第32章 CHAPTER VI.(4)

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 IWOULD 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.