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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancestors, by Gertrude Atherton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ancestors
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Gertrude Atherton
+
+Release Date: April 1, 2010 [EBook #31858]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCESTORS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Mark C. Orton, Linda McKeown, Mary Meehan and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              Ancestors
+
+                               A Novel
+
+                        By Gertrude Atherton
+
+
+Copyright, 1907, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
+New York and London
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+Published September, 1907.
+
+
+TO
+Emma Beatrice Brunner
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+1904
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Miss Thangue, who had never seen her friend's hand tremble among the
+teacups before, felt an edge on her mental appetite, stimulating after
+two monotonous years abroad. It was several minutes, however, before she
+made any effort to relieve her curiosity, for of all her patron-friends
+Victoria Gwynne required the most delicate touch. Flora had learned to
+be audacious without taking a liberty, which, indeed, was one secret of
+her success; but although she prided herself upon her reading of this
+enigma, whom even the ancestral dames of Capheaton looked down upon
+inspectively, she was never quite sure of her ground. She particularly
+wished to avoid mistakes upon the renewal of an intimacy kept alive by a
+fitful correspondence during her sojourn on the Continent. Quite apart
+from self-interest, she liked no one as well, and her curiosity was
+tempered by a warm sympathy and a genuine interest. It was this capacity
+for friendship, and her unlimited good-nature, that had saved her,
+penniless as she was, from the ignominious footing of the social
+parasite. The daughter of a clergyman in a Yorkshire village, and the
+playmate in childhood of the little girls of the castle near by, she had
+realized early in life that although pretty and well-bred, she was not
+yet sufficiently dowered by either nature or fortune to hope for a
+brilliant marriage; and she detested poverty. Upon her father's death
+she must earn her bread, and, reasoning that self-support was merely the
+marketing of one's essential commodity, and as her plump and indolent
+body was disinclined to privations of any sort, she elected the rôle of
+useful friend to fashionable and luxurious women. It was not an exalted
+niche to fill in life, but at least she had learned to fill it to
+perfection, and her ambitions were modest. Moreover, a certain integrity
+of character and girlish enthusiasm had saved her from the more
+corrosive properties of her anomalous position, and she was not only
+clever enough to be frankly useful without servility, but she had become
+so indispensable to certain of her friends, that although still blooming
+in her early forties, she would no more have deserted them for a mere
+husband than she would have renounced her comfortable and varied
+existence for the no less varied uncertainties of matrimony.
+
+It was not often that a kindly fate had overlooked her for so long a
+period as two years, and when she had accepted the invitation of one of
+the old castle playmates to visit her in Florence, it had been with a
+lively anticipation that made dismay the more poignant in the face of
+hypochondria. Nevertheless, realizing her debt to this first of her
+patrons, and with much of her old affection revived, she wandered from
+one capital and specialist to the next, until death gave her liberty.
+She was not unrewarded, but the legacy inspired her with no desire for
+an establishment beyond her room at the Club in Dover Street, the
+companionship of friends not too exacting, the agreeable sense of
+indispensableness, and a certain splendor of environment which gave a
+warmth and color to life; and which she could not have commanded had she
+set up in middle years as an independent spinster of limited income. She
+had received many impatient letters while abroad, to which she had
+replied with fluent affection and picturesque gossip, never losing touch
+for a moment. When release came she had hastened home to book herself
+for the house-parties, and with Victoria Gwynne, although one of the
+least opulent of her friends, first on the list. She had had several
+correspondents as ardent as herself, and there was little gossip of the
+more intimate sort that had not reached her sooner or later, but she
+found subtle changes in Victoria for which she could not as yet account.
+She had now been at Capheaton and alone with her friend for three days,
+but there had been a stress of duties for both, and the hostess had
+never been more silent. To-day, as she seemed even less inclined to
+conversation, although manifestly nervous, Miss Thangue merely drank her
+tea with an air of being too comfortable and happy in England and
+Capheaton for intellectual effort, and patiently waited for a cue or an
+inspiration. But although she too kept silence, memory and imagination
+held rendezvous in her circumspect brain, and she stole more than one
+furtive glance at her companion.
+
+Lady Victoria Gwynne, one of the tallest women of her time and still one
+of the handsomest, had been extolled all her life for that fusion of the
+romantic and the aristocratic ideals that so rarely find each other in
+the same shell; and loved by a few. Her round slender figure, supple
+with exercise and ignorant of disease, her black hair and eyes, the
+utter absence of color in her smooth Orientally white skin, the mouth,
+full at the middle and curving sharply upward at the corners, and the
+irregular yet delicate nose that seemed presented as an afterthought to
+save that brilliant and subtle face from classic severity, made her
+look--for the most part--as if fashioned for the picture-gallery or the
+poem, rather than for the commonplaces of life. Always one of those
+Englishwomen that let their energy be felt rather than expressed, for
+she made no effort in conversation whatever, her once mobile face had of
+late years, without aging, composed itself into a sort of illuminated
+mask. As far as possible removed from that other ideal, the British
+Matron, and still suggesting an untamed something in the complex centres
+of her character, she yet looked so aloof, so monumental, that she had
+recently been painted by a great artist for a world exhibition, as an
+illustration of what centuries of breeding and selection had done for
+the noblewomen of England.
+
+Some years before, a subtle Frenchman had expressed her in such a
+fashion that while many vowed he had given to the world an epitome of
+romantic youth, others remarked cynically that his handsome subject
+looked as if about to seat herself on the corner of the table and smoke
+a cigarette. The American artist, although habitually cruel to his
+patrons, had, after triumphantly transferring the type to the canvas,
+drawn to the surface only so much of the soul of the woman as all that
+ran might admire. If there was a hint of bitterness in the lower part of
+the face, from the eyes there looked an indomitable courage and much
+sweetness. Only in the carnage of the head, the tilt of the chin, was
+the insolence expressed that had made her many enemies. Some of the
+wildest stories of the past thirty years had been current about her, and
+rejected or believed according to the mental habit or personal bias of
+those that tinker with reputations. The late Queen, it was well known,
+had detested her, and made no secret of her resentment that through the
+short-sighted loyalty of one of the first members of her Household, the
+dangerous creature had been named after her. But whatever her secrets,
+open scandal Lady Victoria had avoided: imperturbably, without even an
+additional shade of insolence, never apologizing nor explaining;
+wherein, no doubt, lay one secret of her strength. And then her
+eminently respectable husband, Arthur Gwynne, second son of the Marquess
+of Strathland and Zeal, had always fondly alluded to her as "The
+Missus," and lauded her as a repository of all the unfashionable
+virtues. To-day, presiding at the tea-table in her son's country-house,
+an eager light in her eyes, she looked like neither of her portraits:
+more nearly approached, perhaps, poor Arthur Gwynne's ideal of her; not
+in the least the frozen stoic of the past three days. When she finally
+made an uncontrollable movement that half-overturned the cream-jug,
+Flora Thangue's curiosity overcame her, and she murmured, tentatively:
+
+"If I had ever seen you nervous before, Vicky--"
+
+"I am not nervous, but allowances are to be made for maternal anxiety."
+
+"Oh!" Miss Thangue drew a deep breath. She continued, vaguely, "Oh, the
+maternal rôle--"
+
+"Have I ever failed as a mother?" asked Lady Victoria, dispassionately.
+
+"No, but you are so many other things, too. Somehow, when I am away from
+you I see you in almost every other capacity."
+
+"Jack is thirty and I am forty-nine."
+
+"_You_ look thirty," replied Flora, with equal candor.
+
+"I am thankful that my age is in Lodge; I can never be tempted to enroll
+myself with the millions that were married when just sixteen."
+
+"Oh, you never could make a fool of yourself," murmured her friend.
+Then, as Victoria showed signs of relapsing into silence, she plunged in
+recklessly; "Jack is bound to be elected. When has he ever failed to get
+what he wanted? But you, Vicky dear--is there anything wrong? You had a
+bulky letter from California the day I arrived. I do hope that tiresome
+property is not giving you trouble. What a pity it is such a long way
+off."
+
+"The San Francisco lease runs out shortly. Half of that, and the
+southern ranch, are my only independent sources of income. The northern
+ranch belongs to Jack. All three are getting less and less easy to let
+in their entirety, my agents write me, and I feel half a pauper
+already."
+
+"This is not so bad," murmured Flora.
+
+"Strathland would bundle me out in ten minutes if anything happened to
+Jack."
+
+"It would be a pity; it suits you." She was not referring to the hall,
+which was somewhat too light and small for the heroic mould of its
+chatelaine, but to the noble proportions of the old house itself, and
+the treasures that had accumulated since the first foundations were laid
+in the reign of Henry VI. There were rooms hung with ugly brocades and
+velvets never duplicated, state bed-chambers and boudoirs sacred to the
+memory of personages whose dust lay half-forgotten in their marbles; but
+above all, Capheaton was famous for its pictures. Not only was there an
+unusually large number of portraits by masters scattered about the
+twenty rooms that lay behind and on either side of the hall, but many
+hundreds of those portraits and landscapes from the brushes of artists
+fashionable in their day, unknown in the annals of art, but seeming to
+emit a faint scent of lavender and rose leaves from the walls of
+England's old manor-houses and castles. In the dining-room there was a
+full-length portrait of Mary Tudor, black but for the yellow face and
+hands and ruff; and another, the scarlet coat and robust complexion
+still fresh, of the fourth George, handsome, gay, devil-may-care; both
+painted to commemorate visits to Capheaton, historically hospitable in
+the past. But Lord Strathland, besides having been presented with six
+daughters and an heir as extravagant as tradition demanded, was poor as
+peers go, and had more than once succumbed to the titillating delights
+of speculation, less cheering in the retrospect. Having a still larger
+estate to keep up, he had been glad to lend Capheaton to his second son,
+who, being an excellent manager and assisted by his wife's income, had
+lived very comfortably upon its yield. Upon his death Elton Gwynne had
+assumed possession as a matter of course; and a handsome allowance from
+his doting grandfather supplementing his inheritance, the mind of the
+haughty and promising young gentleman was free of sordid anxieties.
+
+Lady Victoria's satirical gaze swept the simpering portraits of her
+son's great-aunts and grandmothers, with which the hall was
+promiscuously hung.
+
+"Of course I am as English as if the strain had never been crossed, if
+you mean that. But I'd rather like to get away for a while. I really
+ought to visit my California estates, and I have always wanted to see
+that part of America. I started for it once, but never even reached the
+western boundaries of New York. One of us should spend a year there, at
+least; and of course it is out of the question for Jack to leave England
+again."
+
+"You would not spend six months out of Curzon Street. You are the most
+confirmed Londoner I know."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+Miss Thangue replied, impulsively, "I have often wondered if you
+numbered satiety among your complexities!"
+
+This was as far as she had ever adventured into the mysterious
+backwaters of Victoria's soul, and she dropped her eyelids lest a
+deprecating glance meet the contempt it deserved; both with a due regard
+for the limit imposed by good taste, despised the faint heart.
+
+"I hate the sight of London!" Her tone had changed so suddenly that
+Flora winked. "If it were not for Jack I would leave--get out. I am sick
+of the whole game."
+
+"Oh, be on your guard," cried her friend, sharply. "That sort of thing
+means the end of youth."
+
+"Youth after fifty depends upon your doctor, your masseuse, and your
+dressmaker. I do not say that my present state of mind is sown with
+evergreens and immortelles, but the fact remains that for the present I
+have come to the end of myself and am interested in no one on earth but
+Jack."
+
+Miss Thangue stared into her teacup, recalling the gossip of a year ago,
+although she had given it little heed at the time: Victoria had been
+transiently interested so often! But all the world knew that when Arthur
+Gwynne was killed Sir Cadge Vanneck had been off his head about
+Victoria; and that when obvious restrictions vanished into the family
+vault he had left abruptly for Rhodesia to develop his mines, and had
+not found time to return since. Sir Cadge was about the same age as the
+famous beauty, and rose quite two inches above her lofty head. People
+had grown accustomed to the fine appearance they made when
+together--"Artie" was ruddy and stout--and although Victoria reinforced
+her enemies, for Vanneck was one of the most agreeable and accomplished
+men in London, the artistic sense of that lenient world was tickled at
+their congruities and took their future mating for granted; Arthur
+Gwynne was sure to meet his death on the hunting-field, for he was far
+too heavy for a horse and rode vilely. When he fulfilled his destiny and
+Vanneck fled, the world was as much annoyed as amused. But they were
+amused, and Flora Thangue knew that this gall must have bitten deeper
+than the loss of Vanneck, who may or may not have made an impression on
+this woman too proud and too spoiled to accept homage in public
+otherwise than passively, whatever may have been the unwritten tale of
+her secret hours. The excuses hazarded by Vanneck's friends were neither
+humorous nor sentimental, but no one denied that they were eminently
+sensible: his first wife had died childless, his estates were large, his
+title was one of the oldest in England. But although no one pitied
+Victoria Gwynne, many were annoyed at having their mental attitude
+disarranged, and this no doubt had kept the gossip alive and been a
+constant source of irritation to a woman whose sense of humor was as
+deep as her pride.
+
+Flora replied at random. "Jack couldn't very well get on without you."
+
+His mother's eyes flashed. "I flatter myself he could not--at present.
+If Julia Kaye would only marry him!"
+
+"She won't," cried Flora, relieved at the change of tone. "And
+why do you wish it? She is two years older, of quite dreadful
+origin--and--well--I don't like her; perhaps my opinion is a little
+biased."
+
+"She is immensely rich, one of the ablest political women in London, and
+Jack is desperately in love with her."
+
+"I cannot picture Jack in extremities about any one, although I don't
+deny that he has his sentimental seizures. He even made love to me when
+he was cutting his teeth. But he doesn't need a lot of money, you rank
+higher than she among the political women, and--well, I believe her to
+be bad-tempered, and more selfish than any woman I have ever known."
+
+"He loves her. He wants her. He would dominate any woman he married. He
+is such a dear that no woman who lived with him could help loving him.
+Moreover, she is inordinately ambitious, and Jack's career is the most
+promising in England."
+
+"Jack is far too good for her, and I am glad that he will not get her. I
+happen to know that she has made up her mind to marry Lord Brathland."
+
+"Bratty is a donkey."
+
+"She would be the last to deny it, but he is certain to be a duke if he
+lives, and she would marry a man that had to be led round with a string
+for the sake of being called 'your grace' by the servants. She'll never
+be anything but a third-rate duchess, and people that tolerate her now
+will snub her the moment she gives herself airs. But I suppose she
+thinks a duchess is a duchess."
+
+"Money goes pretty far with us," said Lady Victoria, dryly.
+
+"Doesn't it? Nevertheless--you know it as well as I do--among the people
+that really count other things go further, and duchesses have been put
+in their place before this--you have done it yourself. Julia Kaye has
+kept her head so far because she has been hunting for strawberry leaves,
+and there is no denying she's clever; but once she is in the upper
+air--well, I have seen her as rude as she dares be, and if she became a
+duchess she would cultivate rudeness as part of the rôle."
+
+"We can be rude enough."
+
+"Yes, and know how to be. A parvenu never does."
+
+"She is astonishingly clever."
