A First Family of Tasajara

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"I shall not be afraid."

She smiled so graciously, and, as she fully believed, maternally, that
he looked at her the second time. To his first hurried impression of
her as an elegant and delicately nurtured woman--one of the class of
distinguished tourists that fashion was beginning to send thither--he
had now to add that she had a quantity of fine silken-spun light hair
gathered in a heavy braid beneath her gray hat; that her mouth was
very delicately lipped and beautifully sensitive; that her soft skin,
although just then touched with excitement, was a pale faded velvet, and
seemed to be worn with ennui rather than experience; that her eyes
were hidden behind a strip of gray veil whence only a faint glow was
discernible. To this must still be added a poetic fancy all his own
that, as she sat there, with the skirt of her gray habit falling from
her long bodiced waist over the mustang's fawn-colored flanks, and with
her slim gauntleted hands lightly swaying the reins, she looked like
Queen Guinevere in the forest. Not that he particularly fancied Queen
Guinevere, or that he at all imagined himself Launcelot, but it was
quite in keeping with the suggestion-haunted brain of John Milton
Harcourt, whom the astute reader has of course long since recognized.

Preceding her through the soft carpeted vault with a woodman's
instinct,--for there was apparently no trail to be seen,--the soft inner
twilight began to give way to the outer stronger day, and presently she
was startled to see the clear blue of the sky before her on apparently
the same level as the brown pine-tessellated floor she was treading. Not
only did this show her that she was crossing a ridge of the upland, but
a few moments later she had passed beyond the woods to a golden hillside
that sloped towards a leafy, sheltered, and exquisitely-proportioned
valley. A tiny but picturesque tower, and a few straggling roofs and
gables, the flashing of a crystal stream through the leaves, and a
narrow white ribbon of road winding behind it indicated the hostelry
they were seeking. So peaceful and unfrequented it looked, nestling
between the hills, that it seemed as if they had discovered it.

With his hand at times upon the bridle, at others merely caressing her
mustang's neck, he led the way; there were a few breathless places where
the crown of his straw hat appeared between her horse's reins, and again
when she seemed almost slipping over on his shoulder, but they were
passed with such frank fearlessness and invincible youthful confidence
on the part of her escort that she felt no timidity. There were moments
when a bit of the charmed landscape unfolding before them overpowered
them both, and they halted to gaze,--sometimes without a word, or only a
significant gesture of sympathy and attention. At one of those artistic
manifestations Mrs. Ashwood laid her slim gloved fingers lightly but
unwittingly on John Milton's arm, and withdrew them, however, with a
quick girlish apology and a foolish color which annoyed her more than
the appearance of familiarity. But they were now getting well down into
the valley; the court of the little hotel was already opening before
them; their unconventional relations in the idyllic world above had
changed; the new one required some delicacy of handling, and she had an
idea that even the simplicity of the young stranger might be confusing.

"I must ask you to continue to act as my escort," she said, laughingly.
"I am Mrs. Ashwood of Philadelphia, visiting San Francisco with my
sister and brother, who are, I am afraid, even now hopelessly waiting
luncheon for me at San Mateo. But as there seems to be no prospect of my
joining them in time, I hope you will be able to give me the pleasure
of your company, with whatever they may give us here in the way of
refreshment."

"I shall be very happy," returned John Milton with unmistakable candor;
"but perhaps some of your friends will be arriving in quest of you, if
they are not already here."

"Then they will join us or wait," said Mrs. Ashwood incisively, with
her first exhibition of the imperiousness of a rich and pretty woman.
Perhaps she was a little annoyed that her elaborate introduction of
herself had produced no reciprocal disclosure by her companion. "Will
you please send the landlord to me?" she added.

John Milton disappeared in the hotel as she cantered to the porch. In
another moment she was giving the landlord her orders with the easy
confidence of one who knew herself only as an always welcome and highly
privileged guest, which was not without its effect. "And," she added
carelessly, "when everything is ready you will please tell--Mr."--

"Harcourt," suggested the landlord promptly.

Mrs. Ashwood's perfectly trained face gave not the slightest sign of the
surprise that had overtaken her. "Of course,--Mr. Harcourt."

"You know he's the son of the millionaire," continued the landlord, not
at all unwilling to display the importance of the habitues of Crystal
Spring, "though they've quarreled and don't get on together."

"I know," said the lady languidly, "and, if any one comes here for ME,
ask them to wait in the parlor until I come."

