by Bret Harte
CHAPER IV.
It was part of the functions of John Milton Harkutt to take down theearly morning shutters and sweep out the store for his father each daybefore going to school. It was a peculiarity of this performance that hewas apt to linger over it, partly from the fact that it put off theevil hour of lessons, partly that he imparted into the process a purelyimaginative and romantic element gathered from his latest novel-reading.In this he was usually assisted by one or two school-fellows on theirway to school, who always envied him his superior menial occupation. Togo to school, it was felt, was a common calamity of boyhood that calledinto play only the simplest forms of evasion, whereas to take downactual shutters in a bona fide store, and wield a real broom that raiseda palpable cloud of dust, was something that really taxed the noblestexertions. And it was the morning after the arrival of the strangersthat John Milton stood on the veranda of the store ostentatiouslyexamining the horizon, with his hand shading his eyes, as one of hiscompanions appeared.
"Hollo, Milt! wot yer doin'?"
John Milton started dramatically, and then violently dashed at one ofthe shutters and began to detach it. "Ha!" he said hoarsely. "Clear theship for action! Open the ports! On deck there! Steady, you lubbers!"In an instant his enthusiastic school-fellow was at his side attackinganother shutter. "A long, low schooner bearing down upon us! Lively,lads, lively!" continued John Milton, desisting a moment to take anotherdramatic look at the distant plain. "How does she head now?" he demandedfiercely.
"Sou' by sou'east, sir," responded the other boy, frantically dancingbefore the window. "But she'll weather it."
They each then wrested another shutter away, violently depositing them,as they ran to and fro, in a rack at the corner of the veranda. Addedto an extraordinary and unnecessary clattering with their feet, theyaccompanied their movements with a singular hissing sound, supposed toindicate in one breath the fury of the elements, the bustle of the eagercrew, and the wild excitement of the coming conflict. When the lastshutter was cleared away, John Milton, with the cry "Man the starboardguns!" dashed into the store, whose floor was marked by the muddyfootprints of yesterday's buyers, seized a broom and began to sweepviolently. A cloud of dust arose, into which his companion at onceprecipitated himself with another broom and a loud BANG! to indicate thesomewhat belated sound of cannon. For a few seconds the two boys pliedtheir brooms desperately in that stifling atmosphere, accompanying eachlong sweep and puff of dust out of the open door with the report ofexplosions and loud HA'S! of defiance, until not only the store, but theveranda was obscured with a cloud which the morning sun struggled vainlyto pierce. In the midst of this tumult and dusty confusion--happilyunheard and unsuspected in the secluded domestic interior of thebuilding--a shrill little voice arose from the road.
"Think you're mighty smart, don't ye?"
The two naval heroes stopped in their imaginary fury, and, as the dustof conflict cleared away, recognized little Johnny Peters gazing at themwith mingled inquisitiveness and envy.
"Guess ye don't know what happened down the run last night," hecontinued impatiently. "'Lige Curtis got killed, or killed hisself!Blood all over the rock down thar. Seed it, myseff. Dad picked up hissix-shooter,--one barrel gone off. My dad was the first to find it out,and he's bin to Squire Kerby tellin' him."
The two companions, albeit burning with curiosity, affected indifferenceand pre-knowledge.
"Dad sez your father druv 'Lige outer the store lass night! Dad sez yourfather's 'sponsible. Dad sez your father ez good ez killed him. Dad sezthe squire'll set the constable on your father. Yah!" But here the smallinsulter incontinently fled, pursued by both the boys. Nevertheless,when he had made good his escape, John Milton showed neither adisposition to take up his former nautical role, nor to follow hiscompanion to visit the sanguinary scene of Elijah's disappearance. Hewalked slowly back to the store and continued his work of sweeping andputting in order with an abstracted regularity, and no trace of hisformer exuberant spirits.