+
+"Duchesses are born--even the American ones. Julia Kaye has never
+succeeded in being quite natural; she has always the effect of
+rehearsing the part of the great lady for amateur theatricals. Poor
+Gussy Kaye might have coached her better. The moment she mounts she'll
+become wholly artificial, she'll patronize, she'll give herself no end
+of ridiculous airs; she won't move without sending a paragraph to the
+_Morning Post_. The back of her head will be quite in line with her
+charming little bust, and I for one shall walk round and laugh in her
+face. She is the only person that could inspire me to such a vicious
+speech, but I am human, and as she so ingenuously snubs me as a person
+of no consequence, my undazzled eyes see her as she is."
+
+Lady Victoria, instead of responding with the faint, absent, somewhat
+irritating smile which she commonly vouchsafed those that sought to
+amuse her, lit another cigarette and leaned back among the cushions of
+the sofa behind the tea-table. She drew her eyelids together, a rare
+sign of perturbation. The only stigma of time on her face was a certain
+sharpness of outline and leanness of throat. But the throat was always
+covered, and her wardrobe reflected the most fleeting of the fashions,
+assuring her position as a contemporary, if driving her dressmaker to
+the verge of bankruptcy. When her bright, black, often laughing eyes
+were in play she passed with the casual public, and abroad, as a woman
+of thirty, but with her lids down the sharpness of the lower part of the
+face arrested the lover of detail.
+
+"Are you sure of that?" she asked, in a moment.
+
+"Quite."
+
+"I am sorry. It will be a great blow to Jack. I hoped she would come
+round in time."
+
+"She will marry Brathland. I saw Cecilia Spence in town. She was at
+Maundrell Abbey with them both last week. You may expect the
+announcement any day--she'll write it herself for the _Morning Post_.
+How on earth can Jack find time to think about women with the immense
+amount of work he gets through?--and his really immodest ambitions!
+By-the-way--isn't this polling-day? I wonder if he has won his seat? But
+as I said just now I do not associate Jack with defeat. His trifling
+set-backs have merely served to throw his manifest destiny into higher
+relief."
+
+"The telegram should have come an hour ago. I have few doubts--and yet
+he has so many enemies. I wonder if we shall be born into a world, after
+we have been sufficiently chastened here, where one can get one's head
+above the multitude without rousing some of the most hideous qualities
+in human nature? It is a great responsibility! But there has been no
+such speaker, nor fighter, for a quarter of a century." Her eyes glowed
+again. "And heaven knows I have worked for him."
+
+"What a pity he is not a Tory! He could have a dozen boroughs for the
+asking. I wish he were. The whole Liberal party makes me sick. And it is
+against every tradition of his family--"
+
+"As if that mattered. Besides, he is a born fighter. He'd hate anything
+he could have for the asking. And he's far too modern, too progressive,
+for the Conservative party--even if there were anything but blue-mould
+left in it."
+
+"Well, you know I am not original, and my poor old dad brought us up on
+the soundest Tory principles; he never would even compromise on the word
+Conservative. But considering that Jack is as Liberal as if the taint
+were in the marrow of his bones, what a blessing that poor Artie did not
+happen to be the oldest son. Cecilia says they were all talking of it at
+Maundrell Abbey, where of course it is a peculiarly interesting topic.
+That ornamental and conscientious peer, Lord Barnstable, has never
+ceased to regret his father's death, for reasons far removed from
+sentimental. He told Cecilia that Lord Strathland almost confessed to
+him that he would give his right eye to hand over his old shoes to Jack,
+not only because he detests Zeal, but because it would take the backbone
+out of his Liberalism--"
+
+"And ruin _his_ career. Thank heaven Zeal is engaged at last. They will
+marry in the spring, and then the only cloud on Jack's horizon will
+vanish."
+
+"What if there were no children?"
+
+"There are so much more often than not--that is the least of my worries.
+He had five girls by his first wife; there is no reason why this
+splendid cow I have picked out should not produce a dozen boys. I never
+worked so hard over one of Jack's elections--not only to overcome Zeal's
+misogyny, which he calls scruples, but I had to fight Strathland every
+inch of the way. When I think of Jack's desperation if he were
+pitchforked up into the Peers--you do not know him as I do."
+
+"Well, he is safe for a time, I fancy. There has been consumption in the
+family before, and always the slowest sort--"
+
+A footman entered with a yellow envelope on a tray.
+
+Lady Victoria opened it without haste or change of color.
+
+"Jack is returned," she said.
+
+"How jolly," replied the other, with equal indifference.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"You look tired--I will take you up to your room. Vicky has so many on
+her hands."
+
+The American rose slowly, but with a flash of gratitude in her eyes.
+
+"I am tired, and I don't know a soul here. I almost wish Lady Victoria
+had not asked me down, although I have wanted all my life to visit one
+of the ancestral homes of England."
+
+"Oh, you'll get over that, and used to us," said Miss Thangue, smiling.
+"Your staircase is behind this door, and we can slip out without
+attracting attention. They are all gabbling over Jack's election."
+
+She opened a door in a corner of the hall where the newly arrived guests
+were gathered about Lady Victoria's tea-table, and led the way up a wide
+dark and slippery stair. After the first landing the light was stronger,
+and the walls were, to an inch, covered with portraits and landscapes,
+the effect almost as careless as if the big open space were a
+lumber-room.
+
+"Are they _all_ old masters?" asked Miss Isabel Otis, politely, her eyes
+roving over the dark canvases.
+
+"Oh no; the masters are down-stairs. I'll show them to you to-morrow.
+These are not bad, though."
+
+"What a lot of ancestors to have!"
+
+"Oh, you'll find them all over the house. These are not Gwynnes. This
+house came to Lord Strathland through the female line. It will be Jack's
+eventually--one way or another; and Jack must be more like the Eltons
+than the Gwynnes--unless, indeed, he is like his American ancestors."
+She turned her soft non-committal eyes on the stranger. "You are his
+thirty-first cousin, are you not?"
+
+"Not quite so remote. But why do you call him Jack? He is known to fame
+as Elton Gwynne."
+
+"His name is John Elton Cecil Gwynne. We are given to the nickname these
+days--to the abbreviation in general."
+
+They were walking down a corridor, and Miss Thangue was peering through
+her lorgnette at the cards on the doors.
+
+"I know you are on this side. I wrote your name myself. But exactly
+where--ah, here it is."
+
+She opened the door of a square room with large roses on the white
+wall-paper, and fine old mahogany furniture. The sofa and chairs and
+windows were covered with a chintz in harmony with the walls. "It is
+cheerful, don't you think so?" asked Miss Thangue, drawing one of the
+straight curtains aside. "Vicky had all the rooms done over, and I chose
+the designs. She is quite intolerantly modern, and holds that when
+wall-paper and chintz can save an old house from looking like a
+sarcophagus, why not have them? That bell-cord connects with your maid's
+room--"
+
+"I have no maid. I am not well off at all. I wonder Lady Victoria
+thought it worth while to ask me down."
+
+"Dear me, how odd! May I sit with you a little while? I never before saw
+a poor American girl."
+
+"I'll be only too grateful if you will stay with me as long as you can.
+I am not exactly poor. I have a ranch near Rosewater, some property and
+an old house in San Francisco. All that makes me comfortable, but no
+more; and there are so many terribly rich American girls!"
+
+"There are, indeed!" Miss Thangue sat forward with the frank curiosity
+of the Englishwoman when inspecting a foreign specimen. But her
+curiosity was kindly, for she was still a girl at heart, interested in
+other girls. Miss Otis, looking at her blond, virginal face, took for
+granted that she was under thirty, and owed her weight to a fondness for
+sweets and sauces.
+
+"How can you travel in Europe if you are not rich?" demanded Flora. "I
+never dare venture over except as the guest of some more fortunate
+friend."
+
+"Are _you_ poor?" asked Miss Otis, her eye arrested by the smart little
+afternoon frock of lace and chiffon and crêpe-de-chine.
+
+"Oh, horribly. But then we all are, over here. If it were not for the
+Jews and the Americans we'd have to make our own clothes. The
+dressmakers never could afford to give us credit."
+
+"They all looked very wealthy down-stairs."
+
+"Smart, rather. This happens to be a set that knows how to dress. Many
+don't. You know something of it yourself," she added, with a frank
+survey of the girl's well-cut travelling-frock and small hat. "Lots of
+Americans don't, if you don't mind my saying so--for all their
+reputation. I went to a dinner at an American Legation once and two of
+your countrywomen came with their hats on. They had brought letters to
+the Minister, and he hadn't taken the precaution of looking them over.
+He was terribly mortified, poor thing."
+
+She related the anecdote with philanthropic intention, but Miss Otis put
+her half-rejected doubts to flight by remarking, lightly:
+
+"We don't do that even in Rosewater."
+
+"Where _is_ Rosewater? What a jolly name!"
+
+"It is in northern California, not far from Lady Victoria's ranch and
+what is left of ours. I have spent most of my life in or near it--my
+father was a lawyer."
+
+"Do tell me about yourself!" Like most amiable spinsters, she was as
+interested in the suggestive stranger as in a new novel. She sank with a
+sigh of comfort into the depths of the chair. "May I smoke? Are you
+shocked?"
+
+Then she colored apprehensively, fearing that her doubt might be
+construed as an insult to Rosewater.
+
+But Miss Otis met it with her first smile. "Oh no," she replied. "Will
+you give me one? Mine are in my trunk and they haven't brought it up."
+She took a cigarette from the gayly tendered case and smoked for a few
+moments in silence.
+
+"I don't know why you should be interested in my history," she said at
+last in her slow cold voice, so strikingly devoid of the national
+animation. "It has been far too uneventful. I have an adopted sister,
+six years older than myself, who married twelve years ago. Her husband
+is an artist in San Francisco, rather a genius, so they are always poor.
+My mother died when I was little. After my sister married I took care of
+my father until I was twenty-one, when he died--four years ago. There
+are very good schools in Rosewater, particularly the High School. My
+father also taught me languages. He had a very fine library. But I do
+not believe this interests you. Doubtless you want to know something of
+the life with which Lady Victoria is so remotely connected."
+
+"I am far more interested in you. Tell me whichever you like first. How
+_are_ you related, by-the-way?"
+
+"Father used to draw our family tree whenever he had bronchitis in
+winter. One of the most famous of the Spanish Californians was Don José
+Argüello. We are descended from one of his sons, who had a ranch of a
+hundred thousand acres in the south. When the Americans came, long
+after, they robbed the Californians shamefully, but fortunately the son
+of the Argüello that owned the ranch at the time married an American
+girl whose father bought up the mortgages. He left the property to his
+only grandchild, a girl, who married my great-grandfather, James Otis--a
+northern rancher, born in Boston, and descended from old Sam Adams. He
+had two children, a boy and a girl, who inherited the northern and
+southern ranches in equal shares. The girl came over to England to visit
+an aunt who lived here, was presented at court, and straightway married
+a lord."
+
+"Then you are second cousin to Vicky and third to Jack. I had no idea
+the relationship was so close."
+
+"It has seemed very remote to me ever since I laid eyes on Lady Victoria
+down-stairs. Father made me promise, just before he died, that if ever I
+visited Europe I would look her up. Somehow I hadn't thought of her
+except as Elton Gwynne's mother, so I wrote to her without a qualm. But
+I see that she is an individual."
+
+"Rather! How self-contained our great London is, after all! Vicky has
+been a beauty for over thirty years--to be sure her fame was at its
+height before you were old enough to be interested in such things. But I
+should have thought your father--"
+
+"He must have known all about her. It comes back to me that he was very
+proud of the connection for more than family reasons, but it made no
+impression on me at the time."
+
+"Proud?"
+
+"Yes, he was rather a snob. He was very clever, but he fell out of
+things, and being able to dwell on his English and Spanish connections
+meant a good deal to him. I can recite the family history backwards."
+
+"But if he was clever, why on earth did he live in Rosewater? Surely he
+could have practised in San Francisco?"
+
+"He drank. When a man drinks he doesn't care much where he lives. My
+father had fads but no ambition."
+
+"Great heaven!" exclaimed Miss Thangue, aghast at this toneless
+frankness. "You must have been glad to be rid of him!"
+
+"I was fond of him, but his death was a great relief. He was a hard
+steady secret drinker. I nursed him through several attacks of delirium
+tremens, and was always in fear that he would get out and disgrace us.
+Sometimes he did, although when I saw the worst coming I generally
+managed to get him over to the ranch. Of course it tied me down. I
+rarely even visited my sister. My father hated San Francisco. He had
+practised there in his youth, promised great things, had plenty of
+money. The time came--" She shrugged her shoulders, although without the
+slightest change of expression. "I never lived my own life until he
+died, but I have lived it ever since."
+
+"And the first thing you did with your liberty was to come to Europe,"
+said Miss Thangue, with a sympathetic smile.
+
+"Of course. My father and uncle had got rid of most of their property
+long before they died; there isn't an acre left of our share in the
+southern estate. But my uncle died six years ago and willed me all that
+remained of the northern, as well as some land in the poorer quarter of
+San Francisco. I could not touch the principal during the lifetime of my
+father, but we lived on the ranch and I managed it and was entitled, by
+the terms of the will, to what I could make it yield. When I was finally
+mistress of my fortunes I left it in charge of an old servant, sold
+enough to pay off the mortgage on a property in San Francisco I
+inherited from my mother, and came to Europe with a personally conducted
+tour."
+
+Miss Thangue shuddered. The phrase unrolled a vista of commonness and
+attrition. Miss Otis continued, calmly: "That is the way I should feel
+now. But it was my only chance then; or rather I had seen enough of
+business to avoid making mistakes when I could. In that way I learned
+the ropes. After we had been rushed about for six weeks and I could not
+have told you whether the Pitti Palace was in Italy or France, and the
+celebrated frescos were one vast pink smudge, the party returned and I
+wandered on by myself. I spent a winter in Paris, and months in
+Brittany, Austria, Italy, Spain--Munich." It was here that her even
+tones left their register for a second. "I studied the languages, the
+literatures, the peoples, music, pictures. In Munich"--this time Flora's
+alert ear detected no vibration--"and also in Rome, I saw something of
+society. It was a life full of freedom, and I shall never cease to be
+grateful for it, but I must go home soon and look after my affairs. I
+left England to the last, like the best things of the banquet. I hope
+Lady Victoria--I shall never be able to call her Cousin Victoria, as I
+remember father did--will be nice to me. I have seen a good deal of
+life, but have never had a real _girl's_ time, and I should love it.
+Besides, I have a lot of new frocks."
+
+"I am sure Vicky will be nice to you. If she isn't, I'll find some one
+that will be. You might marry Jack if you had money enough. We are dying
+to get him married--and a California cousin--it would be too romantic.
+And you would hold your own anywhere!"
+
+But Miss Otis expanded a fine nostril. "I have no desire to marry. I
+feel as if I had had enough of men to last until I am forty--what with
+those I have buried, and others I have known at home and in Europe--to
+say nothing of the executors of my uncle's will, who did not approve of
+my coming abroad alone and delayed the settlement of the estate as long
+as possible. And now I have had too much liberty! Besides, I have seen
+'Jack's' picture--two years ago, in a magazine. I will confess I had
+some romantic notions about him: imagined him very dashing, bold,
+handsome; insolent, if you like--the traditional young aristocrat,
+glorified by genius. He looks like Uncle Hiram."