Then, submitting herself and her dusty habit to the awkward ministration
of the Irish chambermaid, she was quite thrilled with a delightful
curiosity. She vaguely remembered that she had heard something of the
Harcourt family discord,--but that was the divorced daughter surely!
And this young man was Harcourt's son, and they had quarreled! A quarrel
with a frank, open, ingenuous fellow like that--a mere boy--could only
be the father's fault. Luckily she had never mentioned the name of
Harcourt! She would not now; he need not know that it was his father who
had originated the party; why should she make him uncomfortable for the
few moments they were together?

There was nothing of this in her face as she descended and joined him.
He thought that face handsome, well-bred, and refined. But this
breeding and refinement seemed to him--in his ignorance of the world,
possibly--as only a graceful concealment of a self of which he knew
nothing; and he was not surprised to find that her pretty gray eyes, now
no longer hidden by her veil, really told him no more than her lips.
He was a little afraid of her, and now that she had lost her naive
enthusiasm he was conscious of a vague remorsefulness for his
interrupted work in the forest. What was he doing here? He who had
avoided the cruel, selfish world of wealth and pleasure,--a world that
this woman represented,--the world that had stood apart from him in the
one dream of his life--and had let Loo die! His quickly responsive face
darkened.

"I am afraid I really interrupted you up there," she said gently,
looking in his face with an expression of unfeigned concern; "you were
at work of some kind, I know, and I have very selfishly thought only of
myself. But the whole scene was so new to me, and I so rarely meet any
one who sees things as I do, that I know you will forgive me." She bent
her eyes upon him with a certain soft timidity. "You are an artist?"

"I am afraid not," he said, coloring and smiling faintly; "I don't think
I could draw a straight line."

"Don't try to; they're not pretty, and the mere ability to draw them
straight or curved doesn't make an artist. But you are a LOVER of
nature, I know, and from what I have heard you say I believe you can do
what lovers cannot do,--make others feel as they do,--and that is what I
call being an artist. You write? You are a poet?"

"Oh dear, no," he said with a smile, half of relief and half of naive
superiority, "I'm a prose writer--on a daily newspaper."

To his surprise she was not disconcerted; rather a look of animation lit
up her face as she said brightly, "Oh, then, you can of course satisfy
my curiosity about something. You know the road from San Francisco to
the Cliff House. Except for the view of the sea-lions when one gets
there it's stupid; my brother says it's like all the San Francisco
excursions,--a dusty drive with a julep at the end of it. Well, one day
we were coming back from a drive there, and when we were beginning to
wind along the brow of that dreadful staring Lone Mountain Cemetery, I
said I would get out and walk, and avoid the obtrusive glitter of those
tombstones rising before me all the way. I pushed open a little gate and
passed in. Once among these funereal shrubs and cold statuesque lilies
everything was changed; I saw the staring tombstones no longer, for,
like them, I seemed to be always facing the sea. The road had vanished;
everything had vanished but the endless waste of ocean below me, and
the last slope of rock and sand. It seemed to be the fittest place for
a cemetery,--this end of the crumbling earth,--this beginning of the
eternal sea. There! don't think that idea my own, or that I thought of
it then. No,--I read it all afterwards, and that's why I'm telling you
this."

She could not help smiling at his now attentive face, and went on: "Some
days afterwards I got hold of a newspaper four or six months old, and
there was a description of all that I thought I had seen and felt,--only
far more beautiful and touching, as you shall see, for I cut it out
of the paper and have kept it. It seemed to me that it must be some
personal experience,--as if the writer had followed some dear friend
there,--although it was with the unostentation and indefiniteness of
true and delicate feeling. It impressed me so much that I went back
there twice or thrice, and always seemed to move to the rhythm of that
beautiful funeral march--and I am afraid, being a woman, that I wandered
around among the graves as though I could find out who it was that had
been sung so sweetly, and if it were man or woman. I've got it here,"
she said, taking a dainty ivory porte-monnaie from her pocket and
picking out with two slim finger-tips a folded slip of newspaper; "and
I thought that maybe you might recognize the style of the writer, and
perhaps know something of his history. For I believe he has one. There!
that is only a part of the article, of course, but it is the part that
interested me. Just read from there," she pointed, leaning partly over
his shoulder so that her soft breath stirred his hair, "to the end; it
isn't long."

