But Mr. Lawrence Grant's character in certain circumstances would seem
to have as startling and inexplicable contradictions as Clementina
Harcourt's, and three days later he halted his horse at the entrance of
Los Gatos Rancho. The Home of the Cats--so called from the catamounts
which infested the locality--which had for over a century lazily basked
before one of the hottest canyons in the Coast Range, had lately been
stirred into some activity by the American, Don Diego Fletcher, who had
bought it, put up a saw-mill, and deforested the canyon. Still there
remained enough suggestion of a feline haunt about it to make Grant
feel as if he had tracked hither some stealthy enemy, in spite of the
peaceful intimation conveyed by the sign on a rough boarded shed at the
wayside, that the “Los Gatos Land and Lumber Company” held their office
there.
A cigarette-smoking peon lounged before the door. Yes; Don Diego was
there, but as he had arrived from Santa Clara only last night and was
going to Colonel Ramirez that afternoon, he was engaged. Unless the
business was important--but the cool, determined manner of Grant, even
more than his words, signified that it WAS important, and the servant
led the way to Don Diego's presence.
There certainly was nothing in the appearance of this sylvan proprietor
and newspaper capitalist to justify Grant's suspicion of a surreptitious
foe. A handsome man scarcely older than himself, in spite of a wavy
mass of perfectly white hair which contrasted singularly with his brown
mustache and dark sunburned face. So disguising was the effect of these
contradictions, that he not only looked unlike anybody else, but even
his nationality seemed to be a matter of doubt. Only his eyes, light
blue and intelligent, which had a singular expression of gentleness and
worry, appeared individual to the man. His manner was cultivated and
easy. He motioned his visitor courteously to a chair.
“I was referred to you,” said Grant, almost abruptly, “as the person
responsible for a series of slanderous attacks against Mr. Daniel
Harcourt in the 'Clarion,' of which paper I believe you are the
proprietor. I was told that you declined to give the authority for your
action, unless you were forced to by legal proceedings.”
Fletcher's sensitive blue eyes rested upon Grant's with an expression
of constrained pain and pity. “I heard of your inquiries, Mr. Grant; you
were making them on behalf of this Mr. Harcourt or Harkutt”--he made the
distinction with intentional deliberation--“with a view, I believe, to
some arbitration. The case was stated to you fairly, I think; I believe
I have nothing to add to it.”
“That was your answer to the ambassador of Mr. Harcourt,” said Grant,
coldly, “and as such I delivered it to him; but I am here to-day to
speak on my own account.”
What could be seen of Mr. Fletcher's lips appeared to curl in an odd
smile. “Indeed, I thought it was--or would be--all in the family.”
Grant's face grew more stern, and his gray eyes glittered. “You'll find
my status in this matter so far independent that I don't propose,
like Mr. Harcourt, either to begin a suit or to rest quietly under the
calumny. Briefly, Mr. Fletcher, as you or your informant knows, I was
the surveyor who revealed to Mr. Harcourt the value of the land to which
he claimed a title from your man, this Elijah or 'Lige Curtis as you
call him,”--he could not resist this imitation of his adversary's
supercilious affectation of precise nomenclature,--“and it was upon
my representation of its value as an investment that he began the
improvements which have made him wealthy. If this title was fraudulently
obtained, all the facts pertaining to it are sufficiently related to
connect me with the conspiracy.”
“Are you not a little hasty in your presumption, Mr. Grant?” said
Fletcher, with unfeigned surprise.
“That is for ME to judge, Mr. Fletcher,” returned Grant, haughtily.
“But the name of Professor Grant is known to all California as beyond
the breath of calumny or suspicion.”
“It is because of that fact that I propose to keep it so.”
“And may I ask in what way you wish me to assist you in so doing?”
“By promptly and publicly retracting in the 'Clarion' every word of this
slander against Harcourt.”
Fletcher looked steadfastly at the speaker. “And if I decline?”
“I think you have been long enough in California, Mr. Fletcher, to know
the alternative expected of a gentleman,” said Grant, coldly.
Mr. Fletcher kept his gentle blue eyes--in which surprise still
overbalanced their expression of pained concern--on Grant's face.
“But is not this more in the style of Colonel Starbottle than Professor
Grant?” he asked, with a faint smile.
Grant rose instantly with a white face. “You will have a better
opportunity of judging,” he said, “when Colonel Starbottle has the honor
of waiting upon you from me. Meantime, I thank you for reminding me of
the indiscretion into which my folly, in still believing that this thing
could be settled amicably, has led me.”