+
+"Is that who Jack looks like? We never could make out. No, Jack is not
+much to look at, except when he wakes up--I have seen him quite
+transfigured on the platform. But he is as insolent as you could wish,
+and has a superb confidence in himself that his enemies call by the most
+offensive names. But he is a dear, in spite of all, and I quite adore
+him."
+
+"Perhaps; but life, myself, so many mysteries and problems, upon which
+I have barely turned a dark lantern as yet, interest me far more than
+any man could, unless he were superlative. I have had my disillusions."
+
+She lit another cigarette, and for a few moments looked silently out of
+the window at the darkening woods beyond the lawn. Flora Thangue
+regarded her with a swelling interest. It was a type of which she had no
+knowledge, evidently not a common type even in the hypothetical land of
+the free; she had visited New York and Newport and known many Americans.
+True, she had never met the provincial type before, but she doubted if
+Rosewater had produced a crop of Isabel Otises. What was at the source
+of that cold-blooded frankness, so different from the English fashion of
+alternately speaking out and knowing nothing? Was she merely an
+egoist--it ran in the family--or did it conceal much that she had no
+intention of revealing? Her very beauty was of a type rarely seen in the
+America of to-day, prevalent as it may have been a hundred years ago:
+she looked like a feminine edition of the first group of American
+statesmen--although black Spanish hair was pulled carelessly over the
+high forehead, a heavy coil encircling the head in a long upward sweep,
+and the half-dreaming, half-penetrating regard of the light-blue eyes
+was softened by a heavy growth of lash. The eyebrows were low and thick,
+the upper lip was sensitive, quivering sometimes as she talked, but the
+lower was firm and full. It was the brow, the profile, the strength of
+character expressed, the general seriousness of the fine face and head,
+that made her look like a reversion to the type that gave birth to a
+nation. But Miss Thangue had seen too much of the world to judge any one
+by his inherited shell. She had observed many Americans with fine heads
+and bulging brows concealing practically nothing, insignificant German
+heads whose intellects had terrified her, the romantic Spanish eyes of
+the most unromantic people in Europe, English pride and an icy mask of
+breeding guarding from the casual eye the most lawless and ribald
+instincts. Therefore had she no intention of taking this new specimen on
+trust, much as she liked her, and she speculated upon her possibilities
+in the friendly silence that had fallen between them. Life is composed
+of individuals and their choruses, and Flora, humorously admitting the
+fact, was far more interested in others than in herself.
+
+Only in the dense silky masses of her black hair and the almost stolid
+absence of gesture did the American betray her Spanish ancestry; but how
+much of the Spaniard, subtle, patient, vengeful, treacherous, mighty in
+passive resistance and cunning, lay behind those deep fearless blue eyes
+of her New England ancestors? Or was she not Spanish at all, but merely
+a higher type of American--or wholly herself? Would Jack, susceptible
+and passionate, a worshipper of beauty down among the roots of his
+abnormal cleverness and egoism, fall in love with her? And what then?
+The girl, with her strong stern profile against the shadows, her low
+brooding brows, might wield a power far more dangerous than that of the
+average fascinating woman, if her will marshalled the rest of her
+faculties and drove them in a straight line; although the luminous skin
+as polished as ivory, the low full curves and slow graceful movements of
+her figure added a potency that Flora, always an amused observer of men,
+would have been the last to ignore. Victoria, high-bred, fastidious,
+mocking, yet unmistakably passionate and possibly insurgent, was of
+that mint of woman about whom men had gone mad since the world began.
+But this girl, who might be as cold as the moon, or not, looked, in any
+case, capable of clasping a man's throat with her strong little hand,
+and gently turning his head from east to west. At this point Miss
+Thangue rose impatiently and rang a bell. Jack's career was almost at
+the flood. No woman could submerge his intellect and stupendous
+interests for more than a moment.
+
+"Order lights and have your trunks brought up," she said. "I will send
+one of the housemaids to help you dress. My room is over on the other
+side of the house--go through that door opposite, and down a corridor
+until you come to another long hall and staircase like the one on this
+side. You will find my name on the door. Knock at about a quarter-past
+eight and I will go down with you. Vicky may be in an angelic humor and
+she may not. It depends mainly upon whether Jack condescends to turn up.
+I suppose you know all about him; it would hardly do for you to face him
+and his mother if you didn't. He has travelled quite exhaustively in the
+colonies and given us some of the most informing literature on that
+subject that we have. He was out in Africa when the Boer War broke out,
+and once before in India, when there was fighting, volunteered both
+times and did brilliant service. He has no end of medals with clasps.
+Then he suddenly went in for politics and announced himself an
+uncompromising Liberal. It nearly killed his grandfather--Lord
+Strathland--for Jack is the one person on earth that he loves as much as
+himself; and it has alienated many of his relatives on both sides--which
+gave him one more chance to win against terrific odds; he enjoys that
+sort of thing. He had been in but two years when there was a general
+election, and he has only just got back--he contested three divisions
+before he won his seat this time, and he had almost as hard a fight
+before. Vicky, who hates the Gwynnes, with the exception of Lord Zeal,
+the heir, besides believing in Jack as you would in Solomon, has
+steadily upheld him; and she is a powerful ally--not only one of the
+most distinguished of the political women, but still turns heads when
+she chooses, and her game is generally in the cabinet preserves, when it
+is not in the diplomatic. I must run. Put on your most fetching gown.
+Julia Kaye, a detestable little parvenu, is here. Jack is in love with
+her and she has chosen another. It will be a cousinly duty to console
+him. Then you can turn him over to some one else. Ta, ta!" Her last
+words floated back from the depths of the corridor; a clock was striking
+and she had pattered off hastily.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The "Jack," whose more distinguished patronymic was so gayly caracolling
+down the road to posterity, had arrived, and after dressing hastily,
+sought his mother. Her hair was done, her gown laced; she dismissed her
+maid at once, and while her eyes melted, in the fashion of mothers, she
+embraced her son with something more than maternal warmth: a curious
+suggestion of relief, of stepping out of her own personality and leaving
+it like a heap of clothes on the floor. This attitude had occasionally
+puzzled her idol, but he was too masculine to analyze. She was his best
+friend and a delightful person to have for a mother; her soul might be
+her own possession undisturbed. He admired her almost as much as he did
+himself, and to-night he kissed her fondly and told her gallantly that
+she was looking even more beautiful than usual.
+
+"It is all this white after the dead black," said Lady Victoria, smiling
+appreciatively. "I am thankful that prolonged mourning is out of date;
+it made a fright of me and was getting on my nerves." She wore no jewels
+save a high diamond dog-collar and a few sparkling combs in her hair,
+but she made a superb appearance with the long white sweep of shoulders
+and bust, her brilliant eyes and smart tailed gown of black chiffon and
+Irish lace. Her arms, no longer rounded as when artists had fought to
+paint her, were but half-revealed under floating sleeves, and her fair
+tapering hands were even younger than her face.
+
+She opened a large black fan and moved it slowly while looking intently
+at her son's bent profile. "Something has gone wrong," she said. "Have
+you seen Julia Kaye again?"
+
+"No, I was invited to Maundrell Abbey last week, but couldn't manage it,
+of course. And I knew she was to be here. Nothing has gone wrong--but I
+had rather a shock this morning. I met Zeal at the club. He looks like a
+death's head. He vowed he was taking even better care of himself than
+usual, but his chest is bad again. He talked about going to Davos--the
+very word makes me sick! In the next breath he said he might go out to
+Africa. Can't you hurry on his marriage?--persuade Carry that it is her
+duty to go with him?"
+
+"I should have no difficulty persuading Carry. The rub is with him.
+Compulsory asceticism has bred misogyny, and misogyny scruples. He says
+that he has sins enough to his account without laying up a reckoning
+with posterity. If it were not for you I should agree with him. I feel
+like a conspirator--"
+
+"There is no reason why his children should be consumptive. Carry's
+physique is Wagnerian, and she is just the woman to look after her
+children herself. Zeal's health was thrown to the dogs by a weak
+indulgent frivolous mother, and what she left him he disposed of later
+when he made as great an ass of himself as might have been expected. He
+is a hypochondriac now and would keep a close watch on his heir's health
+and habits; you may be sure of that. He ought not to be in London
+now--it is stifling--went up for some business meeting or other--seemed
+to wish to avoid details. I hope to heaven he has not been relieving the
+monotony of his life by some rotten speculation. I begged him to come
+down here, but he wouldn't--says that his hand is no longer steady
+enough to hold a gun--it's awful!--worse because I'm not merely fond of
+him and regretting the possible loss of a good friend--I have felt like
+a beast all day. But I can't help it. For God's sake write and persuade
+him to go to Davos at once--and picture the delights of a pretty and
+devoted nurse. I feel as if I had ashes in my mouth--and yesterday I was
+so happy!" he burst out, with the petulance of a child.
+
+"I will write to-night," she said, soothingly. "He has a very slow form
+of consumption; I have the assurance of his doctors. And at least he has
+committed himself with Carry, and announced his intention to marry as
+soon as a sojourn somewhere has made him feel fit again. You know how
+much better he always is when he comes back. Put it out of your mind
+to-night. I want you to be as happy as I am. Everybody is talking of the
+brilliance of your campaign--"
+
+"Much good brilliance will do me if I am to rot in the Upper House!"
+
+"Put it out of your mind; don't let apprehension control you for a
+moment. Believe me, will-power counts in life for more than everything
+else combined, and if it isn't watched it weakens."
+
+"All right, mummy. You are never so original as when you preach. So
+Julia Kaye came down this afternoon? Talk about will. Mine should be of
+pure steel; I have ordered her out of my consciousness these last weeks
+at the point of the bayonet. She has written me exactly three times.
+However--those letters were charming," he added, with the sudden smile
+that transfigured his face, routing the overbearing and contemptuous
+expression that had won him so many enemies; friends and flatterers and
+the happy circumstances of his life had combined thoroughly to spoil
+him. "Do you maintain that will can win a woman?" he added, sharply.
+
+She was the woman to laugh outright at such a suggestion. "No, nor that
+it can uproot love, although it can give it a good shaking and lock it
+in the dark room. I doubt if you love Julia Kaye, but you will find that
+out for yourself. You might bring her to terms by flirting a little with
+your American cousin--"
+
+"My what?" He opened his eyes as widely as he had ever done when a
+school-boy.
+
+"Of course--I forgot you know nothing of her. She wrote me from
+Ambleside--I infer she has been 'doing' England; and as her credentials
+were unimpeachable I asked her down. She has inherited a part of the
+northern estate and was brought up in the neighboring town of
+Rosewater--the American names are too silly. She seems quite _comme il
+faut_ and is remarkably handsome. I detest Americans, as you know, but
+there certainly is something in blood. I liked her at once. She looks
+clever, and is quite off the type--none of the usual fluff. If she
+doesn't bore me I shall keep her here for a while."
+
+"I wish you would adopt her," he said, fondly. "I shouldn't be jealous,
+for I hate to think of you so much alone." He rose and kissed her
+lightly on the forehead, experience teaching him to avoid a stray hair
+from the carefully built coiffure. "I'll see if I can waylay Julia on
+the stairs; she is always late. Keep from eleven to twelve for me
+to-morrow morning. I want to tell you about the campaign. It was a
+glorious fight!" His eyes sparkled at the memory of it. "I felt as if
+every bit of me had never been alive at once before. My opponent was a
+splendid chap. It meant something to beat him. The other side was in a
+rage!--more than once yelled for half an hour after I took the platform.
+When I finished they yelled again for half an hour--to a different
+tune." His slight, thin, rather graceless figure seemed suddenly to
+expand, even to grow taller. Some hidden magnetism burst from him like
+an aura, and his cold pasty face and light gray eyes flamed into
+positive beauty. "It was glorious! Glorious! I was intoxicated--I could
+have reeled, little as they suspected it. I wouldn't part for a second
+with the certainty that I am the biggest figure in young England to-day.
+I hate to sleep and forget it. If I cultivated modesty I should renounce
+one of the exquisite pleasures of life. Humility is a superstition. The
+man who doesn't weed it out is an ass. To be young, well-born, with
+money enough, a brain instead of a mere intelligence, an essential
+leader of men--Good God! Good God!" Then he subsided and blushed, jerked
+up his shoulders and laughed. "Well--I never let myself go to any one
+but you," he said. "And I won't inflict _you_ any longer."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+"I wish the old homes of England had electric lights," thought Miss
+Otis, with a sigh.
+
+There were four candles on the dressing-table, two on the mantel-shelf;
+beyond the radius of their light the room was barely visible. She
+carried one of the candles over to the cheval-glass and held it above
+her head, close to her face, low on either side.
+
+"I feel as if I had been put together by some unpleasant mechanical
+process. It is well I am not inordinately vain, but when one puts on a
+new dress for the first time--" She shrugged her shoulders hopelessly,
+replaced the candle, and walked up and down the room swinging the
+train--her first--of the charming gown of pale blue satin; patting the
+hair coiled softly about the entire head in a line eminently becoming to
+the profile, and prolonged by several little curls escaping to the neck.
+
+She felt happy and excited, her fine almost severe face far more
+girlishly alive than when she had told her story, provocatively dry, to
+Flora Thangue. She directed an approving glance at the high heels of her
+slippers, which, with her lofty carriage, produced the effect of
+non-existing inches. She was barely five feet five, but she ranked with
+tall women, her height as unchallenged as the chiselling of her profile.
+
+"What frauds we all are!" she thought, with a humor of which she had
+not vouchsafed Miss Thangue a hint. "But what is a cunningly made
+slipper on a foot not so small, at the end of a body not quite long
+enough, but an encouraging example of the triumph of art over nature?
+Not the superiority, perhaps, but they are the best of working
+partners."
+
+She sat down and recalled the conversation with her new friend, giving
+an amused little shudder. She had heard much of, and in her travels come
+into contact with, the cold-blooded frankness of the English elect; with
+whom it was either an instinct or a pose to manifest their careless
+sense of impregnability. When pressed to give an account of herself the
+dramatic possibilities of the method suddenly appealed to her,
+accompanied by a mischievous desire to outdo them at their own game and
+observe the effect. She had found herself as absorbed as an actress in a
+new and congenial rôle.
+
+"After all," she thought, "clever women make themselves over in great
+part, uprooting here, adopting there, and as we have so little chance to
+_be_ anything, there is a good deal to be got out of it. If one cannot
+be a genius one can at least be an artist. I have never had much cause
+to be as direct as stage lightning, but as I enjoyed it I suppose I may
+infer that even brutal frankness is not foreign to my nature. Perhaps,
+like father, I am a snob at heart and liked the sensation of a sort of
+artistic alliance with the British aristocracy. Well, if I develop
+snobbery I can root out that weed--or persuade myself that some other
+motive is at the base of a disposition to adopt any of the
+characteristics of this people: a woman can persuade herself of any
+sophistry she chooses. Not for anything would I be a man. Absolutely to
+accept the facts of life, even the ugly unvarnished fact itself, and at
+the same time to invent one's own soul-tunes--that is to be a woman and
+free!"