The first one of those instinctive fears which are common to imaginativechildren, and often assume the functions of premonition, had takenpossession of him. The oddity of his father's manner the evening before,which had only half consciously made its indelible impression on hissensitive fancy, had recurred to him with Johnny Peters's speech. He hadno idea of literally accepting the boy's charges; he scarcely understoodtheir gravity; but he had a miserable feeling that his father's angerand excitement last night was because he had been discovered hunting inthe dark for that paper of 'Lige Curtis's. It WAS 'Lige Curtis's paper,for he had seen it lying there. A sudden dreadful conviction came overhim that he must never, never let any one know that he had seen hisfather take up that paper; that he must never admit it, even to HIM. Itwas not the boy's first knowledge of that attitude of hypocrisy whichthe grownup world assumes towards childhood, and in which the innocentvictims eventually acquiesce with a Machiavellian subtlety that at lastavenges them,--but it was his first knowledge that that hypocrisy mightnot be so innocent. His father had concealed something from him, becauseit was not right.
But if childhood does not forget, it seldom broods and is not abovebeing diverted. And the two surveyors--of whose heroic advent in a raftJohn Milton had only heard that morning with their traveled ways, theirstrange instruments and stranger talk, captured his fancy. Kept inthe background by his sisters when visitors came, as an unpresentablefeature in the household, he however managed to linger near thestrangers when, in company with Euphemia and Clementina, after breakfastthey strolled beneath the sparkling sunlight in the rude gardeninclosure along the sloping banks of the creek. It was with the averagebrother's supreme contempt that he listened to his sisters' "practicin'"upon the goodness of these superior beings; it was with an exceptionalpity that he regarded the evident admiration of the strangers in return.He felt that in the case of Euphemia, who sometimes evinced a laudablecuriosity in his pleasures, and a flattering ignorance of his reading,this might be pardonable; but what any one could find in the uselessstatuesque Clementina passed his comprehension. Could they not see atonce that she was "just that kind of person" who would lie abed inthe morning, pretending she was sick, in order to make Phemie do thehousework, and make him, John Milton, clean her boots and fetch thingsfor her? Was it not perfectly plain to them that her present sickeningpoliteness was solely with a view to extract from them caramels,rock-candy, and gum drops, which she would meanly keep herself, andperhaps some "buggy-riding" later? Alas, John Milton, it was not! Forstanding there with her tall, perfectly-proportioned figure outlinedagainst a willow, an elastic branch of which she had drawn down by onecurved arm above her head, and on which she leaned--as everybody leanedagainst something in Sidon--the two young men saw only a strayinggoddess in a glorified rosebud print. Whether the clearly-cut profilepresented to Rice, or the full face that captivated Grant, eachsuggested possibilities of position, pride, poetry, and passion thatastonished while it fascinated them. By one of those instincts knownonly to the freemasonry of the sex, Euphemia lent herself to thisadvertisement of her sister's charms by subtle comparison with her ownprettinesses, and thus combined against their common enemy, man.
"Clementina certainly is perfect, to keep her supremacy over that prettylittle sister," thought Rice.
"What a fascinating little creature to hold her own against that tall,handsome girl," thought Grant.
"They're takin' stock o' them two fellers so as to gabble about 'em whentheir backs is turned," said John Milton gloomily to himself, with adismal premonition of the prolonged tea-table gossip he would be obligedto listen to later.
"We were very fortunate to make a landing at all last night," said Rice,looking down upon the still swollen current, and then raising his eyesto Clementina. "Still more fortunate to make it where we did. I supposeit must have been the singing that lured us on to the bank,--as,you know, the sirens used to lure people,--only with less disastrousconsequences."
John Milton here detected three glaring errors; first,
it was NOTClementina who had sung; secondly, he knew that neither of his sistershad ever read anything about sirens, but he had; thirdly, that theyoung surveyor was glaringly ignorant of local phenomena and should becorrected.
"It's nothin' but the current," he said, with that feverish youthfulhaste that betrays a fatal experience of impending interruption. "It'salways leavin' drift and rubbish from everywhere here. There ain'tanythin' that's chucked into the creek above that ain't bound to fetchup on this bank. Why, there was two sheep and a dead hoss here longafore YOU thought of coming!" He did not understand why this shouldprovoke the laughter that it did, and to prove that he had no ulteriormeaning, added with pointed politeness, "So IT ISN'T YOUR FAULT, youknow--YOU couldn't help it;" supplementing this with the distinctcourtesy, "otherwise you wouldn't have come."
