When Grant had left,Harcourt remained for some moments steadfastly gazing from the window over the Tasajara plain.He had not lost his look of concentrated power,nor his determination to fight.Astruggle between himself and the phantoms of the past had become now a necessary stimulus for its own sake,--for the sake of his mental and physical equipoise.He saw before him the pale,agitated,irresolute features of 'Lige Curtis,--not the man HE had injured,but the man who had injured HIM,whose spirit was aimlessly and wantonly--for he had never attempted to get back his possessions in his lifetime,nor ever tried to communicate with the possessor--striking at him in the shadow.And it was THAT man,that pale,writhing,frightened wretch whom he had once mercifully helped!Yes,whose LIFE he had even saved that night from exposure and delirium tremens when he had given him the whiskey.And this life he had saved,only to have it set in motion a conspiracy to ruin him!Who knows that 'Lige had not purposely conceived what they had believed to be an attempt at suicide,only to cast suspicion of murder on HIM!From which it will be perceived that Harcourt's powers of moral reasoning had not improved in five years,and that even the impartiality he had just shown in his description of 'Lige to Grant had been swallowed up in this new sense of injury.The founder of Tasajara,whose cool business logic,unfailing foresight,and practical deductions were never at fault,was once more childishly adrift in his moral ethics.
And there was Clementina,of whose judgment Grant had spoken so persistently,--could she assist him?It was true,as he had said,he had never talked to her of his affairs.In his sometimes uneasy consciousness of her superiority he had shrunk from even revealing his anxieties,much less his actual secret,and from anything that might prejudice the lofty paternal attitude he had taken towards his daughters from the beginning of his good fortune.He was never quite sure if her acceptance of it was real;he was never entirely free from a certain jealousy that always mingled with his pride in her superior rectitude;and yet his feeling was distinct from the good-natured contempt he had for his wife's loyalty,the anger and suspicion that his son's opposition had provoked,and the half-affectionate toleration he had felt for Euphemia's waywardness.
However he would sound Clementina without betraying himself.
He was anticipated by a slight step in the passage and the pushing open of his study door.The tall,graceful figure of the girl herself stood in the opening.
"They tell me Mr.Grant has been here.Does he stay to dinner?""No,he has an engagement at the hotel,but he will probably drop in later.Come in,Clemmy,I want to talk to you.Shut the door and sit down."She slipped in quietly,shut the door,took a seat on the sofa,softly smoothed down her gown,and turned her graceful head and serenely composed face towards him.Sitting thus she looked like some finely finished painting that decorated rather than belonged to the room,--not only distinctly alien to the flesh and blood relative before her,but to the house,and even the local,monotonous landscape beyond the window with the shining new shingles and chimneys that cut the new blue sky.These singular perfections seemed to increase in Harcourt's mind the exasperating sense of injury inflicted upon him by 'Lige's exposures.With a daughter so incomparably gifted,--a matchless creation that was enough in herself to ennoble that fortune which his own skill and genius had lifted from the muddy tules of Tasajara where this 'Lige had left it,--that SHE should be subjected to this annoyance seemed an infamy that Providence could not allow!What was his mere venial transgression to this exaggerated retribution?
"Clemmy,girl,I'm going to ask you a question.Listen,pet."He had begun with a reminiscent tenderness of the epoch of her childhood,but meeting the unresponding maturity of her clear eyes he abandoned it."You know,Clementina,I have never interfered in your affairs,nor tried to influence your friendships for anybody.
Whatever people may have to say of me they can't say that!I've always trusted you,as I would myself,to choose your own associates;I have never regretted it,and I don't regret it now.
But I'd like to know--I have reasons to-day for asking--how matters stand between you and Grant."The Parian head of Minerva on the bookcase above her did not offer the spectator a face less free from maidenly confusion than Clementina's at that moment.Her father had certainly expected none,but he was not prepared for the perfect coolness of her reply.
"Do you mean,have I ACCEPTED him?"
"No,--well--yes."
"No,then!Is that what he wished to see you about?It was understood that he was not to allude again to the subject to any one.""He has not to ME.It was only my own idea.He had something very different to tell me.You may not know,Clementina,"he begun cautiously,"that I have been lately the subject of some anonymous slanders,and Grant has taken the trouble to track them down for me.It is a calumny that goes back as far as Sidon,and I may want your level head and good memory to help me to refute it."He then repeated calmly and clearly,with no trace of the fury that had raged within him a moment before,the substance of Grant's revelation.
The young girl listened without apparent emotion.When he had finished she said quickly:"And what do you want me to recollect?"The hardest part of Harcourt's task was coming."Well,don't you remember that I told you the day the surveyors went away--that--Ihad bought this land of 'Lige Curtis some time before?""Yes,I remember your saying so,but"--
"But what?"