+
+A printed square of card-board on her writing-table had informed her
+that the dinner-hour was half-past eight. She looked at her watch. It
+was five minutes to the time. Once more she peered into the glass, shook
+out her skirts, then sought a door in a far and dusky corner. It opened
+upon a long dimly lit corridor which led into another at right angles,
+and Isabel presently found herself at the head of a staircase similar to
+the one on her side of the house. Here, too, the walls were hung with
+portraits and landscapes, and as far down as the eye could follow; but
+after glancing over them for a moment with the recurring weariness of
+one who has seen too many pictures in the hard ways of European travel,
+her eyes lit and lingered on the figure of a young man who stood on the
+landing, his back to her, examining, with a certain tensity, a canvas on
+a level with his eyes.
+
+"Uncle Hiram--John Elton Cecil Gwynne! What a likeness and what a
+difference!"
+
+The young Englishman's hair, pale in color and very smooth, was worn
+longer than the fashion, the ends lilting. As he turned slowly at the
+rustle of descending skirts, this eccentricity and his colorless skin
+made him look the pale student rather than the gallant soldier, the best
+fighter on the hustings that England had seen for five-and-twenty years.
+As Isabel walked carefully down the slippery stair she veiled her eyes
+to hide the wonder in them. She had expected personality, magnetism, as
+a compensation for nature's external economies. His apparent lack of
+both made him almost repellent, awakened in Isabel a sensation of
+antagonism; and the cool speculation in his light gray eyes merely
+accentuated his general dearth of charm. True he had height--although
+his carriage was unimposing--his head was large and well-proportioned,
+his nose and chin salient, but the straight heavy mouth was as
+contemptuous as a Prussian officer's, and in spite of his grooming he
+looked old-fashioned, absurdly like the Uncle Hiram who had been a
+country lawyer and farmer, and had always worn broadcloth in the hottest
+weather--except, to be sure, when he wore a linen "duster," or sat on
+the veranda in his shirt-sleeves, his feet on the railing.
+
+However, she smiled, and he smiled politely in return, advancing a few
+steps to meet her. "I hope you have heard of me," she said. "Your mother
+is so busy--English people are so indifferent to details--I am your
+cousin, Isabel Otis--"
+
+"Of course my mother has spoken of you. I am very glad to see you in my
+house," he added, hospitably. "Shall I show you the way?"
+
+He made no further remark as they descended the darker section of the
+stair, and she could think of nothing to say to him. Nor did she
+particularly care to think of anything, the American in her resenting
+his lack of effort. But as they reached the door she paused abruptly.
+
+"I forgot! Miss Thangue asked me to knock at her door--"
+
+"You take us too seriously," he said, with a slight sneer. "Flora has
+evidently forgotten you; she came down a quarter of an hour ago."
+
+Isabel lifted her head still higher, annoyed at the angry blood that
+leaped to her face. "I am afraid I am rather literal," she said, with
+more hauteur than the occasion demanded. "But perhaps you will tell me
+where to go. There seems to be a bewildering number of rooms. After
+three years of lodgings in Europe, to say nothing of the modest
+architecture of Rosewater, I feel as if astray in a maze."
+
+"You got that off as if you were a masquerading princess," he said, with
+a flicker of humor in his eyes. "Americans generally bluff the other
+way." He opened the door. "We meet here in the hall. There is my mother.
+You are not obliged to speak to her, you know. We are less formal in
+life than in novels." With this parting shot he left her abruptly and
+joined a small dark woman with a plebeian face, a sensual mouth, and
+magnificent black eyes.
+
+"The rude beast!--Julia Kaye, of course." But Isabel forgot them both in
+the novelty of the scene. The square white hall was lit with wax-candles
+and shaded lamps, and filled with the murmur of voices--beautiful
+gowns--the sparkle of jewels. Isabel dismissed the memory of early
+trials, the long years she had lived in the last three, her philosophic
+resignation to the disillusions and disappointments with which her
+liberty had been pitted; it was her first appearance in the world of
+fashion--which she entered, after all, by a sort of divine right.
+Trepidation was undeveloped in her, and when she had stood for a moment,
+quite aware that her proud and singular beauty had won her instant
+recognition, she walked over to her hostess.
+
+No fresh demand was made on her courage. Lady Victoria's earlier mood of
+colossal indifference had been dissipated by her son's return. She
+greeted Isabel with a dazzling smile and a winning gesture.
+
+"Isn't Jack a darling? Isn't he a dear?" she commanded. "I have put you
+on his left, that you may be sure not to be bored. What hair! That is
+_your_ legacy from Spain. I have the eyes, but I never had a foot of
+hair. I hope you are comfortable. I expect you to remain a week. I am so
+glad that Jack will be here. The place is intolerably dull without him."
+
+Isabel, warming to such maternal ardor in a beauty whose years were
+prematurely emphasized by a son as conspicuous as Elton Gwynne, summoned
+a few vague words of enthusiasm. She was reproached politely for
+wandering about England for two months before discovering herself to her
+relatives; then, Lady Victoria's interest waning, she turned to a young
+man, handsome and Saxon and orthodox, and said, casually, "Jimmy, you
+will take in Miss Otis."
+
+Dinner had already been announced. The twain, in complete ignorance of
+each other's identity, walked through a long line of rooms, almost
+unfurnished but for the scowling or smiling dead crowding the walls.
+Isabel decided that she would be as effortless as the English and see
+what came of it. The practised instinct of the American girl, added to
+the excessive hospitality of the Californian, would have led her to put
+her companion immediately at ease, but not only was she fond of
+experimenting with racial characteristics upon her own hidden
+possibilities, but she was intensely proud, and the English attitude had
+stung her more than once.
+
+"Why should I please them?" she thought, contemptuously. "Let them
+please me."
+
+Her companion betrayed no eagerness to please her; and during the first
+ten minutes at table he talked to Gwynne about the late elections.
+Evidently, he too had emerged from the political fray triumphant. Isabel
+sat like a stately picture by Reynolds, and after her slow gaze had
+travelled over the dark full-length portraits of the kings and queens
+that had honored Capheaton, it dropped to the more animated faces in the
+foreground. The men were good-looking, with hardly an exception; judging
+by their carriage they might all have been army men, but as every word
+that floated to the head of the table was political, they possibly had
+followed their successful host's example and adopted an equally
+intermittent career. One or two of the women were almost as handsome as
+Lady Victoria, with their superb figures, their complexions of claret
+and snow, that blending of high breeding and warm palpitating humanity
+one never sees outside of England. But others within Isabel's range were
+too haggard for beauty, although one had a Burne-Jones face and her eyes
+gazed beyond the company with an expression that made her seem pure
+spirit; but she too looked tired, delicate, curiously overworked.
+
+Opposite Isabel was a tall buxom young woman of the purest Saxon type,
+who was talking amiably with the man on her right, and occasionally
+shaking with deep and silent laughter; her intimate casual manner, her
+slight movements, her accentuation, manifestly bred in the bone.
+Suddenly it was borne in upon Isabel's always sensitive consciousness
+that she was the only haughty and reserved person present, and she felt
+provincial and laughed frankly at herself. The lady across the table
+claiming the attention of the host, she turned to her own partner. Her
+black eyelashes were long, and under their protecting shadow she swept a
+glance at the card above the young man's plate. It was inscribed, "Lord
+Hexam." She saw her opportunity and asked, ingenuously:
+
+"How can you be a member of the House of Commons?"
+
+He looked up from his fish and replied, somewhat cuttingly, "By
+contesting a borough and getting elected."
+
+"But I thought a peer could not be in the House of Commons."
+
+"He can't."
+
+"Then how can you be?"
+
+"I am not a peer." He looked very much annoyed.
+
+"But you are Lord Hexam."
+
+He answered, sulkily: "I happen to be the son of a peer."
+
+"Are you irritated because I know nothing about you?" asked Isabel,
+cruelly. "Do you suppose I have wasted my time in England reading
+Burke?"
+
+"No, there are too many sights," he replied, more cruelly still.
+
+"They are far more interesting than most of the people I have met." Then
+she changed her tactics and smiled upon him; and when she smiled she
+showed a dimple hardly larger than a pin's head at one corner of her
+flexible mouth. For the first time he looked under her eyelashes into
+the odd blue eyes, with their dilated pupils and black rim edging the
+light iris. He suddenly realized that she was beautiful, in spite of the
+three little black moles on her face--he detested moles--and smiled in
+return.
+
+"I am afraid I was rude. But I am really shy, and you quite took it out
+of me. I am more afraid of the American girl than of anything on earth."
+
+"How did you know I was an American?"
+
+"By your accent." He laughed good-naturedly. "Now I am even with you."
+
+"Well, you are. Californians pride themselves upon having no accent."
+
+"Oh, it is not nearly so bad as some. But it is there all the same. Not
+a twang nor a drawl, but--well--every country has its unmistakable
+stamp."
+
+"Well, I have no desire to be taken for anything but an American," she
+said, defiantly. "A Californian, that is. After all, we are quite
+different. But we do have an appalling variety of accents in the United
+States. I have lived abroad long enough to discover that. When I am an
+old maid I am going to mount the platform and preach the training of the
+voice in childhood. I have taken a violent dislike to more than one
+clever American man merely because he trailed his voice through his
+nose. I don't mind our vices being criticised as much as our crudities."
+
+"I never before heard an American girl make a remark that indicated the
+least interest in her country--even when--pardon me--they brag. They
+generally give the impression that they don't even know who happens to
+be the President of the moment. Somehow, you look as if you might."
+
+"I was brought up by a man, and my uncle was a great politician in a
+small way. That is to say he was identified with country politics only,
+but he and my father were everlastingly discussing the national issues.
+Of course you have only met girls from the great cities, where the men
+are too busy making money to take any interest in public affairs. The
+women rarely hear them mentioned, practically forget there are such
+affairs--except on the Fourth of July, which they resent as a personal
+grievance. I have met scores of them in Europe. To know anything of
+politics they regard as the height of bad form."
+
+"Sometimes I wish that our women would let them alone for a while. That
+is my sister over there," indicating the lady with the Burne-Jones face.
+"She has worn herself to a shadow working for her husband, who is in the
+House, and she is heart and soul in politics--which she regards as a
+sort of divine mission. She is on several committees, is far more useful
+to her husband than his secretary, for she has the gift of style--and no
+one would accuse Rex of that--and during an election she never rests.
+Besides which, of course she has her little family, the usual number of
+establishments to look after, and great social pressure. I always
+maintain that our women are of immense service to us, but many of them
+are physically unfit. I expect to see my sister go to pieces any day,
+and as she is little short of an angel it worries me."
+
+"She does look angelic," said Isabel, sympathetically. "Is that what is
+the matter with the rest of them?--the thin ones, I mean?"
+
+"Generally speaking. The thinnest is my cousin. I went in for a cup of
+tea a week or two before the end of last session. There were several of
+us about the tea-table when a footman entered and muttered something to
+her, and with a vague word of apology she left the room and did not
+return for half an hour. I thought the baby must be dying, and was about
+to ring, when she reappeared and remarked that she had been sitting at
+the telephone listening to a paper her husband had just finished on one
+of the questions before the House. Some of them stand it better." He
+indicated a fair beautiful creature with a determined profile and deep
+womanly figure. "There is Mrs. Sefton, for instance. She presides at
+committee meetings--she is great on colonial politics--for three or four
+hours at a time, and always sails out as fresh as a rose; but she has
+buried her husband and entertains when and whom she chooses. Lady
+Cecilia opposite understands politics as well as any woman in England,
+but does not go in for them--Spence isn't in the House; that may account
+for it!"
+
+"Your fashionable women do not in the least resemble ours," said Isabel,
+meditatively. "They are far more like the women of our small towns."
+
+"What!"
+
+"It sounds paradoxical, but it is more than half true. Say two-thirds;
+the other third is all in favor of your women, for obvious reasons. But
+those I speak of, the best women of every small town, are constantly
+active in civic affairs. Most of the sanitary improvements and the
+educational, all schemes for parks and better streets, come from them.
+There is no village too small to have its 'Woman's Improvement Club.'
+And it is the women that have saved all the historical buildings in the
+country from destruction."
+
+"I thought they went in for Browning Societies."
+
+"Doubtless you would scorn really to know anything of American humor.
+Perhaps our comic papers have never heard of the Improvement Clubs, or
+find nothing in them that is humorous. Not that I would decry the
+Browning Clubs, nor any literary clubs, however crude. It is all in the
+line of progress. 'Culture' is a tempting morsel for the jokemaker, but
+as an alternative for dull domesticity and the vulgar inanities of
+gossip it is not to be despised."
+
+"By Jove, you are right," said Hexam, not without warmth.
+
+"Is my fair cousin converting you to something?" asked the host. His
+voice had been little heard, and he looked sulky.
+
+"Cousin?"
+
+"Yes, he is my cousin," said Isabel, with the accent of resignation.
+Hexam laughed. Gwynne looked as if the grace of humor had been left out
+of him. Isabel, innocent and impassive, turned her eyelashes upon her
+partner. "I was quite wild to meet my cousin," she went on, in the
+toneless voice that contrasted so effectively with her occasional
+extravagance of speech; "and now I find him the precise image of my
+uncle Hiram, who never spoke to me except to say: 'Little girls should
+be seen and not heard,' or 'Run off to bed now, little one.'"
+
+Without repitching her voice she yet infused it with a patronizing
+masculinity that once more startled Hexam into laughter, and caused a
+silent convulsion in the massive frame of Lady Cecilia Spence.
+
+"She knows that was a bit of vengeance," thought Isabel. "But of course,
+manlike, he'll never suspect it." She turned her deep thoughtful gaze
+full upon her cousin. His eyes were glittering under their heavy lids.
+He replied, suavely:
+
+"I hope you will find us more polite--if less picturesque. I cannot
+flatter myself that my likeness to your uncle Hiram extends that far.
+'Precise image'--is not that perhaps a bit of national exaggeration?"
+
+"Well, I take that back," said Isabel, sweetly. "But you really might be
+his son instead of his second cousin."
+
+"Perhaps that accounts for a good many things," said Lady Cecilia. "You
+know, Jack, I have always said there was something exotic about you. You
+are much too energetic and progressive for this settled old country. If
+you had been born in America I suppose you would have been president at
+the earliest moment the constitution permitted."
+
+He hesitated a moment, then delivered himself of a bombshell. "I was
+born in America," he said.
+
+His eyes moved slowly from one stupefied face to another. "As I left at
+the age of five weeks I can hardly claim that the incident left an
+indelible impress. But the fact remains that I should be eligible for
+the presidency if I chose to become an American citizen."
+
+Isabel looked at her relative with an accession of interest; he had
+suddenly ceased to be an alien, become in a measure a personal
+possession. "Come over and try it," she said, impulsively. "_There_ is a
+career worth while! A young country as full of promise as of faults!
+Think of the variousness of achievement! England's history is made. If
+you are all they claim, you might really make history in the United
+States. If I only had a brother--" Her eyes were flashing for the first
+time. "However--they say you love the fight. It is far more difficult to
+become a president of the United States than a prime-minister of
+England, for with us family influence counts for nothing."
+
+"I am afraid I have not the qualities that do count. To be as frank as
+yourself--I don't think I could stand your politics."
+
+"But think of the excitement of really sounding your capacities!"
