an interest in your literary career? Have you known
her long? Is she a friend of your family?"

The slight sneer that accompanied his question restored the natural
color to the young man's face, but kindled his eye ominously.

"No," he said briefly. "I met her accidentally about two months ago and
as accidentally found out that she had taken an interest in one of the
first things I ever wrote for your paper. She neither knew you nor me.
It was then that she told me this story; she did not even then know who
I was, though she had met some of my family. She was very good and has
generously tried to help me."

Fletcher's eyes remained fixed upon him.

"But this tells me only WHAT she is, not WHO she is."

"I am afraid you must inquire of her brother, Mr. Shipley," said
Harcourt curtly.

"Shipley?"

"Yes; he is traveling with her for his health, and they are going
south when the rains come. They are wealthy Philadelphians, I believe,
and--and she is a widow."

Fletcher picked up her note and glanced again at the signature,
"Constance Ashwood." There was a moment of silence, when he resumed in
quite a different voice: "It's odd I never met them nor they me."

As he seemed to be waiting for a response, John Milton said simply:
"I suppose it's because they have not been here long, and are somewhat
reserved."

Mr. Fletcher laid aside the manuscript and letter, and took up his
apparently suspended work.

"When you see this Mrs.--Mrs. Ashwood again, you might say"--

"I shall not see her again," interrupted John Milton hastily.

Mr. Fletcher shrugged his shoulders. "Very well," he said with a
peculiar smile, "I will write to her. Now, Mr. Harcourt," he continued
with a sudden business brevity, "if you please, we'll drop this affair
and attend to the matter for which I just summoned you. Since yesterday
an important contract for which I have been waiting is concluded, and
its performance will take me East at once. I have made arrangements that
you will be left in the literary charge of the 'Clarion.' It is only a
fitting recompense that the paper owes to you and your father,--to whom
I hope to see you presently reconciled. But we won't discuss that now!
As my affairs take me back to Los Gatos within half an hour, I am sorry
I cannot dispense my hospitality in person,--but you will dine and
sleep here to-night. Good-by. As you go out will you please send up Mr.
Jackson to me." He nodded briefly, seemed to plunge instantly into his
papers again, and John Milton was glad to withdraw.

The shock he had felt at Mrs. Ashwood's frigid disposition of his wishes
and his manuscript had benumbed him to any enjoyment or appreciation of
the change in his fortune. He wandered out of the house and descended
to the beach in a dazed, bewildered way, seeing only the words of her
letter to Fletcher before him, and striving to grasp some other meaning
from them than their coldly practical purport. Perhaps this was her
cruel revenge for his telling her not to write to him. Could she not
have divined it was only his fear of what she might say! And now it
was all over! She had washed her hands of him with the sending of that
manuscript and letter, and he would pass out of her memory as a foolish,
conceited ingrate,--perhaps a figure as wearily irritating and stupid to
her as the cousin she had known. He mechanically lifted his eyes to the
distant hotel; the glow was still in the western sky, but the blue lamp
was already shining in the window. His cheek flushed quickly, and he
turned away as if she could have seen his face. Yes--she despised him,
and THAT was his answer!

When he returned, Mr. Fletcher had gone. He dragged through a dinner
with Mr. Jackson, Fletcher's secretary, and tried to realize his good
fortune in listening to the subordinate's congratulations. "But I
thought," said Jackson, "you had slipped up on your luck to-day, when
the old man sent for you. He was quite white, and ready to rip out about
something that had just come in. I suppose it was one of those anonymous
things against your father,--the old man's dead set against 'em now."
But John Milton heard him vaguely, and presently excused himself for a
row on the moonlit bay.