In the film that seemed to come across his eyes, suddenly the print
appeared blurred and indistinct. But he knew that she had put into his
hand something he had written after the death of his wife; something
spontaneous and impulsive, when her loss still filled his days and
nights and almost unconsciously swayed his pen. He remembered that his
eyes had been as dim when he wrote it--and now--handed to him by this
smiling, well-to-do woman, he was as shocked at first as if he had
suddenly found her reading his private letters. This was followed by a
sudden sense of shame that he had ever thus publicly bared his feelings,
and then by the illogical but irresistible conviction that it was false
and stupid. The few phrases she had pointed out appeared as cheap and
hollow rhetoric amid the surroundings of their social tete-a-tete over
the luncheon-table. There was small danger that this heady wine of
woman's praise would make him betray himself; there was no sign of
gratified authorship in his voice as he quietly laid down the paper and
said dryly: "I am afraid I can't help you. You know it may be purely
fanciful."

"I don't think so," said Mrs. Ashwood thoughtfully. "At the same time it
doesn't strike me as a very abiding grief for that very reason. It's TOO
sympathetic. It strikes me that it might be the first grief of some one
too young to be inured to sorrow or experienced enough to accept it as
the common lot. But like all youthful impressions it is very sincere and
true while it lasts. I don't know whether one gets anything more real
when one gets older."

With an insincerity he could not account for, he now felt inclined to
defend his previous sentiment, although all the while conscious of a
certain charm in his companion's graceful skepticism. He had in his
truthfulness and independence hitherto always been quite free from that
feeble admiration of cynicism which attacks the intellectually weak and
immature, and his present predilection may have been due more to her
charming personality. She was not at all like his sisters; she had
none of Clementina's cold abstraction, and none of Euphemia's sharp
and demonstrative effusiveness. And in his secret consciousness of her
flattering foreknowledge of him, with her assurance that before they had
ever met he had unwittingly influenced her, he began to feel more at his
ease. His fair companion also, in the equally secret knowledge she had
acquired of his history, felt as secure as if she had been formally
introduced. Nobody could find fault with her for showing civility to
the ostensible son of her host; it was not necessary that she should
be aware of their family differences. There was a charm too in their
enforced isolation, in what was the exceptional solitude of the little
hotel that day, and the seclusion of their table by the window of the
dining-room, which gave a charming domesticity to their repast. From
time to time they glanced down the lonely canyon, losing itself in the
afternoon shadow. Nevertheless Mrs. Ashwood's preoccupation with Nature
did not preclude a human curiosity to hear something more of John
Milton's quarrel with his father. There was certainly nothing of the
prodigal son about him; there was no precocious evil knowledge in his
frank eyes; no record of excesses in his healthy, fresh complexion;
no unwholesome or disturbed tastes in what she had seen of his rural
preferences and understanding of natural beauty. To have attempted any
direct questioning that would have revealed his name and identity would
have obliged her to speak of herself as his father's guest. She began
indirectly; he had said he had been a reporter, and he was still a
chronicler of this strange life. He had of course heard of many cases
of family feuds and estrangements? Her brother had told her of some
dreadful vendettas he had known in the Southwest, and how whole families
had been divided. Since she had been here she had heard of odd cases of
brothers meeting accidentally after long and unaccounted separations;
of husbands suddenly confronted with wives they had deserted; of fathers
encountering discarded sons!

John Milton's face betrayed no uneasy consciousness. If anything it was
beginning to glow with a boyish admiration of the grace and intelligence
of the fair speaker, that was perhaps heightened by an assumption of
half coquettish discomfiture.

"You are laughing at me!" she said finally. "But inhuman and selfish as
these stories may seem, and sometimes are, I believe that these curious
estrangements and separations often come from some fatal weakness of
temperament that might be strengthened, or some trivial misunderstanding
that could be explained. It is separation that makes them seem
irrevocable only because they are inexplicable, and a vague memory
always seems more terrible than a definite one. Facts may be forgiven
and forgotten, but mysteries haunt one always. I believe there are weak,
sensitive people who dread to put their wrongs into shape; those are the
kind who sulk, and when you add separation to sulking, reconciliation
becomes impossible. I knew a very singular case of that kind once. If
you like, I'll tell it to you. May be you will be able, some day, to
weave it into one of your writings. And it's quite true."

