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.