The active exertion, with intervals of placid drifting along the
land-locked shore, somewhat soothed him. The heaving Pacific beyond
was partly hidden in a low creeping fog, but the curving bay was softly
radiant. The rocks whereon she sat that morning, the hotel where she
was now quietly reading, were outlined in black and silver. In this
dangerous contiguity it seemed to him that her presence returned,--not
the woman who had met him so coldly; who had penned those lines; the
woman from whom he was now parting forever, but the blameless ideal he
had worshiped from the first, and which he now felt could never pass out
of his life again! He recalled their long talks, their rarer rides and
walks in the city; her quick appreciation and ready sympathy; her pretty
curiosity and half-maternal consideration of his foolish youthful past;
even the playful way that she sometimes seemed to make herself younger
as if to better understand him. Lingering at times in the shadow of the
headland, he fancied he saw the delicate nervous outlines of her face
near his own again; the faint shading of her brown lashes, the soft
intelligence of her gray eyes. Drifting idly in the placid moonlight,
pulling feverishly across the swell of the channel, or lying on his oars
in the shallows of the rocks, but always following the curves of the
bay, like a bird circling around a lighthouse, it was far in the night
before he at last dragged his boat upon the sand. Then he turned to look
once more at her distant window. He would be away in the morning and he
should never see it again! It was very late, but the blue light seemed
to be still burning unalterably and inflexibly.

But even as he gazed, a change came over it. A shadow seemed to pass
before the blind; the blue shade was lifted; for an instant he could see
the colorless star-like point of the light itself show clearly. It was
over now; she was putting out the lamp. Suddenly he held his breath!
A roseate glow gradually suffused the window like a burning blush; the
curtain was drawn aside, and the red lamp-shade gleamed out surely and
steadily into the darkness.

Transfigured and breathless in the moonlight, John Milton gazed on it.
It seemed to him the dawn of Love!




CHAPER XIII.


The winter rains had come. But so plenteously and persistently, and
with such fateful preparation of circumstance, that the long looked for
blessing presently became a wonder, an anxiety, and at last a slowly
widening terror. Before a month had passed every mountain, stream, and
watercourse, surcharged with the melted snows of the Sierras, had become
a great tributary; every tributary a great river, until, pouring their
great volume into the engorged channels of the American and Sacramento
rivers, they overleaped their banks and became as one vast inland sea.
Even to a country already familiar with broad and striking catastrophe,
the flood was a phenomenal one. For days the sullen overflow lay in the
valley of the Sacramento, enormous, silent, currentless--except where
the surplus waters rolled through Carquinez Straits, San Francisco Bay,
and the Golden Gate, and reappeared as the vanished Sacramento River, in
an outflowing stream of fresh and turbid water fifty miles at sea.

Across the vast inland expanse, brooded over by a leaden sky, leaden
rain fell, dimpling like shot the sluggish pools of the flood; a
cloudy chaos of fallen trees, drifting barns and outhouses, wagons and
agricultural implements moved over the surface of the waters, or circled
slowly around the outskirts of forests that stood ankle deep in ooze and
the current, which in serried phalanx they resisted still. As night fell
these forms became still more vague and chaotic, and were interspersed
with the scattered lanterns and flaming torches of relief-boats, or
occasionally the high terraced gleaming windows of the great steamboats,
feeling their way along the lost channel. At times the opening of a
furnace-door shot broad bars of light across the sluggish stream and
into the branches of dripping and drift-encumbered trees; at times
the looming smoke-stacks sent out a pent-up breath of sparks that
illuminated the inky chaos for a moment, and then fell as black and
dripping rain. Or perhaps a hoarse shout from some faintly outlined hulk
on either side brought a quick response from the relief-boats, and the
detaching of a canoe with a blazing pine-knot in its bow into the outer
darkness.

