第28章 CHAPTER V.(7)

His eyes instinctively sought Clementina's.She was gazing at him with such a grave,penetrating look,--half doubting,half wistful,--a look so unlike her usual unruffled calm that he felt strangely stirred.But the next moment,when she rejoined him,the look had entirely gone."You have not seen my sister since you were at Sidon,I believe?"she said quietly."She would be sorry to miss you."But Euphemia and her train were already passing them on the opposite side of the long table.She had evidently recognized Grant,yet the two sisters were looking intently into each other's eyes when he raised his own.Then Euphemia met his bow with a momentary accession of color,a coquettish wave of her hand across the table,a slight exaggeration of her usual fascinating recklessness,and smilingly moved away.He turned to Clementina,but here an ominous tapping at the farther end of the long table revealed the fact that Mr.Harcourt was standing on a chair with oratorical possibilities in his face and attitude.There was another forward movement in the crowd and--silence.In that solid,black-broadclothed,respectable figure,that massive watchchain,that white waistcoat,that diamond pin glistening in the satin cravat,Euphemia might have seen the realization of her prophetic vision at Sidon five years before.

He spoke for ten minutes with a fluency and comprehensive business-like directness that surprised Grant.He was not there,he said,to glorify what had been done by himself,his family,or his friends in Tasajara.Others who were to follow him might do that,or at least might be better able to explain and expatiate upon the advantages of the institution they had just opened,and its social,moral,and religious effect upon the community.He was there as a business man to demonstrate to them--as he had always done and always hoped to do--the money value of improvement;the profit--if they might choose to call it--of well-regulated and properly calculated speculation.The plot of land upon which they stood,of which the building occupied only one eighth,was bought two years before for ten thousand dollars.When the plans of the building were completed a month afterwards,the value of the remaining seven eighths had risen enough to defray the cost of the entire construction.He was in a position to tell them that only that morning the adjacent property,subdivided and laid out in streets and building-plots,had been admitted into the corporate limits of the city;and that on the next anniversary of the building they would approach it through an avenue of finished dwellings!An outburst of applause followed the speaker's practical climax;the fresh young faces of his auditors glowed with invincible enthusiasm;the afternoon trade-winds,freshening over the limitless plain beyond,tossed the bright banners at the windows as with sympathetic rejoicing,and a few odorous pine shavings,overlooked in a corner in the hurry of preparation,touched by an eddying zephyr,crept out and rolled in yellow ringlets across the floor.

The Reverend Doctor Pilsbury arose in a more decorous silence.He had listened approvingly,admiringly,he might say even reverently,to the preceding speaker.But although his distinguished friend had,with his usual modesty,made light of his own services and those of his charming family,he,the speaker,had not risen to sing his praises.No;it was not in this Hall,projected by his foresight and raised by his liberality;in this town,called into existence by his energy and stamped by his attributes;in this county,developed by his genius and sustained by his capital;ay,in this very State whose grandeur was made possible by such giants as he,--it was not in any of these places that it was necessary to praise Daniel Harcourt,or that a panegyric of him would be more than idle repetition.Nor would he,as that distinguished man had suggested,enlarge upon the social,moral,and religious benefits of the improvement they were now celebrating.It was written on the happy,innocent faces,in the festive garb,in the decorous demeanor,in the intelligent eyes that sparkled around him,in the presence of those of his parishioners whom he could meet as freely here to-day as in his own church on Sunday.What then could he say?What then was there to say?Perhaps he should say nothing if it were not for the presence of the young before him.--He stopped and fixed his eyes paternally on the youthful Johnny Billings,who with a half dozen other Sunday-school scholars had been marshaled before the reverend speaker.--And what was to be the lesson THEYwere to learn from it?They had heard what had been achieved by labor,enterprise,and diligence.Perhaps they would believe,and naturally too,that what labor,enterprise,and diligence had done could be done again.But was that all?Was there nothing behind these qualities--which,after all,were within the reach of every one here?Had they ever thought that back of every pioneer,every explorer,every pathfinder,every founder and creator,there was still another?There was no terra incognita so rare as to be unknown to one;no wilderness so remote as to be beyond a greater ken than theirs;no waste so trackless but that one had already passed that way!Did they ever reflect that when the dull sea ebbed and flowed in the tules over the very spot where they were now standing,who it was that also foresaw,conceived,and ordained the mighty change that would take place;who even guided and directed the feeble means employed to work it;whose spirit moved,as in still older days of which they had read,over the face of the stagnant waters?Perhaps they had.Who then was the real pioneer of Tasajara,--back of the Harcourts,the Peterses,the Billingses,and Wingates?The reverend gentleman gently paused for a reply.

It was given in the clear but startled accents of the half frightened,half-fascinated Johnny Billings,in three words:--"'Lige Curtis,sir!"