+Impersonality was an achievement with Isabel and she could always
+command it. "You can never do that here, no matter how brilliant your
+success. There must always be the question of how far you would have
+gone without your family, and friends of equal power. The ugliest lesson
+of life is its snobbishness. Even when the herd can expect no return, a
+blind instinct--doubtless an inheritance from the days when there were
+but two classes--drives it to beat the drums for the socially elect. We
+have enough of that in America, heaven knows, but the best thing that
+can be said of American politics is that they are free of it. Besides,
+if our politics are bad, so much the better for you. You might do for
+the United States what your English great-grandfather helped to do for
+this country in 1832. You might be another 'Great Revolutioner,' like
+your still more illustrious ancestor, Sam Adams. You'll never, never
+have such an opportunity to become a great historical figure over here,
+for English dissatisfaction hardly counts, and in the United States
+there are increasing millions that demand reform, a closer approach to
+the ideal republic promised by their ancestors, and the man for the
+hour."
+
+The angry glitter had left his eyes and he was looking at her with
+interest and curiosity. He respected her courage and obvious power to
+rise above the personal attitude of her sex.
+
+"I dislike intensely many things in your country," he said, slowly; "but
+I will confess that it interests me greatly. If it has failed in some of
+its original ideals it has at least continued to be a republic for more
+than a century; and when one considers its enormous size and conflicting
+elements--for I suppose you will not claim that you are a homogeneous
+race--that is very inspiring! It makes one believe that fundamentally
+the country must be sound--that unswerving fidelity to an ideal. It is a
+great thing! a stupendous thing! I wish I knew that I should live to
+see England, all Europe, a republic. There is no other state fit for
+self-respecting men--that voice in the selection of their own rulers."
+
+"By Jove, Jack!" cried Lord Hexam. "I never heard you go as far as that
+before."
+
+"Possibly you never will again. I have no desire to rank with those
+brilliant failures that are born before their time, and no intention of
+wasting my energies on the unattainable. Moreover, radicals and
+socialists per se are merely a nuisance. The Liberal party is the only
+choice in England to-day, and when I get it at my back, I can, at least,
+after I have led it to a stronger position, fight for the soundest of
+the extremist dogmas, as well as for the reorganization of the House of
+Peers. Hereditary legislation in the twentieth century and the most
+civilized country in the world! Why not an hereditary army and navy?
+Russia has few greater anachronisms. And when one thinks of the careers
+it has ruined! Look at Barnstaple."
+
+The two men plunged into discussion, and Isabel, her eyes expressing a
+polite interest, studied the face of her cousin. She appreciated for the
+first time something of its power. A brief illumination of his eyes had
+betrayed the soul of the idealist; a passion that in a less sound mind
+might result in fanaticism. He was talking with none of the fiery
+enthusiasm that made him so irresistible a public speaker, but his
+negative suggestion of vitality, of mature thought, his very lack of
+every-day magnetism, fascinated her; not the woman, but the acute,
+receptive, and antagonistic intelligence. As he sat there talking, with
+hardly a change of expression in his voice or on his cold face, faintly
+sneering, he seemed to be holding his powers in solution; to have
+resolved them for the time being into their elements, that they might
+rest and recuperate. While no doubt in first-rate physical condition, he
+looked as if he had not a red corpuscle in his body, and this very
+contrast to the warm full-blooded people surrounding him gave him a
+distinction of his own, the distinction of pure brain independent of
+those auxiliaries that few public men have been able to dispense with.
+It was obvious that he was too self-centred, too haughtily indifferent,
+or too spoilt, to make any effort in private life to charm or bewilder;
+when he vanquished from the platform it was by the awakened rush of the
+forces within him; and this very indifference, this contemptuous
+knowledge of his mighty reserves, this serene faith in his star,
+invested his personal unattractiveness with a formidable significance.
+Isabel's imagination dilated him into a disembodied intellect surrounded
+by mere statues of human flesh. As she left the dining-room the illusion
+vanished. She liked him less than ever, nevertheless wished that he were
+her brother and the rising star in American politics.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+As the women entered a large room on the opposite side of the central
+hall, where coffee was to be served, Flora Thangue laid her hand
+deprecatingly on Isabel's arm. "I was so sorry not to be able to wait
+for you," she said. "But I had a distracted note from Vicky at eight
+asking me to dress as quickly as I could and see if the cards on the
+table were all right: the new butler is rather a muff, and such a
+martinet the footmen dare not interfere. I was delighted to see that
+Jack had taken charge of you. What do you think of our infant prodigy?"
+
+"I have had little chance to think anything," said Isabel, evasively.
+"Is he the typical Englishman--I mean apart from his peculiar gifts?"
+
+"Only in certain qualities. You see he has Celtic blood in him: of
+course the Gwynnes had their origin in Wales; and then he is one-fourth
+American, isn't he? I can't say how far that inheritance has influenced
+his character, but there is no doubt about the Celtic. Outwardly he is
+even more impassive than the usual Oxford product, and if he had been
+born a generation earlier he would have had all sorts of affectations.
+But affectation, thank heaven, is out of date. We wouldn't tolerate a
+Grandcourt five minutes. Whom should you like to talk to? You will have
+enough of me."
+
+"I am sure there is no one I shall like half so well," said Isabel,
+truthfully; and Flora loved her for not being gracious. "I think I
+should like to know Mrs. Kaye."
+
+"If you ever do, please give me the benefit of your investigations.
+There are as many opinions of her as there are of cats. Vicky believes
+in her and I don't. Jack is in love with her--with certain of his Celtic
+instincts gone wrong."
+
+She led Isabel over to Mrs. Kaye, who sat alone on a small sofa, sipping
+her coffee and absently puffing at a cigarette. She was exquisitely
+dressed and jewelled, and her little figure was round and symmetrical;
+but nothing could obscure the ignoble modelling of her face. She might
+have been misunderstood for a housemaid masquerading had it not been for
+an air of assured power, a repose as monumental as that of a Chinese
+joss.
+
+She had cultivated a still radiance of expression which, when she
+thought it worth her while, broke into a tender or brilliant smile;
+although even then her large, ripe mouth retained a hint of the
+austerity her strong will had imposed upon it--to the more complete
+undoing of the masculine host. She smiled graciously as Miss Thangue
+murmured the introduction and moved away, but did not offer the other
+half of the sofa, and Isabel fetched a chair.
+
+"You are the American cousin, of course," she said, with a slight lisp.
+"We were all talking about you down at our end of the table, but I could
+not see you until just now. I long to go to America, your novels
+interest me so much. But one is always so busy--one never gets time for
+the Atlantic. Lady Victoria says you come from that wonderful country,
+California, but of course you know New York and Newport still better.
+All Americans do."
+
+"I have never seen Newport, and passed exactly a week in New York before
+sailing."
+
+Mrs. Kaye's expressive eyes, which had dwelt on Isabel with flattering
+attention, fell to the tip of her cigarette. "No? I thought that all
+smart Americans came from that sacred precinct."
+
+"I am not in the least smart. I don't really _know_ half a dozen people
+in America outside of the county in which I have spent the greater part
+of my life--not even in San Francisco, where I was born." Isabel held
+her cigarette poised in one slender hand, letting her eyes fall
+deliberately on the broad back and flat nails of the exquisitely kept
+section on Mrs. Kaye's lap. "So far, in my small social ventures I have
+felt the necessity of little beyond good manners and a small independent
+income. This is my first excursion into the great world, and of course
+my cousin is too secure in her position to care whether I am smart or
+not. Miss Thangue, the only other woman I have talked with, is far too
+amiable and well-bred. Am I to understand that I shall be tried by New
+York measurements and found wanting?"
+
+"Oh no!" Mrs. Kaye's bright color had darkened. "On the contrary, the
+English are always rather amused at American distinctions. It only
+happens that all my friends are New-Yorkers."
+
+She was a very clever woman, for snobbery had blunted and demoralized
+only one small chamber of her brain, and she had as comprehensive a
+knowledge of the world as any woman in it. Nevertheless, as her powerful
+magnetic eyes met the ingenuous orbs opposite, she was unable to
+determine whether the barbed words, quivering in a sore spot, had been
+uttered in innocence or intent. "Of course one doesn't meet so many
+Americans, after all. Naturally, the New-Yorkers bring the best
+letters." She paused a moment as if ruminating, then delivered herself
+of an epigram: "New York is the great American invention for separating
+the wheat from the tares."
+
+"Indeed!" Isabel was too surprised to strike back.
+
+"It is well known that it is one of the most exclusive social bodies in
+the world. You have far less difficulty over here."
+
+"That may be merely owing to the fear that affects all new social
+bodies. I have the honor to know the leader of society in St. Peter--a
+town of ten thousand inhabitants near my own--and she is frightfully
+exclusive. She is so afraid of knowing the wrong sort of people that she
+is barely on nodding terms with the several thousand new-comers that
+have added to the wealth and importance of the town during the last ten
+years. Consequently, her circle is as dull as an Anglo-Saxon Sunday. I
+fancy the same may be said of New York, for its fashionable set is not
+large and its interests are far from various. From all I have heard,
+London society alone is perennially interesting, and the reason is,
+that, absolutely secure, it keeps itself from staleness by constantly
+refreshing its veins with new blood, exclusive only against
+offensiveness. Of course you are a daughter of a duke or something," she
+added, wickedly. "Everybody here seems to be. Don't you feel that your
+ancestors have given you the right to know whom you please?--instead of
+eternally plugging the holes in the dike."
+
+In spite of her sharpened wits, Mrs. Kaye smiled radiantly into Isabel's
+guileless eyes. "I am not the daughter of a duke; I wish I were!" she
+exclaimed, with a fair assumption of aristocratic frankness. "But your
+point is quite correct." Again she appeared to ruminate; then added:
+"The British aristocracy is to society what God is to the
+world--all-sufficient, all-merciful, all-powerful."
+
+"And she would sacrifice Him and all his archangels to an epigram,"
+thought Isabel, who was somewhat shocked. "How fearfully clever you
+are!" she murmured. "Do you think in epigrams?"
+
+"Epigrams? Have I made one? I wish I could. They are immensely the
+fashion."
+
+"I should think you might have set it--"
+
+She did not finish her sentence, for the ear to which it was addressed
+suddenly closed. Lady Cecilia Spence had sauntered up, and Mrs. Kaye
+hastily made room for her on the sofa, turning a shoulder upon Isabel. A
+faint change, as by the agitation of depths on the far surface of
+waters, rippled her features, and Isabel, summoning the impersonal
+attitude, watched her curiously. It was her first experience of the snob
+in a grandiose setting, but it was the type that had aroused her most
+impassioned inward protest all her life: the smallest circles have their
+snobs, and, like all the unchosen of mammon, she had had her corroding
+experiences. But her high spirit resented the power of the baser
+influences, and, with her intellect, commanded her to accept the world
+with philosophy and the unsheathed weapon of self-respect. In the
+present stage of the world's development it was to be expected that the
+pettier characteristics of human nature would predominate; and perhaps
+the intellectually exclusive would not have it otherwise.
+
+Mrs. Kaye, polite tolerance giving place to the accent of intimacy,
+began: "Oh, Lady Cecilia, have you heard--" and plunged into a piece of
+gossip, no doubt of absorbing interest to those that knew the
+contributory circumstances and the surnames of the actors, but to the
+uninitiated as puzzling as success. Lady Cecilia's eyes twinkled
+appreciatively, and her wells of laughter bubbled close to the surface.
+Isabel, completely ignored, waited until the story was finished, and
+then made a deliberate move.
+
+"How interesting!" she exclaimed. "Won't you tell me the names of the
+people?"
+
+Mrs. Kaye, without turning her head, murmured something indistinctly,
+and lit another cigarette. "Won't you have a light, Lady Cecilia?" she
+asked.
+
+"Please give me one," said Isabel, sweetly. She reached out and took the
+cigarette from Mrs. Kaye's faintly resisting hand. "Thank you. I am lazy
+about looking for matches. Do you smoke a lot?"
+
+But Mrs. Kaye, irritated, or having reached the conclusion that the
+newcomer was not in the very least worth while, said with soft fervor to
+her who was: "How delightful that dear Jack was returned! Of course you
+are as interested in his career as the rest of us."
+
+"I should be a good deal more so if his mother had turned him across her
+knee a little oftener--or if I could shake him myself occasionally."
+
+Isabel, satisfied, more amazed than ever at the infantile ingenuousness
+of the snob, rose, and was about to turn away when she met Lady
+Cecilia's eyes. They were full of amusement, and there was no mistaking
+its purport. In a flash Isabel had responded with a challenge of appeal,
+which that accomplished dame was quick to understand.
+
+"Please don't go," she said. "I came over here to talk to you. We are
+all so interested in the idea that Vicky is half an American--we had
+quite forgotten it. Did you ever see any one look less as if she had
+American cousins than Vicky? She might easily have a whole tribe of
+Spanish ones."
+
+"Well, she has, in a way." And in response to many questions Isabel
+found herself relating the story of Rezánov and Concha Argüello, while
+Mrs. Kaye, whatever may have been her sensations, rose with an absent
+smile and composedly transferred herself to an equally distinguished
+neighborhood.
+
+"I wonder if she has ever tried to condense rudeness into an epigram,"
+said Isabel viciously, pausing in her narrative.
+
+Lady Cecilia shook expressively. "At least she has not made an art of
+it," she said. "They never do."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The next morning, Isabel, after little sleep, rose early and went out
+for a walk. She had sat up until eleven, listening to the puzzling jets
+of conversation, or watching the Bridge-players, and when she had
+finally reached her room, tired and excited, Flora Thangue had come in
+for a last cigarette and half an hour of chat. Her first evening in the
+new world had had its clouded moments, for it was impossible not to feel
+the alien, and the kindness of English people, no matter how deep, is
+casual in expression. But on the whole she had felt more girlishly happy
+and ebullient than since her sister had gone her own way and left a
+heavy burden for young shoulders behind her. In the freedom of a girl in
+Europe, no matter how prized, there is much of loneliness in idleness, a
+constant attitude of defence, moments of bitter wonder and disgust, and,
+to the analytical mind, an encroaching dread of a more normal future
+with a chronic canker of discontent.
+
+Isabel had by no means passed her European years in the procession that
+winds from the Tiber to the Seine, prostrating itself at each successive
+station of architecture or canvas; nor even devoted the major portion of
+her time to the investigation of the native, deeply as the varying types
+had interested her. Her intellectual ambition, as is often the case with
+the American provincial girl, had been even stronger than her desire for
+liberty and pleasure, and she had spent several months with the
+archæological society of Rome, read deeply in Italian history and art,
+attended lectures at the Sorbonne, and spent nearly a year in Berlin,
+Dresden, Munich, and Vienna, studying that modern stronghold of dramatic
+literature, the German Theatre.