He bowed coldly and withdrew. Nevertheless, as he mounted his horse
and rode away, he felt his cheeks burning. Yet he had acted upon calm
consideration; he knew that to the ordinary Californian experience there
was nothing quixotic nor exaggerated in the attitude he had taken. Men
had quarreled and fought on less grounds; he had even half convinced
himself that he HAD been insulted, and that his own professional
reputation demanded the withdrawal of the attack on Harcourt on
purely business grounds; but he was not satisfied of the personal
responsibility of Fletcher nor of his gratuitous malignity. Nor did the
man look like a tool in the hands of some unscrupulous and hidden enemy.
However, he had played his card. If he succeeded only in provoking a
duel with Fletcher, he at least would divert the public attention from
Harcourt to himself. He knew that his superior position would throw the
lesser victim in the background. He would make the sacrifice; that was
his duty as a gentleman, even if SHE would not care to accept it as an
earnest of his unselfish love!
He had reached the point where the mountain track entered the Santa
Clara turnpike when his attention was attracted by a handsome but
old-fashioned carriage drawn by four white mules, which passed down the
road before him and turned suddenly off into a private road. But it was
not this picturesque gala equipage of some local Spanish grandee that
brought a thrill to his nerves and a flash to his eye; it was the
unmistakable, tall, elegant figure and handsome profile of Clementina,
reclining in light gauzy wraps against the back seat! It was no fanciful
resemblance, the outcome of his reverie,--there never was any one like
her!--it WAS she herself! But what was she doing here?
A vaquero cantered from the cross road where the dust of the vehicle
still hung. Grant hailed him. Ah! it was a fine carroza de cuatro mulas
that he had just passed! Si, Senor, truly; it was of Don Jose Ramirez,
who lived just under the hill. It was bringing company to the casa.
Ramirez! That was where Fletcher was going! Had Clementina known that
he was one of Fletcher's friends? Might she not be exposed to
unpleasantness, marked coolness, or even insult in that unexpected
meeting? Ought she not to be warned or prepared for it? She had banished
Grant from her presence until this stain was removed from her father's
name, but could she blame him for trying to save her from contact with
her father's slanderer? No! He turned his horse abruptly into the cross
road and spurred forward in the direction of the casa.
It was quite visible now--a low-walled, quadrangular mass of whitewashed
adobe lying like a drift on the green hillside. The carriage and four
had far preceded him, and was already half up the winding road towards
the house. Later he saw them reach the courtyard and disappear within.
He would be quite in time to speak with her before she retired to change
her dress. He would simply say that while making a professional visit
to Los Gatos Land Company office he had become aware of Fletcher's
connection with it, and accidentally of his intended visit to Ramirez.
His chance meeting with the carriage on the highway had determined his
course.
As he rode into the courtyard he observed that it was also approached
by another road, evidently nearer Los Gatos, and probably the older
and shorter communication between the two ranchos. The fact was
significantly demonstrated a moment later. He had given his horse to a
servant, sent in his card to Clementina, and had dropped listlessly on
one of the benches of the gallery surrounding the patio, when a horseman
rode briskly into the opposite gateway, and dismounted with a familiar
air. A waiting peon who recognized him informed him that the Dona was
engaged with a visitor, but that they were both returning to the gallery
for chocolate in a moment. The stranger was the man he had left only an
hour before--Don Diego Fletcher!
In an instant the idiotic fatuity of his position struck him fully. His
only excuse for following Clementina had been to warn her of the coming
of this man who had just entered, and who would now meet her as quickly
as himself. For a brief moment the idea of quietly slipping out to the
corral, mounting his horse again, and flying from the rancho, crossed
his mind; but the thought that he would be running away from the man he
had just challenged, and perhaps some new hostility that had sprung up
in his heart against him, compelled him to remain. The eyes of both men
met; Fletcher's in half-wondering annoyance, Grant's in ill-concealed
antagonism. What they would have said is not known, for at that moment
the voices of Clementina and Mrs. Ramirez were heard in the passage, and
they both entered the gallery. The two men were standing together; it
was impossible to see one without the other.
And yet Grant, whose eyes were instantly directed to Clementina, thought
that she had noted neither. She remained for an instant standing in the
doorway in the same self-possessed, coldly graceful pose he remembered
she had taken on the platform at Tasajara. Her eyelids were slightly
downcast, as if she had been arrested by some sudden thought or some shy
maiden sensitiveness; in her hesitation Mrs. Ramirez passed impatiently
before her.