It was late in the afternoon when Lawrence Grant, from the deck of one
of the larger tugs, sighted what had been once the estuary of Sidon
Creek. The leader of a party of scientific observation and relief, he
had kept a tireless watch of eighteen hours, keenly noticing the work of
devastation, the changes in the channel, the prospects of abatement, and
the danger that still threatened. He had passed down the length of the
submerged Sacramento valley, through the Straits of Carquinez, and was
now steaming along the shores of the upper reaches of San Francisco Bay.
Everywhere the same scene of desolation,--vast stretches of tule land,
once broken up by cultivation and dotted with dwellings, now clearly
erased on that watery chart; long lines of symmetrical perspective,
breaking the monotonous level, showing orchards buried in the flood;
Indian mounds and natural eminences covered with cattle or hastily
erected camps; half submerged houses, whose solitary chimneys, however,
still gave signs of an undaunted life within; isolated groups of trees,
with their lower branches heavy with the unwholesome fruit of the
flood, in wisps of hay and straw, rakes and pitchforks, or pathetically
sheltering some shivering and forgotten household pet. But everywhere
the same dull, expressionless, placid tranquillity of destruction,--a
horrible leveling of all things in one bland smiling equality of
surface, beneath which agony, despair, and ruin were deeply buried and
forgotten; a catastrophe without convulsion,--a devastation voiceless,
passionless, and supine.

The boat had slowed up before what seemed to be a collection of
disarranged houses with the current flowing between lines that indicated
the existence of thoroughfares and streets. Many of the lighter wooden
buildings were huddled together on the street corners with their gables
to the flow; some appeared as if they had fallen on their knees, and
others lay complacently on their sides, like the houses of a child's
toy village. An elevator still lifted itself above the other warehouses;
from the centre of an enormous square pond, once the plaza, still arose
a "Liberty pole," or flagstaff, which now supported a swinging lantern,
and in the distance appeared the glittering dome of some public
building. Grant recognized the scene at once. It was all that was left
of the invincible youth of Tasajara!

As this was an objective point of the scheme of survey and relief for
the district, the boat was made fast to the second story of one of the
warehouses. It was now used as a general store and depot, and bore a
singular resemblance in its interior to Harcourt's grocery at Sidon.
This suggestion was the more fatefully indicated by the fact that half
a dozen men were seated around a stove in the centre, more or less
given up to a kind of philosophical and lazy enjoyment of their enforced
idleness. And when to this was added the more surprising coincidence
that the party consisted of Billings, Peters, and Wingate,--former
residents of Sidon and first citizens of Tasajara,--the resemblance was
complete.

They were ruined,--but they accepted their common fate with a certain
Indian stoicism and Western sense of humor that for the time lifted
them above the vulgar complacency of their former fortunes. There was a
deep-seated, if coarse and irreverent resignation in their philosophy.
At the beginning of the calamity it had been roughly formulated by
Billings in the statement that "it wasn't anybody's fault; there was
nobody to kill, and what couldn't be reached by a Vigilance Committee
there was no use resolootin' over." When the Reverend Doctor Pilsbury
had suggested an appeal to a Higher Power, Peters had replied, good
humoredly, that "a Creator who could fool around with them in that style
was above being interfered with by prayer." At first the calamity had
been a thing to fight against; then it became a practical joke, the
sting of which was lost in the victims' power of endurance and assumed
ignorance of its purport. There was something almost pathetic in their
attempts to understand its peculiar humor.

"How about that Europ-e-an trip o' yours, Peters?" said Billings,
meditatively, from the depths of his chair. "Looks as if those
Crowned Heads over there would have to wait till the water goes down
considerable afore you kin trot out your wife and darters before 'em!"

"Yes," said Peters, "it rather pints that way; and ez far ez I kin see,
Mame Billings ain't goin' to no Saratoga, neither, this year."

"Reckon the boys won't hang about old Harcourt's Free Library to see
the girls home from lectures and singing-class much this year," said
Wingate. "Wonder if Harcourt ever thought o' this the day he opened it,
and made that rattlin' speech o' his about the new property? Clark
says everything built on that made ground has got to go after the water
falls. Rough on Harcourt after all his other losses, eh? He oughter
have closed up with that scientific chap, Grant, and married him to
Clementina while the big boom was on"--

"Hush!" said Peters, indicating Grant, who had just entered quietly.

"Don't mind me, gentlemen," said Grant, stepping towards the group
with a grave but perfectly collected face; "on the contrary, I am very
anxious to hear all the news of Harcourt's family. I left for New York
before the rainy season, and have only just got back."