It is hardly necessary to say that John Milton had not been touched by
any personal significance in his companion's speech, whatever she may
have intended; and it is equally true that whether she had presently
forgotten her purpose, or had become suddenly interested in her own
conversation, her face grew more animated, her manner more confidential,
and something of the youthful enthusiasm she had shown in the mountain
seemed to come back to her.

"I might say it happened anywhere and call the people M. or N., but it
really did occur in my own family, and although I was much younger
at the time it impressed me very strongly. My cousin, who had been
my playmate, was an orphan, and had been intrusted to the care of my
father, who was his guardian. He was always a clever boy, but singularly
sensitive and quick to take offense. Perhaps it was because the little
property his father had left made him partly dependent on my father, and
that I was rich, but he seemed to feel the disparity in our positions.
I was too young to understand it; I think it existed only in his
imagination, for I believe we were treated alike. But I remember that he
was full of vague threats of running away and going to sea, and that
it was part of his weak temperament to terrify me with his extravagant
confidences. I was always frightened when, after one of those scenes,
he would pack his valise or perhaps only tie up a few things in a
handkerchief, as in the advertisement pictures of the runaway slaves,
and declare that we would never lay eyes upon him again. At first I
never saw the ridiculousness of all this,--for I ought to have told you
that he was a rather delicate and timid boy, and quite unfitted for a
rough life or any exposure,--but others did, and one day I laughed at
him and told him he was afraid. I shall never forget the expression of
his face and never forgive myself for it. He went away,--but he returned
the next day! He threatened once to commit suicide, left his clothes on
the bank of the river, and came home in another suit of clothes he had
taken with him. When I was sent abroad to school I lost sight of him;
when I returned he was at college, apparently unchanged. When he
came home for vacation, far from having been subdued by contact with
strangers, it seemed that his unhappy sensitiveness had been only
intensified by the ridicule of his fellows. He had even acquired a
most ridiculous theory about the degrading effects of civilization, and
wanted to go back to a state of barbarism. He said the wilderness was
the only true home of man. My father, instead of bearing with what
I believe was his infirmity, dryly offered him the means to try his
experiment. He started for some place in Texas, saying we would never
hear from him again. A month after he wrote for more money. My father
replied rather impatiently, I suppose,--I never knew exactly what he
wrote. That was some years ago. He had told the truth at last, for we
never heard from him again."

It is to be feared that John Milton was following the animated lips and
eyes of the fair speaker rather than her story. Perhaps that was the
reason why he said, "May he not have been a disappointed man?"

"I don't understand," she said simply.

"Perhaps," said John Milton with a boyish blush, "you may have
unconsciously raised hopes in his heart--and"--

"I should hardly attempt to interest a chronicler of adventure like you
in such a very commonplace, every-day style of romance," she said,
with a little impatience, "even if my vanity compelled me to make such
confidences to a stranger. No,--it was nothing quite as vulgar as that.
And," she added quickly, with a playfully amused smile as she saw the
young fellow's evident distress, "I should have probably heard from him
again. Those stories always end in that way."

"And you think?"--said John Milton.

"I think," said Mrs. Ashwood slowly, "that he actually did commit
suicide--or effaced himself in some way, just as firmly as I believe he
might have been saved by judicious treatment. Otherwise we should have
heard from him. You'll say that's only a woman's reasoning--but I think
our perceptions are often instinctive, and I knew his character."

Still following the play of her delicate features into a romance of his
own weaving, the imaginative young reporter who had seen so much from
the heights of Russian Hill said earnestly, "Then I have your permission
to use this material at any future time?"

"Yes," said the lady smilingly.

"And you will not mind if I should take some liberties with the text?"

"I must of course leave something to your artistic taste. But you will
let me see it?"

There were voices outside now, breaking the silence of the veranda.
They had been so preoccupied as not to notice the arrival of a horseman.
Steps came along the passage; the landlord returned. Mrs. Ashwood turned
quickly towards him.

"Mr. Grant, of your party, ma'am, to fetch you."

She saw an unmistakable change in her young friend's mobile face. "I
will be ready in a moment," she said to the landlord. Then, turning
to John Milton, the arch-hypocrite said sweetly: "My brother must have
known instinctively that I was in good hands, as he didn't come. But I
am sorry, for I should have so liked to introduce him to you--although
by the way," with a bright smile, "I don't think you have yet told me
your name. I know I couldn't have FORGOTTEN it."

"Harcourt," said John Milton, with a half-embarrassed laugh.

