Part 10

The embarrassment of the questioner at this unexpected reply, which came from the faultless lips of Clementina, was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the young woman's voice and manner betrayed neither annoyance nor anger.

Here, however, Harkutt appeared from the house with the information that he had secured two horses for the surveyors and their instruments, and that he would himself accompany them a part of the way on their return to Tasajara Creek, to show them the road. His usual listless deliberation had given way to a certain nervous but uneasy energy. If they started at once it would be better, before the loungers gathered at the store and confused them with lazy counsel and languid curiosity. He took it for granted that Mr. Grant wished the railroad survey to be a secret, and he had said nothing, as they would be pestered with questions. “Sidon was inquisitive--and old-fashioned.” The benefit its inhabitants would get from the railroad would not prevent them from throwing obstacles in its way at first; he remembered the way they had acted with a proposed wagon road,--in fact, an idea of his own, something like the railroad; he knew them thoroughly, and if he might advise them, it would be to say nothing here until the thing was settled.

“He evidently does not intend to give us a chance,” said Grant good-humoredly to his companion, as they turned to prepare for their journey; “we are to be conducted in silence to the outskirts of the town like horse-thieves.”

“But you gave him the tip for himself,” said Rice reproachfully; “you cannot blame him for wanting to keep it.”

“I gave it to him in trust for his two incredible daughters,” said Grant with a grimace. “But, hang it! if I don't believe the fellow has more concern 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 'Miss Harkutt' as if one were touching upon a manifest indiscretion. But here comes John Milton. Well, my lad, what can I do for you?”

The boy, who had been regarding them from a distance with wistful and curious eyes as they replaced their instruments for the journey, had gradually 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 his operation. “The fact is, you see, it's not exactly the kind of work for a boy of your size.”

John Milton was silent for a moment, shifting himself slowly from one leg to another as he watched the surveyor. After a pause he said, “There don't seem to be much show in this world for boys o' my size. There don't seem to be much use for 'em any way.” This not bitterly, but philosophically, and even politely, as if to relieve Grant's rejection of any incivility.

“Really you quite pain me, John Milton,” said Grant, looking up as he tightened a buckle. “I never thought of it before, but you're right.”

“Now,” continued the boy slowly, “with girls it's just different. Girls of my size everybody does things for. There's Clemmy,--she's only two years older nor me, and don't know half that I do, and yet she kin lie about all day, and hasn't to get up to breakfast. And Phemie,--who's jest the same age, size, and weight as me,--maw and paw lets her do everything 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 that this was not argument, and he turned disappointedly away. As his father was to accompany the strangers a short distance, he, John Milton, was to-day left in charge of the store. That duty, however, did not involve any pecuniary transactions--the taking of money or making of change but a simple record on a slate behind the counter of articles selected by those customers whose urgent needs could not wait Mr. Harkutt's return. Perhaps on account of this degrading limitation, perhaps for other reasons, the boy did not fancy the task imposed upon him. The presence of the idle loungers who usually occupied the armchairs near the stove, and occasionally the counter, dissipated any romance with which he might have invested his charge; he wearied of the monotony of their dull gossip, but mostly he loathed the attitude of hypercritical counsel and instruction which they saw fit to assume towards him at such moments. “Instead o' lazin' thar behind the counter when your father ain't here to see ye, John,” remarked Billings from the depths of his armchair a few 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 ef you go on like that. Ye never heard o' Harry Clay--that was called 'the Mill-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 was growned up either,” responded John Milton, darkly.

“P'r'aps you reckon he got to be a great man by standin' up sassin' his father's customers,” said Peters, angrily. “I kin tell ye, young man, if you 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 literal recollection of his quarrel and pursuit of the youth in question that morning.

An undignified silence on the part of the adults followed, the usual sequel to those passages; Sidon generally declining to expose itself to the youthful Harkutt's terrible accuracy of statement.

The men resumed their previous lazy gossip about Elijah Curtis's disappearance, with occasional mysterious allusions in a lower tone, which the boy instinctively knew referred to his father, but which either 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 mist that seemed to rise from the saturated plain. A stray lounger shuffled over from the blacksmith's shop to the store to take the place of another idler who had joined an equally lethargic circle around the slumbering forge. A dull intermittent sound of hammering came occasionally from the wheelwright's shed--at sufficiently protracted intervals to indicate the enfeebled progress of Sidon's vehicular repair. A yellow dog left his patch of sunlight on the opposite side of the way and walked deliberately over to what appeared to be more luxurious quarters on the veranda; was manifestly disappointed but not equal to the exertion of returning, and sank down with blinking eyes and a regretful sigh without going further. A procession of six ducks got well into a line for a laborious “march past” the store, but fell out at the first mud puddle and gave it up. A highly nervous but respectable hen, who had ventured upon the veranda evidently against her better instincts, walked painfully on tiptoe to the door, apparently was met by language which no mother of a family could listen to, and retired in strong hysterics. A little later the sun became again obscured, the wind arose, rain fell, and the opportunity for going indoors and doing nothing was once more availed of by all Sidon.

It was afternoon when Mr. Harkutt returned. He did not go into the store, but entered the dwelling from the little picket-gate and steep path. There he called a family council in the sitting-room as being the most reserved and secure. Mrs. Harkutt, sympathizing and cheerfully ready for any affliction, still holding a dust-cloth in her hand, took her seat by the window, with Phemie breathless and sparkling at one side of her, while Clementina, all faultless profile and repose, sat on the other. To Mrs. Harkutt's motherly concern at John Milton's absence, it was 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 little more rugged in the lines of his face, and with an odd ring of defiant self-assertion in his voice, stood before them in the centre of the room.

He wanted them to listen to him carefully, to remember what he said, for it was important; it might be a matter of “lawing” hereafter,--and he couldn'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 was saying was gospel. He'd always known to himself that the only good that could ever come to Sidon would come by railroad. When those fools talked wagon road he had said nothing, but he had his own ideas; he had worked for that idea without saying anything to anybody; that idea was to get possession of all the land along the embarcadero, which nobody cared 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 had been gradually getting possession of it, little by little, paying 'Lige Curtis in advances and installments, until it was his own! They had heard what those surveyors said; how that it was the only fit terminus for the railroad. Well, that land, and that water-front, and the terminus were HIS! And all from his own foresight and prudence.

It is needless to say that this was not the truth. But it is necessary to point out that this fabrication was the result of his last night's cogitations and his morning's experience. He had resolved upon a bold course. He had reflected that his neighbors would be more ready to believe in and to respect a hard, mercenary, and speculative foresight in his taking advantage of 'Lige's necessities than if he had--as was the case--merely benefited by them through an accident of circumstance and good humor. In the latter case he would be envied and hated; in the former he would be envied and feared. By logic of circumstance the greater wrong seemed to be less obviously offensive than the minor fault. It was true that it involved the doing of something he had not contemplated, and the certainty of exposure if 'Lige ever returned, but he was nevertheless resolved. The step from passive to active wrong-doing is not only easy, it is often a relief; it is that return to sincerity which we all require. Howbeit, it gave that ring of assertion to Daniel Harkutt's voice already noted, which most women like, and only men are prone to suspect or challenge. The incompleteness of his statement 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 of the terminus from the company, but of course I shall hold on to the rest of the land. The moment they get the terminus there, and the depot and wharf built, I can get my own price and buyers for the rest. Before the year is out Grant thinks it ought to go up ten per cent on the value of the terminus, and that a hundred thousand.”

“Oh, dad!” gasped Phemie, frantically clasping her knees with both hands as 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 of wealth as she had those of poverty. Clementina alone remained silent, clear-eyed, and unchanged.