"But it would seem that your visitors are not all as accidental as yourbrother would imply, and one, at least, seems to have been expected lastevening. You remember you thought we were a Mr. Parmlee," said Mr. Ricelooking at Clementina.
It would be strange indeed, he thought, if the beautiful girl were notsurrounded by admirers. But without a trace of self-consciousness, orany change in her reposeful face, she indicated her sister with a slightgesture, and said: "One of Phemie's friends. He gave her the accordion.She's very popular."
"And I suppose YOU are very hard to please?" he said with a tentativesmile.
She looked at him with her large, clear eyes, and that absence ofcoquetry or changed expression in her beautiful face which might havestood for indifference or dignity as she said: "I don't know. I amwaiting to see."
But here Miss Phemie broke in saucily with the assertion that Mr.Parmlee might not have a railroad in his pocket, but that at least hedidn't have to wait for the Flood to call on young ladies, nor did heusually come in pairs, for all the world as if he had been let out ofNoah's Ark, but on horseback and like a Christian by the front door.All this provokingly and bewitchingly delivered, however, and with asimulated exaggeration that was incited apparently more by Mr. LawrenceGrant's evident enjoyment of it, than by any desire to defend the absentParmlee.
"But where is the front door?" asked Grant laughingly.
The young girl pointed to a narrow zigzag path that ran up the bankbeside the house until it stopped at a small picketed gate on the levelof the road and store.
"But I should think it would be easier to have a door and privatepassage through the store," said Grant.
"WE don't," said the young lady pertly, "we have nothing to do with thestore. I go in to see paw sometimes when he's shutting up and there'snobody there, but Clem has never set foot in it since we came. It's badenough to have it and the lazy loafers that hang around it as near tous as they are; but paw built the house in such a fashion that we ain'ttroubled by their noise, and we might be t'other side of the creek asfar as our having to come across them. And because paw has to sell porkand flour, we haven't any call to go there and watch him do it."
The two men glanced at each other. This reserve and fastidiousness weresomething rare in a pioneer community. Harkutt's manners certainly didnot indicate that he was troubled by this sensitiveness; it must havebeen some individual temperament of his daughters. Stephen felt hisrespect increase for the goddess-like Clementina; Mr. Lawrence Grantlooked at Miss Phemie with a critical smile.
"But you must be very limited in your company," he said; "or is Mr.Parmlee not a customer of your father's?"
"As Mr. Parmlee does not come to us through the store, and don't talktrade to me, we don't know," responded Phemie saucily.
"But have you no lady acquaintances--neighbors--who also avoid the storeand enter only at the straight and narrow gate up there?" continuedGrant mischievously, regardless of the uneasy, half-reproachful glancesof Rice.
But Phemie, triumphantly oblivious of any satire, answered promptly:"If you mean the Pike County Billingses who live on the turnpike road asmuch as they do off it, or the six daughters of that Georgia Cracker whowear men's boots and hats, we haven't."
"And Mr. Parmlee, your admirer?" suggested Rice. "Hasn't he a mother orsisters here?"
"Yes, but they don't want to know us, and have never called here."
The embarrassment of the questioner at this unexpected reply, which camefrom the faultless lips of Clementina, was somewhat mitigated by thefact that the young woman's voice and manner betrayed neither annoyancenor anger.
Here, however, Harkutt appeared from the house with the information thathe had secured two horses for the surveyors and their instruments, andthat he would himself accompany them a part of the way on theirreturn to Tasajara Creek, to show them the road. His usual listlessdeliberation had given way to a certain nervous but uneasy energy. Ifthey started at once it would be better, before the loungers gathered atthe store and confused them with lazy counsel and languid curiosity. Hetook it for granted that Mr. Grant wished the railroad survey to bea secret, and he had said nothing, as they would be pestered withquestions. "Sidon was inquisitive--and old-fashioned." The benefit itsinhabitants would get from the railroad would not prevent them fromthrowing obstacles in its way at first; he remembered the way theyhad acted with a proposed wagon road,--in fact, an idea of his own,something like the railroad; he knew them thoroughly, and if he mightadvise them, it would be to say nothing here until the thing wassettled.