“Mother of God!” said that lively lady, regarding the two speechless
men, “is it an indiscretion we are making here--or are you dumb? You,
Don Diego, are loud enough when you and Don Jose are together; at least
introduce your friend.”
Grant quickly recovered himself. “I am afraid,” he said, coming forward,
“unless Miss Harcourt does, that I am a mere trespasser in your house,
Senora. I saw her pass in your carriage a few moments ago, and having a
message for her I ventured to follow her here.”
“It is Mr. Grant, a friend of my father's,” said Clementina, smiling
with equanimity, as if just awakening from a momentary abstraction,
yet apparently unconscious of Grant's imploring eyes; “but the other
gentleman I have not the pleasure of knowing.”
“Ah! Don Diego Fletcher, a countryman of yours; and yet I think he knows
you not.”
Clementina's face betrayed no indication of the presence of her father's
foe, and yet Grant knew that she must have recognized his name, as she
looked towards Fletcher with perfect self-possession. He was too much
engaged in watching her to take note of Fletcher's manifest disturbance,
or the evident effort with which he at last bowed to her. That this
unexpected double meeting with the daughter of the man he had wronged,
and the man who had espoused the quarrel, should be confounding to him
appeared only natural. But he was unprepared to understand the feverish
alacrity with which he accepted Dona Maria's invitation to chocolate,
or the equally animated way in which Clementina threw herself into her
hostess's Spanish levity. He knew it was an awkward situation, that must
be surmounted without a scene; he was quite prepared in the presence of
Clementina to be civil to Fletcher; but it was odd that in this feverish
exchange of courtesies and compliments HE, Grant, should feel the
greater awkwardness and be the most ill at ease. He sat down and took
his part in the conversation; he let it transpire for Clementina's
benefit that he had been to Los Gatos only on business, yet there was
no opportunity for even a significant glance, and he had the added
embarrassment of seeing that she exhibited no surprise nor seemed to
attach the least importance to his inopportune visit. In a miserable
indecision he allowed himself to be carried away by the high-flown
hospitality of his Spanish hostess, and consented to stay to an early
dinner. It was part of the infelicity of circumstance that the voluble
Dona Maria--electing him as the distinguished stranger above the
resident Fletcher--monopolized him and attached him to her side. She
would do the honors of her house; she must show him the ruins of the
old Mission beside the corral; Don Diego and Clementina would join them
presently in the garden. He cast a despairing glance at the placidly
smiling Clementina, who was apparently equally indifferent to the
evident constraint and assumed ease of the man beside her, and turned
away with Mrs. Ramirez.
A silence fell upon the gallery so deep that the receding voices and
footsteps of Grant and his hostess in the long passage were distinctly
heard until they reached the end. Then Fletcher arose with an
inarticulate exclamation. Clementina instantly put her finger to her
lips, glanced around the gallery, extended her hand to him, and saying
“Come,” half-led, half-dragged him into the passage. To the right
she turned and pushed open the door of a small room that seemed a
combination of boudoir and oratory, lit by a French window opening to
the garden, and flanked by a large black and white crucifix with a prie
Dieu beneath it. Closing the door behind them she turned and faced
her companion. But it was no longer the face of the woman who had been
sitting in the gallery; it was the face that had looked back at her
from the mirror at Tasajara the night that Grant had left her--eager,
flushed, material with commonplace excitement!
“'Lige Curtis,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered passionately, “Lige Curtis, whom you thought dead!
'Lige Curtis, whom you once pitied, condoled with and despised! 'Lige
Curtis, whose lands and property have enriched you! 'Lige Curtis, who
would have shared it with you freely at the time, but whom your father
juggled and defrauded of it! 'Lige Curtis, branded by him as a drunken
outcast and suicide! 'Lige Curtis”--
“Hush!” She clapped her little hand over his mouth with a quick but
awkward schoolgirl gesture, inconceivable to any who had known her usual
languid elegance of motion, and held it there. He struggled angrily,
impatiently, reproachfully, and then, with a sudden characteristic
weakness that seemed as much of a revelation as her once hoydenish
manner, kissed it, when she let it drop. Then placing both her hands
still girlishly on her slim waist and curtseying grotesquely before
him, she said: “'Lige Curtis! Oh, yes! 'Lige Curtis, who swore to do
everything for me! 'Lige Curtis, who promised to give up liquor for
me,--who was to leave Tasajara for me! 'Lige Curtis, who was to reform,
and keep his land as a nest-egg for us both in the future, and then
who sold it--and himself--and me--to dad for a glass of whiskey! 'Lige
Curtis, who disappeared, and then let us think he was dead, only that he
might attack us out of the ambush of his grave!”