+
+It had been the living dream of long winter evenings, when she had not
+dared to join in the festivities of the other young folk lest her father
+should stray beyond her control; he would, when the demon was quiescent,
+sit at home if she read to him, and she had learned to read and dream at
+the same time. It was only at the beginning of her third year of
+liberty, when, in spite of shifting scenes, the entire absence of daily
+cares and of heavy responsibilities involving another had given her
+longer hours for thought and introspection, that the poisonous doubt of
+the use of it all had begun to work in a mind that had lost something of
+the ardor of novelty. The eternal interrogations had obtruded themselves
+in her unfortunate girlhood, and she had questioned the voiceless
+infinite, but angrily, with youth's blind rebellion against the
+injustice of life. The anger and rebellion had been comatose in these
+years of freedom, but the maturer brain was the more uneasy, at times
+appalled. For what was she developing, perfecting herself? She had no
+talent, with its constant promises, its occasional triumphs, its
+stimulating rivalries, to give zest to life; and there were times when
+she envied the student girls in Munich with their absurd "reform dress,"
+their cigarettes and beer in cheap restaurants and theatres, their more
+than doubtful standards. Although she had her own private faith and
+never hesitated to pray for anything she wanted, she was not of those
+that can make a career of religion; her mind and temperament were both
+too complex, and she was unable to interest herself in creeds and
+theologies--and congregations.
+
+Now and again she had considered seriously the study of medicine,
+architecture, law, of perfecting herself for criticism of some sort, for
+she had spoken with a measure of truth when she had assured Flora that
+she had no wish to marry. In her depths she was--had been--romantic and
+given to dreaming, but the manifold weaknesses of her father--who had
+been one of the most brilliant and accomplished of men, a graduate of
+Harvard, and the possessor of many books--and the selfish and tyrannous
+exactions which had tempered his enthusiasm for all things feminine, the
+caustic tongue and overbearing masculinity of her uncle, who had been as
+weak in his way as her father, for he had lost the greater part of his
+patrimony on the stock-market, and the charming inconsequence of her
+brother-in-law, who loved his family extravagantly and treated them like
+poor relations, had not prepared her to idealize the young men she had
+met in Rosewater and Europe. She had been sought and attracted more than
+once during her years of liberty, but her prejudices and the deep cold
+surface of temperament peculiar to American girls of the best class,
+lent a fatal clarity of vision; and although she had studied men as
+deeply as she dared, the result had but intensified the sombre threat of
+the future. It was quite true that she had half-consciously believed
+that hope would live again and justify itself in Elton Gwynne, and the
+disappointment, at the first glimpse of his portrait, was so crushing
+that she had buried her sex under an avalanche of scorn.
+
+But scorn is far more volcanic than glacial and a poor barrier between
+sex and judgment. It needed more than that, and more than disillusions
+of the second class, no matter how inordinate, to give a girl the cool
+reality of poise that had stimulated the curiosity of Miss Thangue; and
+this Isabel had encountered, during the most critical period of her
+inner life, in the beautiful city by the Isar. The experience had been
+so brief and tremendous, the incidents so crowding and tense, the climax
+so hideous, that she had been stunned for a time, then emerged into her
+present state of tranquil and not unpleasant philosophy--when the
+present moment, if it contained distraction, was something to be
+grateful for; otherwise, to be borne with until the sure compensation
+arrived. The future had neither terror for her nor any surpassing
+concern, although all her old impersonal interest in life had revived,
+and she was still too young not to be very much like other girls when
+circumstances were propitious. And at last she had conceived--or
+evolved--a definite purpose.
+
+This morning she was living as eagerly as ever during her first deep
+months in Europe. The excitement of the evening still possessed her; she
+had held her own, received homage, lived a little chapter in an English
+novel; above all, she was young, she was free, she was no longer
+unhappy; and she loved the early morning and swift walking.
+
+It was Sunday; the shooting would not begin until the morrow; everybody
+except herself, apparently, still slept; the breakfast-hour was
+half-past nine. She walked down a long lane behind the lawns and entered
+the first of the coverts. There was a drowsy whir of wings--once--that
+was all. There was a glint of dancing water in the heavier shades, a
+rosy light beyond the farthest of the trees in the little wood where the
+delicate pendent leaves hung asleep in the sweet peace. There was not an
+expiring echo of her own wild forests here; nor any likeness to the
+splendid royal preserves of Germany and Austria, with their ancient
+trees, their miles of garnished floor, the sudden glimpse of chamois or
+stag standing on a rocky ledge against the sky as if drilled for his
+part. These woods had a quality all their own: of Nature in her last
+little strongholds, but smiling, serenely triumphant, of tempered heat
+without chill, above all, of perfect peace.
+
+Nothing in England had impressed Isabel like this atmosphere of peace
+that broods over its fields and lanes, its woods and fells, in the
+evening and early morning hours; the atmosphere that makes it seem to be
+set to the tune of Wordsworth's verses, and to keep it everlastingly
+old-fashioned and out of all relation to its towns. As she left the wood
+she saw a big hay-stack, as firm and shapely of outline as a house, not
+a loose wisp anywhere. A girl, bareheaded, was driving a cow across a
+field. A narrow river moved as slowly as if the world had never
+awakened. The road turned to her right and led to an old stone village
+with a winding broken street and several oak-trees, a pump, and a long
+green bench. It might have been the Deserted Village, for the English
+rise far later than the Southern races that have fallen so far behind
+them in importance and wealth. Beyond the village, on a rise of ground,
+was the church, its square gray tower crumbling down upon its ancient
+graves. In the distance were farms, coverts, another village, a gray
+spire against the blossoming red of the sky; and over all--peace--peace.
+Had anything ever really disturbed it? Would there ever be any change?
+England had been devastated to the roots, would be again, no doubt, but
+unless it became one vast London, it would brood on into eternity with
+the slight defiant smile of a beautiful woman in an enchanted sleep.
+
+"Are you, too, an early bird?"
+
+Isabel flew out of her reverie. Lady Victoria was approaching from a
+forking road. She wore a short skirt, leggings, and heavy boots; and she
+was bright, fresh, almost rosy from swift walking. "I have gone five
+miles already," she said, smiling. "But I believe you were sauntering."
+
+"Only just now--to absorb it all. I, too, can do my five miles an hour,
+although Californians are the laziest people in the world about
+walking."
+
+"Then if you are up to a sharp trot we'll go to that farthest village.
+My land steward has been telling me a painful tale about one of my young
+women, and I intend to ask her some embarrassing questions while she is
+still too stupid with sleep to lie."
+
+"Your young women? Is all this your estate?"
+
+"It belongs to Strathland, but I have lived here since I married, and
+now the place is virtually Jack's. These people have been my particular
+charge for thirty years and will continue to be until my son marries.
+There are only about a hundred families on the estate altogether, but
+they keep one busy."
+
+"I can't imagine you in the working rôle of the Lady Bountiful. Last
+night, at least, if I had written to my friend, Anabel Colton, I should
+have devoted pages to your more famous attributes, but I should never
+have thought of this."
+
+"Indeed? If one could languish through life in the shell of a mere
+beauty that life would be a good deal simpler proposition than it is.
+Unfortunately there are complications, and, agreeable or not, one
+accepts them as one does enemies, husbands, stupid servants, and all
+other mortal thorns. But I am not uninterested in my people here, not by
+any means, and they bore me less than going to court and visiting my
+father-in-law. I watch them from birth, see that they are properly
+clothed and fed, that they go to school as soon as they are old enough,
+later that they find a situation here or elsewhere--those that have no
+work to do at home. My son gives the young men and women a complete
+wardrobe when they start out to win their way in life, and the details
+fall on me. It means correspondence, mothers' meetings, and all that
+sort of thing. Even during the London season I come down once a month.
+Of course it is a bore, but on the whole tradition is rather kind than
+otherwise in making life more or less of a routine."
+
+"Wouldn't you miss it if your son married?" Isabel wondered if this
+woman had really given her the impression of tragic secrets, unlimited
+capacities for both license and arrogance. In this early morning
+freshness there was hardly a suggestion of the woman of the world,
+barely of the great lady; and in the rich tones of her voice there was a
+genuine note of interest in her poor.
+
+"Oh, I should always keep an eye on them; young wives have so many
+distractions. If I had to give them up--yes, of course it would mean a
+vacancy in my collection of habits; one side of me clings strongly to
+traditions and duty. The other--well, I'd like to be a free-lance in the
+world for a while--although," she added, with a sharp intonation, "I
+don't suppose I should stay away from Jack very long. It is a great
+relief to have a vital interest in life outside one's self. You, of
+course, are not old enough to have discovered that; and, indeed, I am
+not always so sure that it is possible."
+
+Isabel did not ask her if she would not be jealous of the wife who must,
+if he loved her, take the greater part of all that her "Jack" had to
+give; she divined in this many-sided woman a quality in her attitude
+towards her son with which ordinary maternal affection had little in
+common. Her fine eyes flashed with pride at the mention of his name, and
+it was more than evident that he was her deep and abiding interest; but
+this keen and curious young student of life had never seen any one less
+maternal. Lady Victoria's attitude, indeed, might as reasonably be that
+of a proud sister or wife. When he was beside her she looked almost
+commonplace in her content. The moment he passed out of her sight some
+phase of individuality promptly lit its torch. Last night Isabel had
+seen her stand for half an hour as motionless as some ivory female
+Colossus, only her eyes burning down with slow voluptuous fire upon an
+adoring little Frenchman. She had looked like a Messalina petrified with
+the complications and commonness of the modern world; possibly with the
+burden of years, Isabel had added, in girlish intolerance of the wiles
+of which youth is independent. She had been far from falling under her
+spell, although not wholly repelled by the glimpse of this worst side of
+a woman far too complex to be judged off-hand. This morning she liked
+her suddenly and warmly, and, with the lightning of instinct, divined
+why she worshipped her son and still was willing to have him marry and
+swing aside into an orbit of his own. All she needed was a certain
+amount of his society, opportunities to work for him, the assurance of
+his success and happiness. He was a refuge from herself; in his
+imperious demands her memory slept, her depths were stagnant. But Isabel
+was still too young, in spite of her own experience, more than dimly to
+apprehend the older woman's attitude, and the innumerable and various
+acts and sufferings, disenchantments and contacts that had led up to it.
+Victoria seemed to her the most rounded mortal she had met, and yet with
+an insistent terror in the depths of her riven and courageous soul, the
+terror of the complete, the final disillusion. Between that moment and
+her too exhaustive knowledge of life stood the magnetic figure of her
+son, safeguarding, almost hypnotizing her. She was as incapable of
+jealousy as of aching vanity in the fact of a son whom the world was
+never permitted to forget. She had done with little things, and Isabel,
+with young curiosity, wondered in what convulsion the last of them had
+gone down.
+
+Lady Victoria, unconscious of the analytical mind groping to conclusions
+beside her, was revolving the midnight comments of Flora Thangue, and
+her own impressions of this American relative whose sudden advent, taken
+in connection with her eighteenth century beauty and undecipherable
+quality, wrought the impression of a symbolic figure swimming out of
+space. Lady Victoria was far too indifferent to analyze the problems of
+any woman's soul, but she was keenly alive to the vital suggestion of
+power in the girl, and of the strong will and intellect, the command
+over every faculty, evidenced in the strong line of the jaw, the stern
+noble profile, the calm searching gaze so difficult to sustain. None
+knew better than Victoria the value and rarity of a free and courageous
+soul. Such a woman must, when more fully developed, throw the whole
+weight of her character into the scales balancing for the few whom she
+recognized as equals and accepted as friends. If she had had "some
+smashing love affair," as the more romantic Flora suggested, so much
+the better.
+
+She said, with a perfectly simulated impulsiveness:
+
+"Of course you understand that I meant what I said last evening. And not
+merely a week; you must pay us a long visit, if it won't bore you. But
+the house will rarely be empty now that the shooting has begun, and
+there is always something going on in the neighborhood. Later comes the
+hunting, and I am sure you ride."
+
+"Oh yes, I ride! I have spent about half my life on a horse. I want to
+stay more than I can tell you, but before long I must go home. The same
+safe old bank that has charge of your ranches looks after my small
+affairs, and I have a man on the farm that has been in the family for
+forty years; otherwise I should never have dared to leave my precious
+chickens; but Mr. Colton writes me that Mac is failing, and before the
+rainy season commences I must look into things myself."
+
+"Chickens?" said Lady Victoria, much amused. "Do you raise chickens?"
+
+"Rather; and not in the back yard, neither. I have about a thousand of
+the most beautiful snow-white Leghorns with blood-red combs you ever
+saw; and I have incubators, runs, colony-houses, and all the rest of it.
+They are raised on the strictest scientific principles and yield me the
+greater part of my income. That is the reason I feel obliged to
+return--if Mac is no longer able--or willing--to get up at night. One
+must not neglect the chicks--the little ones. I doubt if real babies are
+more trouble. I don't mind telling you that I have resolved to make a
+fortune out of chickens, if only that I may be able to live as I should
+in San Francisco. But I must go back and do the greater part of the work
+myself."
+
+"Make a fortune--out of chickens! How odd that sounds! Not in the least
+romantic, but rather the more interesting for that. But why don't you
+let your ranch for dairy and grazing purposes, as we do? They bring us
+in a very good income--have done, so far."
+
+"There are about nineteen thousand acres in Lumalitas, and some forty
+thousand in the southern ranch. I possess exactly three hundred and
+thirty-two, forty-five of which are marsh. You have now nearly the whole
+of the original grants, for as my father and uncle sold or mortgaged
+portions--and could not pay--your agents bought in. You may remember."
+
+"There is seldom any correspondence. Mr. Colton has always had a free
+hand--yes--I do recall--vaguely. So I am profiting at your expense. I am
+afraid that must seem unjust to you."
+
+"Not in the least. I did not choose my paternal relatives, but I long
+since accepted them with philosophy. I am thankful to have anything. Why
+don't you go to California and look at your property?--live on it for a
+few years? You could make far more out of it if you ran it yourself. The
+lease of Lumalitas must expire very soon. I do wish you would come and
+pay me a visit, and--Mr.--what on earth am I to call him?"
+
+"Jack, of course," said Lady Victoria, warmly, although she would have
+been swift to resent the liberty had the new relative been so
+indiscreet.
+
+"I never could manage Jack--never! I can't feel, see him, as Jack. I
+think Cousin Elton will do."
+
+"Quite so. I shouldn't wonder at all if we went. Jack is rather keen on
+American politics, knows his Bryce--I suppose it is in the blood. He
+even takes in an American Review. I have always rather wanted to visit
+California, and started for it once upon a time--on my wedding journey.
+But we were entertained so delightfully in New York and Washington that
+before we realized what an American summer meant it was too hot to cross
+the continent, and we accepted an invitation to the Adirondacks,
+intending to return to England in the course of a month. But Arthur
+broke his leg, and by the time he was well again it was not safe for me
+to travel. So we rented a place in Virginia, where there was good sport,
+and there Jack was born. Here we are. Rest under that tree while I
+interview the erring maiden."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Isabel sat on the bench under an ancient oak for half an hour or more,
+but took no note of the time. In rural America one always seems to hear
+the whir of distant machinery and responds to its tensity in the depths
+of some nerve centre; but in England's open the tendency is to dream
+away the hours, the nerves as blunt as in the tropics; unless, indeed,
+one happens to be so astir within that one rebels in responding, and
+conceives of ultimate hatred for this incompassionate arrogant peace of
+England.
+
+Isabel had been roused from her mood of unreasoning content by her
+contact with the older woman, but for a few moments her thoughts waved
+to and fro in that large tranquillity like pendent moss in a gentle
+breeze. There was a stir of life in the little village; a window was
+thrown open; a man came out to the pump and filled a bucket with water;
+a child cried for its breakfast; the birds were singing in the trees.