"He evidently does not intend to give us a chance," said Grantgood-humoredly to his companion, as they turned to prepare for theirjourney; "we are to be conducted in silence to the outskirts of the townlike horse-thieves."
"But you gave him the tip for himself," said Rice reproachfully; "youcannot blame him for wanting to keep it."
"I gave it to him in trust for his two incredible daughters," said Grantwith a grimace. "But, hang it! if I don't believe the fellow has moreconcern in it than I imagined."
"But isn't she perfect?" said Rice, with charming abstraction.
"Who?"
"Clementina, and so unlike her father."
"Discomposingly so," said Grant quietly. "One feels in calling her 'MissHarkutt' as if one were touching upon a manifest indiscretion. But herecomes John Milton. Well, my lad, what can I do for you?"
The boy, who had been regarding them from a distance with wistful andcurious eyes as they replaced their instruments for the journey, hadgradually approached them. After a moment's timid hesitation he said,looking at Grant: "You don't know anybody in this kind o' business,"pointing to the instruments, "who'd like a boy, about my size?"
"I'm afraid not, J. M.," said Grant, cheerfully, without suspending hisoperation. "The fact is, you see, it's not exactly the kind of work fora boy of your size."
John Milton was silent for a moment, shifting himself slowly from oneleg to another as he watched the surveyor. After a pause he said, "Theredon't seem to be much show in this world for boys o' my size. Theredon't seem to be much use for 'em any way." This not bitterly, butphilosophically, and even politely, as if to relieve Grant's rejectionof any incivility.
"Really you quite pain me, John Milton," said Grant, looking up as hetightened a buckle. "I never thought of it before, but you're right."
"Now," continued the boy slowly, "with girls it's just different. Girlsof my size everybody does things for. There's Clemmy,--she's only twoyears older nor me, and don't know half that I do, and yet she kin lieabout all day, and hasn't to get up to breakfast. And Phemie,--who'sjest the same age, size, and weight as me,--maw and paw lets her doeverything she wants to. And so does everybody. And so would you."
"But you surely don't want to be like a girl?" said Grant, smiling.
It here occurred to John Milton's youthful but not illogical mind thatthis was not argument, and he turned disappointedly away. As his fatherwas to accompany the strangers a short distance, he, John Milton, wasto-day left in charge of the store. That duty, however, did not involveany pecuniary transactions--the taking of money or making of change buta simple record on a slate behind the counter of articles selected byt
hose customers whose urgent needs could not wait Mr. Harkutt's return.Perhaps on account of this degrading limitation, perhaps for otherreasons, the boy did not fancy the task imposed upon him. The presenceof the idle loungers who usually occupied the armchairs near the stove,and occasionally the counter, dissipated any romance with which hemight have invested his charge; he wearied of the monotony of their dullgossip, but mostly he loathed the attitude of hypercritical counsel andinstruction which they saw fit to assume towards him at such moments."Instead o' lazin' thar behind the counter when your father ain't hereto see ye, John," remarked Billings from the depths of his armchair afew moments after Harkutt had ridden away, "ye orter be bustlin' round,dustin' the shelves. Ye'll never come to anythin' when you're a man efyou go on like that. Ye never heard o' Harry Clay--that was called 'theMill-boy of the Slashes'--sittin' down doin' nothin' when he was a boy."
"I never heard of him loafin' round in a grocery store when he wasgrowned up either," responded John Milton, darkly.
"P'r'aps you reckon he got to be a great man by standin' up sassin' hisfather's customers," said Peters, angrily. "I kin tell ye, young man, ifyou was my boy"--
"If I was YOUR boy, I'd be playin' hookey instead of goin' to school,jest as your boy is doin' now," interrupted John Milton, with a literalrecollection of his quarrel and pursuit of the youth in question thatmorning.
An undignified silence on the part of the adults followed, the usualsequel to those passages; Sidon generally declining to expose itself tothe youthful Harkutt's terrible accuracy of statement.
