Part 13

“Hallo!” said the stranger with undisguised interest. “I never heard of that! You don't mean that she eloped”--he hesitated.

“Oh, it was a square enough marriage. I reckon too square to suit some folks; but the fellow hadn't nothin', and wasn't worth shucks,--a sort of land surveyor, doin' odd jobs, you know; and the old man and old woman were agin it, and the tother daughter worse of all. It was allowed here--you know how women-folks talk!--that the surveyor had been sweet on Clementina, but had got tired of being played by her, and took up with Phemie out o' spite. Anyhow they got married, and Harcourt gave them to understand they couldn't expect anything from him. P'raps that's why it didn't last long, for only about two months ago she got a divorce from Rice and came back to her family again.”

“Rice?” queried the stranger. “Was that her husband's name, Stephen Rice?”

“I reckon! You knew him?”

“Yes,--when the tide came up to the tules, yonder,” answered the stranger musingly. “And the other daughter,--I suppose she has made a good match, being a beauty and the sole heiress?”

The Tasajaran made a grimace. “Not much! I reckon she's waitin' for the Angel Gabriel,--there ain't another good enough to suit her here. They say she's had most of the big men in California waitin' in a line with their offers, like that cue the fellows used to make at the 'Frisco post-office steamer days--and she with nary a letter or answer for any of them.”

“Then Harcourt doesn't seem to have been as fortunate in his family affairs as in his speculations?”

Peters uttered a grim laugh. “Well, I reckon you know all about his son's stampeding with that girl last spring?”

“His son?” interrupted the stranger. “Do you mean the boy they called John Milton? Why, he was a mere child!”

“He was old enough to run away with a young woman that helped in his mother's house, and marry her afore a justice of the peace. The old man just snorted with rage, and swore he'd have the marriage put aside, for the boy was under age. He said it was a put-up job of the girl's; that she was older by two years, and only wanted to get what money might be comin' some day, but that they'd never see a red cent of it. Then, they say, John Milton up and sassed the old man to his face, and allowed that he wouldn't take his dirty money if he starved first, and that if the old man broke the marriage he'd marry her again next year; that true love and honorable poverty were better nor riches, and a lot more o' that stuff he picked out o' them ten-cent novels he was allus reading. My women-folks say that he actually liked the girl, because she was the only one in the house that was ever kind to him; they say the girls were just ragin' mad at the idea o' havin' a hired gal who had waited on 'em as a sister-in-law, and they even got old Mammy Harcourt's back up by sayin' that John's wife would want to rule the house, and run her out of her own kitchen. Some say he shook THEM, talked back to 'em mighty sharp, and held his head a heap higher nor them. Anyhow, he's livin' with his wife somewhere in 'Frisco, in a shanty on a sand lot, and workin' odd jobs for the newspapers. No! takin' it by and large--it don't look as if Harcourt had run his family to the same advantage that he has his land.”

“Perhaps he doesn't understand them as well,” said the stranger smiling.

“Mor'n likely the material ain't thar, or ain't as vallyble for a new country,” said Peters grimly. “I reckon the trouble is that he lets them two daughters run him, and the man who lets any woman or women do that, lets himself in for all their meannesses, and all he gets in return is a woman's result,--show!”

Here the stranger, who was slowly rising from his chair with the polite suggestion of reluctantly tearing himself from the speaker's spell, said: “And Harcourt spends most of his time in San Francisco, I suppose?”

“Yes! but to-day he's here to attend a directors' meeting and the opening of the Free Library and Tasajara Hall. I saw the windows open, and the blinds up in his house across the plaza as I passed just now.”

The stranger had by this time quite effected his courteous withdrawal. “Good-afternoon, Mr. Peters,” he said, smilingly lifting his hat, and turned away.

Peters, who was obliged to take his legs off the chair, and half rise to the stranger's politeness, here reflected that he did not know his interlocutor's name and business, and that he had really got nothing in return for his information. This must be remedied. As the stranger passed through the hall into the street, followed by the unwonted civilities of the spruce hotel clerk and the obsequious attentions of the negro porter, Peters stepped to the window of the office. “Who was that man who just passed out?” he asked.

The clerk stared in undisguised astonishment. “You don't mean to say you didn't know WHO he was--all the while you were talking to him?”

“No,” returned Peters, impatiently.

“Why, that was Professor Lawrence Grant!--THE Lawrence Grant--don't you know?--the biggest scientific man and recognized expert on the Pacific slope. Why, that's the man whose single word is enough to make or break the biggest mine or claim going! That man!--why, that's the man whose opinion's worth thousands, for it carries millions with it--and can't be bought. That's him who knocked the bottom outer El Dorado last year, and next day sent Eureka up booming! Ye remember that, sure?”

“Of course--but”--stammered Peters.

“And to think you didn't know him!” repeated the hotel clerk wonderingly. “And here I was reckoning you were getting points from him all the time! Why, some men would have given a thousand dollars for your chance of talking to him--yes!--of even being SEEN talking to him. Why, old Wingate once got a tip on his Prairie Flower lead worth five thousand dollars while just changing seats with him in the cars and passing the time of day, sociable like. Why, what DID you talk about?”

Peters, with a miserable conviction that he had thrown away a valuable opportunity in mere idle gossip, nevertheless endeavored to look mysterious as he replied, “Oh, business gin'rally.” Then in the faint hope of yet retrieving his blunder he inquired, “How long will he be here?”

“Don't know. I reckon he and Harcourt's got something on hand. He just asked if he was likely to be at home or at his office. I told him I reckoned at the house, for some of the family--I didn't get to see who they were--drove up in a carriage from the 3.40 train while you were sitting there.”

Meanwhile the subject of this discussion, quite unconscious of the sensation he had created, or perhaps like most heroes philosophically careless of it, was sauntering indifferently towards Harcourt's house. But he had no business with his former host, his only object was to pass an idle hour before his train left. He was, of course, not unaware that he himself was largely responsible for Harcourt's success; that it was HIS hint which had induced the petty trader of Sidon to venture his all in Tasajara; HIS knowledge of the topography and geology of the plain that had stimulated Harcourt's agricultural speculations; HIS hydrographic survey of the creek that had made Harcourt's plan of widening the channel to commerce practicable and profitable. This he could not help but know. But that it was chiefly owing to his own clear, cool, far-seeing, but never visionary, scientific observation,--his own accurate analysis, unprejudiced by even a savant's enthusiasm, and uninfluenced by any personal desire or greed of gain,--that Tasajara City had risen from the stagnant tules, was a speculation that had never occurred to him. There was a much more uneasy consciousness of what he had done in Mr. Harcourt's face a few moments later, when his visitor's name was announced, and it is to be feared that if that name had been less widely honored and respected than it was, no merely grateful recollection of it would have procured Grant an audience. As it was, it was with a frown and a touch of his old impatient asperity that he stepped to the threshold of an adjoining room and called, “Clemmy!”

Clementina appeared at the door.

“There's that man Grant in the parlor. What brings HIM here, I wonder? Who does he come to see?”

“Who did he ask for?”

“Me,--but that don't mean anything.”