“Yes, but think what I have suffered all these years; not for the
cursed land--you know I never cared for that--but for YOU,--you,
Clementina,--YOU rich, admired by every one; idolized, held far above
me,--ME, the forgotten outcast, the wretched suicide--and yet the man
to whom you had once plighted your troth. Which of those greedy
fortune-hunters whom my money--my life-blood as you might have thought
it was--attracted to you, did you care to tell that you had ever slipped
out of the little garden gate at Sidon to meet that outcast! Do you
wonder that as the years passed and YOU were happy, I did not choose to
be so forgotten? Do you wonder that when YOU shut the door on the past
I managed to open it again--if only a little way--that its light might
startle you?”
Yet she did not seem startled or disturbed, and remained only looking at
him critically.
“You say that you have suffered,” she replied with a smile. “You don't
look it! Your hair is white, but it is becoming to you, and you are a
handsomer man, 'Lige Curtis, than you were when I first met you; you are
finer,” she went on, still regarding him, “stronger and healthier
than you were five years ago; you are rich and prosperous, you have
everything to make you happy, but”--here she laughed a little, held
out both her hands, taking his and holding his arms apart in a rustic,
homely fashion--“but you are still the same old 'Lige Curtis! It was
like you to go off and hide yourself in that idiotic way; it was like
you to let the property slide in that stupid, unselfish fashion; it was
like you to get real mad, and say all those mean, silly things to dad,
that didn't hurt him--in your regular looney style; for rich or poor,
drunk or sober, ragged or elegant, plain or handsome,--you're always the
same 'Lige Curtis!”
In proportion as that material, practical, rustic self--which nobody
but 'Lige Curtis had ever seen--came back to her, so in proportion the
irresolute, wavering, weak and emotional vagabond of Sidon came out to
meet it. He looked at her with a vague smile; his five years of childish
resentment, albeit carried on the shoulders of a man mentally and
morally her superior, melted away. He drew her towards him, yet at the
same moment a quick suspicion returned.
“Well, and what are you doing here? Has this man who has followed you
any right, any claim upon you?”
“None but what you in your folly have forced upon him! You have made him
father's ally. I don't know why he came here. I only know why I did--to
find YOU!”
“You suspected then?”
“I KNEW! Hush!”
The returning voices of Grant and of Mrs. Ramirez were heard in the
courtyard. Clementina made a warning yet girlishly mirthful gesture,
again caught his hand, drew him quickly to the French window, and
slipped through it with him into the garden, where they were quickly
lost in the shadows of a ceanothus hedge.
“They have probably met Don Jose in the orchard, and as he and Don Diego
have business together, Dona Clementina has without doubt gone to her
room and left them. For you are not very entertaining to the ladies
to-day,--you two caballeros! You have much politics together, eh?--or
you have discussed and disagreed, eh? I will look for the Senorita, and
let you go, Don Distraido!”
It is to be feared that Grant's apologies and attempts to detain her
were equally feeble,--as it seemed to him that this was the only chance
he might have of seeing Clementina except in company with Fletcher. As
Mrs. Ramirez left he lit a cigarette and listlessly walked up and
down the gallery. But Clementina did not come, neither did his hostess
return. A subdued step in the passage raised his hopes,--it was only
the grizzled major domo, to show him his room that he might prepare for
dinner.
He followed mechanically down the long passage to a second corridor.
There was a chance that he might meet Clementina, but he reached his
room without encountering any one. It was a large vaulted apartment with
a single window, a deep embrasure in the thick wall that seemed to focus
like a telescope some forgotten, sequestered part of the leafy garden.
While washing his hands, gazing absently at the green vignette framed by
the dark opening, his attention was drawn to a movement of the foliage,
stirred apparently by the rapid passage of two half-hidden figures. The
quick flash of a feminine skirt seemed to indicate the coy flight of
some romping maid of the casa, and the pursuit and struggle of her
vaquero swain. To a despairing lover even the spectacle of innocent,
pastoral happiness in others is not apt to be soothing, and Grant was
turning impatiently away when he suddenly stopped with a rigid face and
quickly approached the window. In her struggles with the unseen Corydon,
the clustering leaves seemed to have yielded at the same moment with the
coy Chloris, and parting--disclosed a stolen kiss! Grant's hand lay like
ice against the wall. For, disengaging Fletcher's arm from her waist
and freeing her skirt from the foliage, it was the calm, passionless
Clementina herself who stepped out, and moved pensively towards the
casa.