The men resumed their previous lazy gossip about Elijah Curtis'sdisappearance, with occasional mysterious allusions in a lower tone,which the boy instinctively knew referred to his father, but whicheither from indolence or caution, the two great conservators of Sidon,were never formulated distinctly enough for his relentless interference.The morning sunshine was slowly thickening again in an indolent mistthat seemed to rise from the saturated plain. A stray lounger shuffledover from the blacksmith's shop to the store to take the place ofanother idler who had joined an equally lethargic circle aroundthe slumbering forge. A dull intermittent sound of hammering cameoccasionally from the wheelwright's shed--at sufficiently protractedintervals to indicate the enfeebled progress of Sidon's vehicularrepair. A yellow dog left his patch of sunlight on the opposite sideof the way and walked deliberately over to what appeared to be moreluxurious quarters on the veranda; was manifestly disappointed but notequal to the exertion of returning, and sank down with blinking eyes anda regretful sigh without going further. A procession of six ducks gotwell into a line for a laborious "march past" the store, but fell outat the first mud puddle and gave it up. A highly nervous but respectablehen, who had ventured upon the veranda evidently against her betterinstincts, walked painfully on tiptoe to the door, apparently was metby language which no mother of a family could listen to, and retired instrong hysterics. A little later the sun became again obscured, thewind arose, rain fell, and the opportunity for going indoors and doingnothing was once more availed of by all Sidon.
It was afternoon when Mr. Harkutt returned. He did not go into thestore, but entered the dwelling from the little picket-gate and steeppath. There he called a family council in the sitting-room as beingthe most reserved and secure. Mrs. Harkutt, sympathizing and cheerfullyready for any affliction, still holding a dust-cloth in her hand, tookher seat by the window, with Phemie breathless and sparkling at one sideof her, while Clementina, all faultless profile and repose, sat on theother. To Mrs. Harkutt's motherly concern at John Milton's absence, itwas pointed out that he was wanted at the store,--was a mere boy anyhow,and could not be trusted. Mr. Harkutt, a little ruddier from weather,excitement, and the unusual fortification of a glass of liquor, a littlemore rugged in the lines of his face, and with an odd ring of defiantself-assertion in his voice, stood before them in the centre of theroom.
He wanted them to listen to him carefully, to remember what he said, forit was important; it might be a matter of "lawing" hereafter,--and hecouldn't be always repeating it to them,--he would have enough to do.There was a heap of it that, as women-folks, they couldn't understand,and weren't expected to. But he'd got it all clear now, and what he wassaying was gospel. He'd always known to himself that the only good thatcould ever come to Sidon would come by railroad. When those fools talkedwagon road he had said nothing, but he had his own ideas; he had workedfor that idea without saying anything to anybody; that idea was to getpossession of all the land along the embarcadero, which nobodycared for, and 'Lige Curtis was ready to sell for a song. Well, now,considering what had happened, he didn't mind telling them that he hadbeen gradually getting possession of it, little by little, paying 'LigeCurtis in advances and installments, until it was his own! They hadheard what those surveyors said; how that it was the only fit terminusfor the railroad. Well, that land, and that water-front, and theterminus were HIS! And all from his own foresight and prudence.
It is needless to say that this was not the truth. But it is necessaryto point out that this fabrication was the result of his last night'scogitations and his morning's experience. He had resolved upon a boldcourse. He had reflected that his neighbors would be more ready tobelieve in and to respect a hard, mercenary, and speculative foresightin his taking advantage of 'Lige's necessities than if he had--as wasthe case--merely benefited by them through an accident of circumstanceand good humor. In the latter case he would be envied and hated; inthe former he would be envied and feared. By logic of circumstancethe greater wrong seemed to be less obviously offensive than the minorfault. It was true that it involved the doing of something he had notcontemplated, and the certainty of exposure if 'Lige ever returned,but he was nevertheless resolved. The step from passive to activewrong-doing is not only easy, it is often a relief; it is that return tosincerity which we all require. Howbeit, it gave that ring of assertionto Daniel Harkutt's voice already noted, which most women like, andonly men are prone to suspect or challenge. The incompleteness of hisstatement was, for the same reason, overlooked by his feminine auditors.
"And what is it worth, dad?" asked Phemie eagerly.