His speech and manner appeared to be so much in keeping with the
prevailing grim philosophy that Billings, after a glance at the others,
went on. "Ef you left afore the first rains," said he, "you must have
left only the steamer ahead of Fletcher, when he run off with Clementina
Harcourt, and you might have come across them on their wedding trip in
New York."

Not a muscle of Grant's face changed under their eager and cruel
scrutiny. "No, I didn't," he returned quietly. "But why did she run
away? Did the father object to Fletcher? If I remember rightly he was
rich and a good match."

"Yes, but I reckon the old man hadn't quite got over the 'Clarion'
abuse, for all its eating humble-pie and taking back its yarns of him.
And may be he might have thought the engagement rather sudden. They say
that she'd only met Fletcher the day afore the engagement."

"That be d----d," said Peters, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and
startling the lazy resignation of his neighbors by taking his feet from
the stove and sitting upright. "I tell ye, gentlemen, I'm sick o' this
sort o' hog-wash that's been ladled round to us. That gal Clementina
Harcourt and that feller Fletcher had met not only once, but MANY times
afore--yes! they were old friends if it comes to that, a matter of six
years ago."

Grant's eyes were fixed eagerly on the speaker, although the others
scarcely turned their heads.

"You know, gentlemen," said Peters, "I never took stock in this yer
story of the drownin' of 'Lige Curtis. Why? Well, if you wanter know--in
my opinion--there never was any 'Lige Curtis!"

Billings lifted his head with difficulty; Wingate turned his face to the
speaker.

"There never was a scrap o' paper ever found in his cabin with the
name o' 'Lige Curtis on it; there never was any inquiry made for 'Lige
Curtis; there never was any sorrowin' friends comin' after 'Lige Curtis.
For why?--There never was any 'Lige Curtis. The man who passed himself
off in Sidon under that name--was that man Fletcher. That's how he knew
all about Harcourt's title; that's how he got his best holt on Harcourt.
And he did it all to get Clementina Harcourt, whom the old man had
refused to him in Sidon."

A grunt of incredulity passed around the circle. Such is the fate of
historical innovation! Only Grant listened attentively.

"Ye ought to tell that yarn to John Milton," said Wingate ironically;
"it's about in the style o' them stories he slings in the 'Clarion.'"

"He's made a good thing outer that job. Wonder what he gets for them?"
said Peters.

It was Billings's time to rise, and, under the influence of some strong
cynical emotion, to even rise to his feet. "Gets for 'em!--GETS for 'em!
I'll tell you WHAT he gets for 'em! It beats this story o' Peters's,--it
beats the flood. It beats me! Ye know that boy, gentlemen; ye know how
he uster lie round his father's store, reading flapdoodle stories and
sich! Ye remember how I uster try to give him good examples and knock
some sense into him? Ye remember how, after his father's good luck,
he spiled all his own chances, and ran off with his father's waiter
gal--all on account o' them flapdoodle books he read? Ye remember how
he sashayed round newspaper offices in 'Frisco until he could write a
flapdoodle story himself? Ye wanter know what he gets for 'em. I'll tell
you. He got an interduction to one of them high-toned, highfalutin',
'don't-touch-me' rich widders from Philadelfy,--that's what he gets for
'em! He got her dead set on him and his stories, that's what he gets for
'em! He got her to put him up with Fletcher in the 'Clarion,'--that's
what he gets for 'em. And darn my skin!--ef what they say is true, while
we hard-working men are sittin' here like drowned rats--that air John
Milton, ez never did a stitch o' live work like me yere; ez never
did anythin' but spin yarns about US ez did WORK, is now 'gittin' for
'em'--what? Guess! Why, he's gittin' THE RICH WIDDER HERSELF and HALF A
MILLION DOLLARS WITH HER! Gentlemen! lib'ty is a good thing--but thar's
some things ye gets too much lib'ty of in this country--and that's this
yer LIB'TY OF THE PRESS!"