"But you must come and see me, Mr.--Mr. Harcourt," she said, producing
a card from a case already in her fingers, "at my hotel, and let my
brother thank you there for your kindness and gallantry to a stranger. I
shall be here a few weeks longer before we go south to look for a place
where my brother can winter. DO come and see me, although I cannot
introduce you to anything as real and beautiful as what YOU have shown
me to-day. Good-by, Mr. Harcourt; I won't trouble you to come down and
bore yourself with my escort's questions and congratulations."

She bent her head and allowed her soft eyes to rest upon his with a
graciousness that was beyond her speech, pulled her veil over her eyes
again, with a pretty suggestion that she had no further use for them,
and taking her riding-skirt lightly in her hand seemed to glide from the
room.

On her way to San Mateo, where it appeared the disorganized party had
prolonged their visit to accept an invitation to dine with a local
magnate, she was pleasantly conversational with the slightly abstracted
Grant. She was so sorry to have given them all this trouble and anxiety!
Of course she ought to have waited at the fork of the road, but she had
never doubted but she could rejoin them presently on the main road. She
was glad that Miss Euphemia's runaway horse had been stopped without
accident; it would have been dreadful if anything had happened to HER;
Mr. Harcourt seemed so wrapped up in his girls. It was a pity they never
had a son--Ah? Indeed! Then there was a son? So--and father and son had
quarreled? That was so sad. And for some trifling cause, no doubt?

"I believe he married the housemaid," said Grant grimly. "Be
careful!--Allow me."

"It's no use!" said Mrs. Ashwood, flushing with pink impatience, as she
recovered her seat, which a sudden bolt of her mustang had imperiled, "I
really can't make out the tricks of this beast! Thank you," she added,
with a sweet smile, "but I think I can manage him now. I can't see
why he stopped. I'll be more careful. You were saying the son was
married--surely not that boy!"

"Boy!" echoed Grant. "Then you know?"--

"I mean of course he must be a boy--they all grew up here--and it was
only five or six years ago that their parents emigrated," she retorted a
little impatiently. "And what about this creature?"

"Your horse?"

"You know I mean the woman he married. Of course she was older than
he--and caught him?"

"I think there was a year or two difference," said Grant quietly.

"Yes, but your gallantry keeps you from telling the truth; which is that
the women, in cases of this kind, are much older and more experienced."

"Are they? Well, perhaps she is, NOW. She is dead."

Mrs. Ashwood walked her horse. "Poor thing," she said. Then a sudden
idea took possession of her and brought a film to her eyes. "How long
ago?" she asked in a low voice.

"About six or seven months, I think. I believe there was a baby who died
too."

She continued to walk her horse slowly, stroking its curved neck. "I
think it's perfectly shameful!" she said suddenly.

"Not so bad as that, Mrs. Ashwood, surely. The girl may have loved
him--and he"--

"You know perfectly what I mean, Mr. Grant. I speak of the conduct of
the mother and father and those two sisters!"

Grant slightly elevated his eyebrows. "But you forget, Mrs. Ashwood. It
was young Harcourt and his wife's own act. They preferred to take their
own path and keep it."

"I think," said Mrs. Ashwood authoritatively, "that the idea of leaving
those two unfortunate children to suffer and struggle on alone--out
there--on the sand hills of San Francisco--was simply disgraceful!"

Later that evening she was unreasonably annoyed to find that her
brother, Mr. John Shipley, had taken advantage of the absence of Grant
to pay marked attention to Clementina, and had even prevailed upon that
imperious goddess to accompany him after dinner on a moonlight stroll
upon the veranda and terraces of Los Pajaros. Nevertheless she seemed to
recover her spirits enough to talk volubly of the beautiful scenery
she had discovered in her late perilous abandonment in the wilds of the
Coast Range; to aver her intention to visit it again; to speak of it in
a severely practical way as offering a far better site for the cottages
of the young married couples just beginning life than the outskirts of
towns or the bleak sand hills of San Francisco; and thence by graceful
degrees into a dissertation upon popular fallacies in regard to hasty
marriages, and the mistaken idea of some parents in not accepting the
inevitable and making the best of it. She still found time to enter
into an appreciative and exhaustive criticism upon the literature and
journalistic enterprise of the Pacific Coast with the proprietor of the
"Pioneer," and to cause that gentleman to declare that whatever people
might say about rich and fashionable Eastern women, that Mrs. Ashwood's
head was about as level as it was pretty.