"Grant says I oughter get at least ten thousand dollars for the site ofthe terminus from the company, but of course I shall hold on to the restof the land. The moment they get the terminus there, and the depot andwharf built, I can get my own price and buyers for the rest. Before theyear is out Grant thinks it ought to go up ten per cent on the value ofthe terminus, and that a hundred thousand."
"Oh, dad!" gasped Phemie, frantically clasping her knees with both handsas if to perfectly assure herself of this good fortune.
Mrs. Harkutt audibly murmured "Poor dear Dan'l," and stood, as it were,sympathetically by, ready to commiserate the pains and anxieties ofwealth as she had those of poverty. Clementina alone remained silent,clear-eyed, and unchanged.
"And to think it all came through THEM!" continued Phemie. "I always hadan idea that Mr. Grant was smart, dad. And it was real kind of him totell you."
"I reckon father could have found it out without them. I don't know whywe should be beholden to them particularly. I hope he isn't expected tolet them think that he is bound to consider them our intimate friendsjust because they happened to drop in here at a time when his plans havesucceeded."
The voice was Clementina's, unexpected but quiet, unemotional andconvincing. "It seemed," as Mrs. Harkutt afterwards said, "as if thechild had already touched that hundred thousand." Phemie reddened with asense of convicted youthful extravagance.
"You needn't fear for me," said Harkutt, responding to Clementina'svoice as if it were an echo of his own, and instinctively recognizingan unexpected ally. "I've got my own ideas of this thing, and what'sto come of it. I've got my own ideas of openin' up that property andshowin' its resources. I'm goin' to run it my own way. I'm goin' to havea town along the embarcadero that'll lay over any town in Contra Costa.I'm goin' to have the court-house and county seat there, and a coupleof hotels as good as any in the Bay
. I'm goin' to build that wagon roadthrough here that those lazy louts slipped up on, and carry it clearover to Five Mile Corner, and open up the whole Tasajara Plain!"
They had never seen him look so strong, so resolute, so intelligent andhandsome. A dimly prophetic vision of him in a black broadcloth suit andgold watch-chain addressing a vague multitude, as she remembered tohave seen the Hon. Stanley Riggs of Alasco at the "Great Barbecue,"rose before Phemie's blue enraptured eyes. With the exception of Mrs.Harkutt,--equal to any possibilities on the part of her husband,--theyhad honestly never expected it of him. They were pleased with theirfather's attitude in prosperity, and felt that perhaps he was notunworthy of being proud of them hereafter.
"But we're goin' to leave Sidon," said Phemie, "ain't we, paw?"
"As soon as I can run up a new house at the embarcadero," said Harkuttpeevishly, "and that's got to be done mighty quick if I want to make ashow to the company and be in possession."
"And that's easier for you to do, dear, now that 'Lige's disappeared,"said Mrs. Harkutt consolingly.
"What do ye mean by that? What the devil are ye talkin' about?" demandedHarkutt suddenly with unexpected exasperation.
"I mean that that drunken 'Lige would be mighty poor company for thegirls if he was our only neighbor," returned Mrs. Harkutt submissively.
Harkutt, after a fixed survey of his wife, appeared mollified. The twogirls, who were mindful of his previous outburst the evening before,exchanged glances which implied that his manners needed correction forprosperity.
"You'll want a heap o' money to build there, Dan'l," said Mrs. Harkuttin plaintive diffidence.
"Yes! Yes!" said Harkutt impatiently. "I've kalkilated all that, andI'm goin' to 'Frisco to-morrow to raise it and put this bill of sale onrecord." He half drew Elijah Curtis's paper from his pocket, but pausedand put it back again.
"Then THAT WAS the paper, dad," said Phemie triumphantly.
"Yes," said her father, regarding her fixedly, "and you know now why Ididn't want anything said about it last night--nor even now."
"And 'Lige had just given it to you! Wasn't it lucky?"
"He HADN'T just given it to me!" said her father with another unexpectedoutburst. "God Amighty! ain't I tellin' you all the time it was an oldmatter! But you jabber, jabber all the time and don't listen! Where'sJohn Milton?" It had occurred to him that the boy might have read thepaper--as his sister had--while it lay unheeded on the counter.