+But they barely rippled the calm. Isabel's eyes dwelt absently upon a
+white line along a distant hill-top, made, no doubt, by Cæsar's troops;
+for she had heard that the mosaic floors of Roman houses had been
+discovered under one of the fields in the neighborhood. This
+information, imparted by Lord Hexam's cousin, Mrs. Throfton, a lady
+interested in neither Bridge nor gossip, had not excited her as it might
+have done before her archæological experience at headquarters, but she
+was glad to recall it now, for that white road, sharply insistent in the
+surrounding green, was one of the perceptible vincula of history.
+
+It was all old--old--old; an illimitable backward vista. And she was as
+new, as out of tune with it as the motorcar flashing like a lost and
+distracted comet along that hill-top in a cloud of historied dust: she
+with her problems, her egoisms, the fateful independence of the modern
+girl. In a fashion she was one of the chosen of earth, but she doubted
+if the women who had toiled in these villages, or in centuries past had
+lived their lives in the mansions of their indubious lords, had not had
+greater compensations than she. Unbroken monotony and a saving sense of
+the inevitable must in time create for the soul something of the
+illimitable horizon of the vast level spaces of the earth.
+
+And she? At twenty-five she had lost her old habit of staring with
+veiled eyes into some sweet ambiguous future, her girlish intensity of
+emotion. But her theories, in general, were sound, and she had ticketed
+even her minor experiences. She knew that character was the most
+significant of all individual forces, and that if developed in strict
+adjustment to the highest demands of society, dragging strength out of
+the powers of the universe, were it not inborn, the book of one's
+objective future at least need never be closed prematurely by those
+inexorable social forces, which, whatever the weak spots on the surface
+of life, invariably place a man in the end according to his deserts. She
+had seen her father, with all his advantages of birth and talents, and
+early importance in the community, gradually shunned, shelved, dismissed
+from the daily life of steadier if less gifted men, almost unknown to
+the young generation. He had clung to certain strict notions of honor
+through it all, however, and at his death the county had experienced a
+spasm of remorse and attended his funeral; the sermon had been eloquent
+with masterly omissions, and even the newspaper that had vilified him in
+his days of political influence came out with an obituary, which, when
+included in some future county history, would give to posterity quite as
+good an impression of him as he deserved.
+
+And James Otis had had his virtues. One of his claims to redemption
+survived in his daughter. He had reared her in the strict principles and
+precepts of his New England ancestors, many of which are generally more
+useful in the life of a man. This early instillation, taken in
+connection with himself as a commanding illustration in subcontraries,
+had given Isabel a directness of vision invaluable to a girl in no haste
+to place her life in stronger hands. Whatever her dissatisfactions and
+disillusions, her road lay along the upper reaches; the second rate, the
+failures from birth, the criminal classes, far below. Her start in life
+was indefectible, and she knew that did the necessity arise to-morrow
+she could support herself and ask no quarter.
+
+Perhaps, she mused, she would be happier in the necessity, for the
+problem of roof and bread is an abiding substitute for the problem of
+what to do with one's life. But she had never known an anxious moment
+regarding the bare necessities, and although there was something
+pleasantly stimulating in the prospect of making a fortune and being
+able to live as she wished in the city of her birth--the only object for
+which she retained any passion in her affections--she smiled somewhat
+cynically at the modest outlook.
+
+Environments like the present were uplifting, almost deindividualizing,
+and there had been a time when she had known seconds in the face of
+nature's surprises that were distinct spiritual experiences. She
+believed they would return when she was in her own land once more, and
+Europe a book of fading memories. Her love of beauty at least was as
+keen as ever, and now that Europe was off her mind, leaving the proper
+sense of surfeit behind it, no doubt she would have a sense of actually
+beginning life when the time came to take an active part in it, and she
+assumed a position of some importance in her own community. She was far
+too sensible for ingratitude, and fully appreciated the gifts that life
+had so liberally dealt her. And she fully believed in work as the
+universal panacea. The mere thought of a busy future brought a glow to
+her heart. She rose with a smile as Lady Victoria emerged from the
+cottage at the upper end of the village.
+
+Lady Victoria was not smiling. Her brows were drawn, and she looked
+angry and contemptuous.
+
+"The little idiot!" she exclaimed, as they started briskly for home.
+"This is the first failure I have had in ten years. That is one of my
+boasts. And I took particular pains with that girl. Now Jack will have
+the agreeable task of coercing the man into marrying her, for it appears
+that his ardor has cooled."
+
+Her brow cleared in a few moments, but she seemed to have had enough of
+conversation, and it was evident that words for words' sake, or as a
+flimsy chain between signposts of genuine interest, had no place in her
+social rubric. Isabel, who was equally indifferent, strode along beside
+her without so much as a comment, and so confirmed the good impression
+she had made on her mettlesome relative. As they approached the house,
+Lady Victoria turned to her with a smile that brought sweetness to her
+eyes rather than any one of her more dazzling qualities.
+
+"I am generally in my boudoir at five," she said. "Come in this
+afternoon for a chat before tea, if you have nothing better to do. Now
+run and get ready for breakfast."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Whether or not Mr. Gwynne had made up his mind to follow his mother's
+advice and employ a new weapon in his siege of Mrs. Kaye, or whether,
+like common mortals, he was subject to the natural impulses of youth,
+the most novel of the guests of Capheaton found herself on his right in
+the informality of breakfast, and the object of his solicitude. He
+fetched her bacon and toast from the sideboard, and when he discovered
+that she did not like cream in her tea, carried her cup back to his
+mother and waited for the more pungent substitute. And then he actually
+made an effort to entertain her. There was a flicker of surprised
+amusement in the neighborhood, but Isabel accepted his attentions as a
+matter of course, assuming that the young gentleman felt refreshed after
+a night's rest in his own bed, or had awakened to a sense of her
+importance as a member of his family. It was not until she caught Mrs.
+Kaye's eye and read a contemptuous power to retaliate, that she
+experienced a certain zest in the situation. With the magnetism of
+intelligent interest in her own eyes, she turned to Gwynne with a
+question that betrayed a flattering acquaintance with one of his less
+popular books, then hung upon the monologue of which he promptly
+delivered himself. It was characteristic that he either contributed
+little to the conversation or monopolized it; and he reflected, as he
+talked of the personal experience which led up to the episode of her
+interest, that he had never before gazed into eyes at once so lovely and
+so fine. He disliked American girls, partly because they had shown no
+disposition to join the ranks of those that lived to spoil him, partly
+because he believed them to be shallow and cold. Some of the married
+women had attracted him, but not before they had lived long enough to
+develop the stronger qualities of the older races; he had his ideals and
+was not easily satisfied. He was deeply in love with Mrs. Kaye, for her
+brilliant subtle mind and powerful appeal to his passions had blinded
+him to her defects, and he was convinced that his heart had travelled to
+its predestined goal. Nevertheless, he decided that his new cousin, if
+as cold as the rest of her youthful compatriots, was worth cultivating
+for her intelligence and obvious talent for good-comradeship.
+
+But in a moment a subject was started that entirely diverted his mind
+and upset the lively tenor of the breakfast-table.
+
+"Where is Lorcutt?" asked some one, abruptly, referring to a brother of
+Lord Brathland, who had lost heavily and cheerfully at Bridge the night
+before.
+
+Isabel's eyes happened to have wandered to the face of the man opposite.
+To her surprise it became livid. He turned instantly to Gwynne, however,
+and said: "I should have told you--I quite forgot--he asked me to make
+his excuses. He got a telegram--bad news--Bratty is dead."
+
+Involuntarily Isabel glanced at Mrs. Kaye; Flora had hinted to her of
+the lady's designs. That face for once was ghastly and unmasked, but the
+eyes were not glittering with grief.
+
+"Impossible!" she cried, sharply. "Lord Brathland? Why--I saw him only
+two days ago, in London. He was as well as possible."
+
+The others barely noticed her. Their astonished eyes were fixed on the
+first speaker, Captain Ormond, who was sitting very erect, as if to
+receive the questions fired at him as a brave man faces the hiss of lead
+on the field.
+
+"I know little," he replied; "except that Brathland was suddenly
+attacked by appendicitis two nights ago and that an operation was
+immediately performed--"
+
+"Friday night!" cried Mrs. Kaye. "Why he spent an hour with me that
+afternoon, and was to dine with Lord Zeal and Lord Raglin and half a
+dozen other men that night--they all came up to London to talk over one
+of Sir Cadge Vanneck's mines. Why--I remember you were to be there.
+Surely Lord Brathland was well then?"
+
+"He was looking very seedy when he came in. I happened to sit next to
+him--told him he ought to go home. Finally he got so bad he decided
+that he would, and as he left the table he fainted. Several of us saw
+him to bed. He said he didn't want his family fidgeting him, and the
+surgeon said he would be all right in a few days. I thought he was out
+of danger when I came down last night, so said nothing about it to
+Harold."
+
+"Was he taken home?" asked Gwynne, whose eyes had never left Ormond's
+face.
+
+"No--to Raglin's room up-stairs. The dinner was at the Club."
+
+"I cannot understand why his family was not summoned at the last!"
+exclaimed Lady Victoria.
+
+"Well, there's only the old duke and Harold, you see. Dick is out in
+Africa. I suppose they didn't want to agitate the duke until the last
+moment and couldn't find Harold until this morning. Besides, Raglin was
+with him, and he is a relative, at least. It is awfully sudden. I have
+been upset ever since Harold woke me up this morning and told me; and
+hated to speak of it."
+
+"Who was the surgeon?" asked Gwynne.
+
+"Ballast."
+
+"Ballast? Who is he? Why not one of the big men, in heaven's name?"
+cried Mrs. Kaye.
+
+"Well--they were all out of town--naturally enough at this time of year.
+We had to take what we could get. No doubt Lester or Masten was
+telegraphed for later. I--all of us--left the affair in Raglin's hands."
+
+The company broke into general comment, and under cover of the confusion
+Isabel distinctly heard Gwynne demand:
+
+"What's up your sleeve, Ormond?"
+
+And the response: "For God's sake, old chap, don't ask!"
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Gwynne had never recognized the contingency of a serious rival in the
+affections of the woman he had elected to mate, and had he heard of the
+late Lord Brathland's attentions it would not have occurred to him that
+Mrs. Kaye could weigh a prospective dukedom against the reflected
+glories of his own career. He intended to be prime-minister before he
+was forty, and older and soberer heads shared his confidence. It was
+true that Mrs. Kaye was an emphatic Conservative--scorning even the
+compromise of Liberal-Unionism--and that so far he had been unable to
+convert her; but he did not take any woman's political convictions very
+seriously, knowing that they commonly owed their inspiration to social
+ambition, a desire for a career, or to marital comradeship. The latter
+he made no doubt would operate in his own case as soon as the lady gave
+him the opportunity to demand it as his right; and his sharp political
+discussions with her were among the spiciest of his experiences. She
+rarely expressed herself in every-day language; and although it had
+crossed his mind that epigrammatic matrimony might grow oppressive, he
+had reminded himself that her speech was but a part of a too cultivated
+individuality and would be unable to endure the strain of daily
+intercourse. Although he had in his composition little of the femininity
+that gives a certain type of man a sympathetic comprehension of women,
+his Celtic blood imparted a subtle understanding of their foibles of
+which he was but half aware. More than once this subconscious
+penetration had induced a speedy recovery from misplaced affections; but
+the toils of Julia Kaye, who piqued, allured, repelled, dazzled, now and
+again snubbed every one else for his sake, bound him helpless. He was
+grateful for his mother's abetment, although it somewhat surprised him;
+but his mother was the woman of whom he had the least comprehension.
+
+So far Mrs. Kaye had ignored his several proposals, but of this he
+thought nothing. He would have cared little for a woman to be had for
+the asking; and he rather welcomed any treatment that stirred the
+somewhat sluggish surfaces of his nature.
+
+He had determined, however, to force a definite answer from her during
+this visit, and although he was far too courteous a host to embarrass a
+guest, he knew that were Mrs. Kaye deliberately to grant him a private
+interview he should be at liberty to press his suit.
+
+Immediately after the hour in the smoking-room that followed breakfast,
+he started in search of her; but although many of the women were
+scattered throughout the lower rooms, reading, writing, gossiping, he
+saw nothing of his inamorata. Flora Thangue happened to be standing
+alone, and he went up to her impulsively.
+
+"Do you know if Julia has gone to church?" he asked, without
+circumlocution.
+
+"She went to her room directly after breakfast. I fancy she is rather
+cut up over Lord Brathland's death," replied the astute Miss Thangue.
+
+"Of course; we all are--poor Bratty! He was rather a bounder, but it is
+natural to recall his virtues. Flora, go and tell her I want her to come
+for a walk. I can't go to her room myself, and I don't care to send a
+servant."
+
+Miss Thangue reflected. Probably this was the most favorable moment for
+a repulse that he could have chosen. She was sincerely fond of him and
+distrusted Mrs. Kaye as much as she disliked her.
+
+"Very well," she said. "I will see what I can do."
+
+Mrs. Kaye admitted her promptly and presented an unstained front,
+although her color was lower than usual. She was a woman of too much
+natural and acquired poise to remain askew under any shock. But she had
+experienced an hour of mixed emotions in which a confused and wondering
+sense of defeat was paramount. It had left her a little aghast, for
+although she had met with the inevitable snubs in her upward course, she
+rarely permitted them to agitate her memory in these days when she had
+grown to believe herself one of the spoiled favorites of destiny; and
+her fibres were by no means sensitive. But this sudden blow was a
+reminder that fate had been capricious to spoiled darlings before. She
+had stood almost motionless before the window from the moment she had
+entered her room until Miss Thangue knocked at the door, and by that
+time she had repoised herself and set her heavy mouth in a hard line as
+she reflected upon her own will as a factor in any game with life.
+
+"Jack wants you to go for a walk," announced Miss Thangue, who saw no
+occasion for subtlety.
+
+"That means he intends to propose again," said Mrs. Kaye, in her
+carefully modulated voice. "I don't know that I care about it. I have
+letters to write."
+
+"Why not get it over? You could compel him to believe, if you chose,
+that you have no intention of marrying him, and it would be rather a
+kindness; he has so much else to think about, and he certainly should
+have a free mind before the opening of Parliament. If you really did
+Jack any harm," she added, deliberately, "Vicky would never forgive
+you--nor a good many others."
+
+"I wouldn't do him any harm for the world," said Mrs. Kaye, casting down
+her eyes and looking very young and innocent. "But I should hate to give
+him up. After all, there is no one half so interesting. Well, I'll go
+down and have it over."
+
+A few moments later she joined Gwynne at the foot of the staircase, and
+they went out to the woods. She looked her best in a smart walking-frock
+of white tweed, and a red toque; for the tailor costume modifies where
+the elaborate accentuates.
+
+Her brilliant eyes melted as Brathland's name was mentioned; naturally
+at once.
+
+"What a dreadful--shocking thing!" she cried. "I do not realize it at
+all. Poor dear, we were such friends--and I saw him only a few hours
+before. Have you heard anything more?"
+
+"Ormond ran off to town directly after breakfast--as if he were afraid
+of being asked too many questions. I have an idea that he kept the cat
+in the bag. I saw my cousin Zeal yesterday, and thought he looked as if
+he had something besides his health on his mind."