"In the store,--you know. You said he wasn't to hear anything of this,but I'll call him," said Mrs. Harkutt, rising eagerly.
"Never mind," returned her husband, stopping her reflectively, "bestleave it as it is; if it's necessary I'll tell him. But don't any of yousay anything, do you hear?"
Nevertheless a few hours later, when the store was momentarily free ofloungers, and Harkutt had relieved his son of his monotonous charge, hemade a pretense, while abstractedly listening to an account of the boy'sstewardship, to look through a drawer as if in search of some missingarticle.
"You didn't see anything of a paper I left somewhere about hereyesterday?" he asked carelessly.
"The one you picked up when you came in last night?" said the boy withdiscomposing directness.
Harkutt flushed slightly and drew his breath between his set teeth. Notonly could he place no reliance upon ordinary youthful inattention,but he must be on his guard against his own son as from a spy! But herestrained himself.
"I don't remember," he said with affected deliberation, "what it was Ipicked up. Do you? Did you read it?"
The meaning of his father's attitude instinctively flashed upon the boy.He HAD read the paper, but he answered, as he had already determined,"No."
An inspiration seized Mr. Harkutt. He drew 'Lige Curtis's bill of salefrom his pocket, and opening it before John Milton said, "Was it that?"
"I don't know," said the boy. "I couldn't tell." He walked away withaffected carelessness, already with a sense of playing some part likehis father, and pretended to whistle for the dog across the street.Harkutt coughed ostentatiously, put the paper back in his pocket,set one or two boxes straight on the counter, locked the drawer, anddisappeared into the back passage. John Milton remained standing inthe doorway looking vacantly out. But he did not see the dull familiarprospect beyond. He only saw the paper his father had opened andunfolded before him. It was the same paper he had read last night. Butthere were three words written there THAT WERE NOT THERE BEFORE! Afterthe words "Value received" there had been a blank. He remembered thatdistinctly. This was filled in by the words, "Five hundred dollars." Thehandwriting did not seem like his father's, nor yet entirely like 'LigeCurtis's. What it meant he did not know,--he would not try to think. Heshould forget it, as he had tried to forget what had happened before,and he should never tell it to any one!
There was a feverish gayety in his sisters' manner that afternoon thathe did not understand; short colloquies that were suspended with illconcealed impatience when he came near them, and resumed when hewas sent, on equally palpable excuses, out of the room. He had beenaccustomed to this exclusion when there were strangers present, but itseemed odd to him now, when the conversation did not even turn upon thetwo superior visitors who had been there, and of whom he confidentlyexpected they would talk. Such fragments as he overheard were always inthe future tense, and referred to what they intended to do. Hismother, whose affection for him had always been shown in excessiveand depressing commiseration of him in even his lightest moments, thatafternoon seemed to add a prophetic and Cassandra-like sympathy for somevague future of his that would require all her ministration. "You won'tneed them new boots, Milty dear, in the changes that may be comin' toye; so don't be bothering your poor father in his worriments over hisnew plans."
"What new plans, mommer?" asked the boy abruptly. "Are we goin' awayfrom here?"
"Hush, dear, and don't ask questions that's enough for grown folks toworry over, let alone a boy like you. Now be good,"--a quality in Mrs.Harkutt's mind synonymous with ceasing from troubling,--"and aftersupper, while I'm in the parlor with your father and sisters, you kinsit up here by the fire with your book."
"But," persisted the boy in a flash of inspiration, "is popper goin' tojoin in business with those surveyors,--a surveyin'?"
"No, child, what an idea! Run away there,--and mind!--don't bother yourfather."
Nevertheless John Milton's inspiration had taken a new andcharacteristic shape. All this, he reflected, had happened since thesurveyors came--since they had weakly displayed such a shameless andunmanly interest in his sisters! It could have but one meaning. He hungaround the sitting-room and passages until he eventually encounteredClementina, taller than ever, evidently wearing a guilty satisfactionin her face, engrafted upon that habitual bearing of hers which he hadalways recognized as belonging to a vague but objectionable race whosemembers were individually known to him as "a proudy."
"Which of those two surveyor fellows is it, Clemmy?" he said with anengaging smile, yet halting at a strategic distance.
"Is what?"
"Wot you're goin' to marry."
"Idiot!"
"That ain't tellin' which," responded the boy darkly.
Clementina swept by him into the sitting-room, where he heard herdeclare that "really that boy was getting too low and vulgarfor anything." Yet it struck him, that being pressed for furtherexplanation, she did NOT specify why. This was "girls' meanness!"
Howbeit he lingered late in the road that evening, hearing his fatherdiscuss with the search-party that had followed the banks of the creek,vainly looking for further traces of the missing 'Lige, the possibilityof his being living or dead, of the body having been carried away by thecurrent to the bay or turning up later in some distant marsh when thespring came with low water. One who had been to his cabin beside theembarcadero reported that it was, as had been long suspected, barelyhabitable, and contained neither books, papers, nor records which wouldindicate his family or friends. It was a God-forsaken, dreary, worthl
essplace; he wondered how a white man could ever expect to make a livingthere. If Elijah never turned up again it certainly would be a long timebefore any squatter would think of taking possession of it. John Miltonknew instinctively, without looking up, that his father's eyes werefixed upon him, and he felt himself constrained to appear to beabstracted in gazing down the darkening road. Then he heard his fathersay, with what he felt was an equal assumption of carelessness: "Yes, Ireckon I've got somewhere a bill of sale of that land that I had to takefrom 'Lige for an old bill, but I kalkilate that's all I'll ever see ofit."
Rain fell again as the darkness gathered, but he still loitered on theroad and the sloping path of the garden, filled with a half resentfulsense of wrong, and hugging with gloomy pride an increasing sense ofloneliness and of getting dangerously wet. The swollen creek stillwhispered, murmured and swirled beside the bank. At another time hemight have had wild ideas of emulating the surveyors on some extemporeraft and so escaping his present dreary home existence; but since thedisappearance of 'Lige, who had always excited an odd boyish antipathyin his heart, although he had never seen him, he shunned the streamcontaminated with the missing man's unheroic fate. Presently the lightfrom the open window of the sitting-room glittered on the wet leavesand sprays where he stood, and the voices of the family conclave camefitfully to his ear. They didn't want him there. They had never thoughtof asking him to come in. Well!--who cared? And he wasn't going to bebought off with a candle and a seat by the kitchen fire. No!
Nevertheless he was getting wet to no purpose. There was the tool-houseand carpenter's shed near the bank; its floor was thickly covered withsawdust and pine-wood shavings, and there was a mouldy buffalo skinwhich he had once transported thither from the old wagon-bed. There,too, was his secret cache of a candle in a bottle, buried with otherpiratical treasures in the presence of the youthful Peters, whoconsented to be sacrificed on the spot in buccaneering fashion tocomplete the unhallowed rites. He unearthed the candle, lit it, andclearing away a part of the shavings stood it up on the floor. He thenbrought a prized, battered, and coverless volume from a hidden recess inthe rafters, and lying down with the buffalo robe over him, and his capin his hand ready to extinguish the light at the first footstep of atrespasser, gave himself up--as he had given himself up, I fear, manyother times--to the enchantment of the page before him.
The current whispered, murmured, and sang, unheeded at his side. Thevoices of his mother and sisters, raised at times in eagerness orexpectation of the future, fell upon his unlistening ears. For with thespell that had come upon him, the mean walls of his hiding-placemelted away; the vulgar stream beside him might have been that dim,subterraneous river down which Sindbad and his bale of riches were sweptout of the Cave of Death to the sunlight of life and fortune, so surelyand so simply had it transported him beyond the cramped and darkenedlimits of his present life. He was in the better world of boyishromance,--of gallant deeds and high emprises; of miraculous atonementand devoted sacrifice; of brave men, and those rarer, impossiblewomen,--the immaculate conception of a boy's virgin heart. What matteredit that behind that glittering window his mother and sisters grewfeverish and excited over the vulgar details of their real but baserfortune? From the dark tool-shed by the muddy current, John Milton,with a battered dogs'-eared chronicle, soared on the wings of fancy farbeyond their wildest ken!