+
+"Why?" asked Mrs. Kaye, startled. "What else could it be?"
+
+"Well, Bratty was rather a flasher," said Gwynne, innocently. "The
+dinner may not have been at the Club at all, and there is a little
+chorus-girl that engaged the fickle Bratty's affections for a time, and
+proclaimed her desire for vengeance from the house-tops when he
+transferred himself to a rival at the Adelphi. She is a Neapolitan, and
+that sort may carry a stiletto even in prosaic old London. Or perhaps
+poor Bratty was despatched with the carving-knife. No wonder he didn't
+want his family. But whatever it was, he has paid the penalty himself,
+poor chap, and no doubt the matter will be hushed up."
+
+"How disgusting! I don't want to think of human slums on this heavenly
+Sunday morning."
+
+"Nor to be proposed to, I suppose?"
+
+"I don't mind, Jack dear."
+
+She looked girlish and very piquant. Jack took her hand. She did not
+withdraw it, and they walked silently in the shadowed quiet of the wood.
+His heart beat almost audibly. Never before had she given him such
+definite encouragement. He could think of nothing to say that would not
+sound banal to this woman of the ready tongue. But agitation unlocks
+wayward fancies and sends them scurrying inopportunely across the very
+foreground of the mind. The vagrant hope that she would not accept him
+in an epigram restored his balance, and he turned to her with his
+habitual air of confidence, albeit his eyes and mouth were restless.
+
+"I want an answer to-day," he said, boldly. "And there is only one
+answer I will take. I have let you play with me, as that seemed to be
+your caprice, and I love caprice in a woman. But there is an end to
+everything and I want to marry before Parliament meets."
+
+"And you never thought I would not marry you?" she asked, in some
+wonder.
+
+"I have never faced the possibility of failure in my life. And you are
+as much to me as my career. I cannot imagine life without either."
+
+He suddenly put his hand under her chin and lifted her face; she was of
+tiny stature and this disadvantage in the presence of man was not the
+least subtle of her charms. "Say yes quickly," he cried, and the
+strength of his will and passion vibrated to her through the medium he
+had established. But she pouted and drew back.
+
+"Perhaps I want a career of my own. You would swallow me whole."
+
+"You could become the most powerful woman in the Liberal party--have a
+salon and all the rest of it."
+
+"I happen to be a Conservative."
+
+"What has that to do with it? Or politics with love, for that matter?
+Tell me that you love me. That is all I care about."
+
+"It is only during the engagement that love is all. Marriage is the
+great public school of life; the passions fall meekly into their proper
+place--beside the prosaic appetites, the objective demands; somewhat
+below the faculties that distinguish the higher kingdom."
+
+"Indeed? Well, I am sanguine enough to believe that we would prove the
+exception. I hardly dare think of it!" he burst out. "For God's sake
+keep your epigrams for other people and be a woman pure and simple."
+
+She looked both as she permitted her full red mouth to tremble and his
+arms to take sudden possession of her.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+In the large liberty of an English country-house Isabel might have found
+the long morning tedious had she been of a more sociable habit. Lady
+Victoria, Mrs. Throfton, and Lady Cecilia Spence went to church; all
+three, as great ladies, having a dutiful eye to the edification of
+humbler folk. Flora Thangue spent the greater part of the morning
+writing letters for her hostess, the men fled to the golf-links, and the
+rest of the women not engaged in vehement political discussion, or
+Bridge, were striding across country. Isabel, tempted by the charmingly
+fitted writing-table in her room, although an indolent correspondent,
+wrote a long and amply descriptive letter to her sister, which her
+brother-in-law, being more than usually hard up at the moment of its
+arrival, transposed into fiction and illustrated delightfully for a
+local newspaper. Then she roamed about looking at the pictures, testing
+her European education by discovering for herself the Lelys and Mores,
+the Hoppners, Ketels, Holbeins, Knellers, Dahls, and Romneys. She had a
+quick instinct for the best in all things, but cared less for pictures
+than for other treasures of the past: marbles, the architecture in old
+streets, hard brown schlosses on their lonely heights, the Gothic spaces
+of cathedrals, the high and fervent imaginations, immortal yet nameless,
+in the carvings on stone; the jewelled façades of Orvieto and Siena,
+the romantic grandeur of the Alhambra.
+
+She opened a door at the back of the central hall and found herself in a
+pillared corridor with a door at either end. Both rooms were open, and
+as a blue cloud hung about the entrance to the left, she turned to what
+proved to be the library of Capheaton. It was a square light apartment,
+with the orthodox number of books, but with so many desks and
+writing-tables that it looked more like the business corner of the
+mansion. Here, indeed, as Isabel was to learn, Lady Victoria held daily
+conference with her housekeeper and stewards, interviewed the women of
+the tenantry, and those active and philanthropic ladies of every
+district that aspire to carry the burdens of others. Here Gwynne kept
+his Blue Books and thought out his speeches, but it was not a favorite
+room with the guests.
+
+Isabel had found many books scattered about the house, solid and
+flippant, old and new, but nothing by her host. She rightly assumed that
+his works would be disposed for posterity in the family library, and
+found them on a shelf above one of the large orderly tables. As a matter
+of fact she had read but two of his books, and she selected another at
+random and carried it to a comfortable chair by the window. The work was
+an exposition of conditions in one of the South African colonies,
+containing much criticism that had been defined by the Conservative
+press as youthful impertinence, but surprisingly sound to the
+unprejudiced. What had impressed Isabel in his other books and claimed
+her admiration anew was his maturity of thought and style; she saw that
+this volume had been published when he was twenty-four, written,
+doubtless, when he was a year or two younger. She felt a vague pity for
+a man that seemed to have had no youth. Since his graduation from
+Balliol in a blaze of glory he had worked unceasingly, for he appeared
+to have found little of ordinary recreation in travel. She wondered if
+he would take his youth in his bald-headed season, like the self-made
+American millionaire.
+
+His style, pure, lucid, virile, distinguished, might have been the
+outcome of midnight travail, or, like his eloquence on the platform, a
+direct flight from the quickened brain. It certainly bore no resemblance
+to his amputated table talk. But in a moment she dismissed her
+speculations, for she had discovered a quality, overlooked before, but
+arresting in the recent light of his cold arrogance and haughty
+self-confidence. Behind his strict regard for facts and the keen insight
+and large grasp of his subject, which, without his evident care for the
+graces, would have distinguished his work from the dry report of equally
+conscientious but less gifted men, was the lonely play of a really lofty
+imagination, and a noble human sympathy. As she read on, this warm
+full-blooded quality, tempered always by reason, grew more and more
+visible to her alert sense; and when the fires in his mind blazed forth
+into a revelation of a passionate love of beauty, both in nature and in
+human character, Isabel realized what such a man's power over his
+audience must be; when this second self, so effectually concealed,
+suddenly burst into being.
+
+"It is too bad a woman would have to live with the other!" she thought,
+as she raised her eyes and saw Gwynne emerge from the woods with Mrs.
+Kaye. "I cannot say that I envy her."
+
+"By Jove, they have an engaged look!"
+
+Isabel turned with a start, but greeted Lord Hexam with a smile. He was
+as yet her one satisfactory experience of the young English nobleman,
+whom, like most American girls, she had unconsciously foreshadowed in
+doublet and hose. Hexam was quite six feet, with a fine military
+carriage; he had been in the Guards and had not left the army until
+after two years of active service; his blue eyes were both honest and
+intelligent, and he was generally clean cut and highly bred.
+
+He drew up a chair beside Isabel and reflected that she was even
+handsomer than he had thought, with the sunlight warming the ivory
+whiteness of her skin, although it contracted the mobile pupils of her
+eyes; and that little black moles when rightly placed were more
+attractive than he had thought possible. They gave a sort of daring
+unconscious eighteenth-century coquetry to what was otherwise a somewhat
+severe style of beauty. But he was a man for whom a woman's hair had a
+peculiar fascination, and while they were uttering commonplaces at
+random his eyes wandered to the soft yet massive coils encircling
+Isabel's shapely head, and lingered there.
+
+"Pardon me!" he said, boyishly. "But I always thought--don't you
+know?--that hair like that was only in novels and poems and that sort of
+thing. Is it all your own?" he asked, with sudden suspicion.
+
+"You would think so if you had to carry it for a day. I should have had
+it cut off long ago if it had happened to be coarse hair. It is an
+inherited evil of which I am too vain to rid myself. The early Spanish
+women of my family all had hair that touched the ground when they stood
+up. I have an old sketch of a back view of three of them taken side by
+side; you see nothing but billows of fine silky hair. But I have put it
+out of sight, as it looks rather like an advertisement for a famous hair
+restorer."
+
+"I'd give a lot to see yours down. It's wonderful--wonderful!"
+
+"Well, I have promised a private view to some of the women. If Lady
+Victoria thinks it quite proper perhaps I'll admit you."
+
+"I'll ask her for a card directly she comes home. Let it be this
+afternoon just after tea."
+
+"I wonder if they really are engaged," said Isabel, who had been told
+that Englishmen never paid compliments, and was growing embarrassed
+under the round-eyed scrutiny. Gwynne and Mrs. Kaye had paused by a
+sundial.
+
+"Who? Oh yes, I should think so, although there was some talk that poor
+Bratty--but no doubt that was mere rumor, or Mrs. Kaye wouldn't be on
+with Jack like that. By Jove, he is engaged. I never saw him look
+so--so--well, I hardly know what."
+
+"Do you approve of the match?"
+
+"If my consent is asked I shall give them my blessing. He is the salt of
+the earth, although a bit lumpy now and then; and she is such a jolly
+little thing, full of genuine affection--just the wife for Jack."
+
+"You believe in her, then?" Isabel wondered, as many another has done,
+at the miasma that seems to rise and dim a man's perceptive faculties
+when he is called upon to estimate the worth of a fascinating woman.
+
+"Rather! Don't you?"
+
+"She struck me as being one of the few people without a redeeming
+virtue. To be sure that has a distinction of its own."
+
+"Oh!" He wondered if so handsome a girl shared the common rancor of her
+age and sex against charming young widows.
+
+"And the worst mannered," continued Isabel, who knew exactly what he
+thought. "And plebeian in her marrow. I wish my cousin had chosen Miss
+Thangue or any one else."
+
+"But he couldn't marry Flora," said the literal young nobleman. "She
+hasn't a penny, and is the friend of all our mothers. But I'm sorry
+you've such a bad opinion of Mrs. Kaye. She's tremendously popular with
+us. I'm not one of her circle--retinue would be more like it; but I've
+always thought her the brightest little thing going, and I'm sure she
+wouldn't harm a fly."
+
+"I'm sure she would do nothing so little worth her while. Well, there is
+no need for your eyes to be opened; but I wish that my cousin's might
+be. I suppose that you have the same faith in him that so many
+others--himself included--seem to have."
+
+"Rather!--You are a most critical person. Haven't you?"
+
+"I think I have. In fact I am sure of it. That is the reason I have been
+wishing he were an American."
+
+He laughed boyishly. "That is a good one! But we need him over here. You
+haven't the slightest idea how much. We get into a blue funk every time
+Zeal takes a cold on his chest. To quote Mrs. Kaye, 'A Liberal peer is
+as useful as a fifth wheel to a coach, and as ornamental as whitewash.'
+Clever, ain't it?"
+
+"I think people are touchingly easy to satisfy! I have been treated to
+several of Mrs. Kaye's epigrams and heard as many more quoted. It seems
+to me that nothing could be easier than the manufacture of that popular
+superfluity."
+
+"Perhaps--with time to think them out beforehand. Anyhow, it's rather
+jolly to hear things you can remember."
+
+"I should be the last to deny her cleverness," said Isabel, dryly. But
+being by no means desirous that he should find her too acid, she dropped
+her eyes for a moment, then raised two dazzling wells of innocence. "I
+am tired of the subject of my cousin and Mrs. Kaye," she murmured. "Are
+you as ambitious as Jack?"
+
+"No use." He stared helplessly down into the blue flood. "There is no
+escape from the 'Peers' for me, although my father, I am happy to say,
+is as healthy as I am. But after the brain cells become brittle--one
+never knows. I too am a Liberal, and am getting in all the good work of
+which I am capable while there is yet time. I don't go as far as
+Jack--don't want to see the 'Peers' chucked. I have a strong reverence
+for traditions, and no taste whatever for democracy--that would be too
+long a step. And I think a man should be content to be useful, do the
+best he can, in his own class; and be loyal to that class whatever
+happens. Of course I understand Jack's point of view, because I
+understand him so well, and know that he would be the most maimed and
+wretched man on earth in the Upper House; but personally, I think one
+should be prepared to accept inherited responsibilities."
+
+And then, as they were both young, and mutually attracted, they found
+many subjects of common interest to keep them in the library until the
+gong summoned them to luncheon.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Flora Thangue, after luncheon, took Isabel out in a pony cart, and
+although too loyal to gossip intimately about her patrons, incidentally
+directed a search-light into certain of their recesses; a light that was
+to prove useful to Isabel in her future intercourse with them, although
+it did not in the least prepare her for an experience that awaited her
+later in the day. Miss Thangue's mind was occupied at first with the
+obvious engagement of Gwynne and Mrs. Kaye.
+
+"That woman was born to upset calculations!" she exclaimed. "Yonder is
+the castle of the dukes of Arcot. We are going over to a party to-morrow
+night. It really looks like a castle with all those gray battlements and
+towers, doesn't it? We don't call every tuppeny-hapenny villa inhabited
+by a nobleman a 'castle' as they do in Germany and Austria. Well--that
+clever little panther! I'd like to pack her into one of her own epigrams
+and bury her alive. I _know_ she was as good as engaged to Brathland.
+Now, having decided that, all things considered, Jack is the best match
+going--for everybody believes Lord Zeal to be worse than he is--well!
+there is something appalling in a woman who can adjust herself as
+quickly as that; whose caprices, sentiments, passions, all natural
+impulses, are completely controlled by her reason. I wish Vicky saw
+through her; she has so much influence over Jack, and such deadly
+powers of ridicule. But Vicky, like all spoiled women of the world, is
+as much the victim of the subtle flatterer as any man, and Julia Kaye
+has managed her beautifully. She considered Jack for a bit before she
+was sure of Brathland. Vicky's real reason for indorsing Julia
+Kaye--between us--is because she believes her to be one of that small
+and select band that can hold a man on all his various sides, and she
+wants to avoid the probability of an absorbing and possibly tragic
+liaison--like Parnell's, for instance--which might interfere with,
+perhaps ruin, Jack's career. That is all very well, as far as it goes,
+but I believe Julia Kaye to be so entirely selfish that when Jack finds
+her out he will sicken of life. I have had the best of opportunities to
+study women, and I have brought Jack up--I had the honor to be the
+highly idealized heroine of his calf-love, and have been more or less in
+his confidence ever since. In certain ways I understand him better than
+his mother does, for she has seen too much of the worst side of men, and
+is at heart too _blasée_ to have much respect for or knowledge of their
+spiritual side; and if I have ever had any maternal spasms in my
+virtuous spinsterhood they have been over Jack. Can't you help us out?"
+she asked, turning suddenly to the stranger, to whom she was powerfully
+attracted. "Are you as indifferent as you look?"
+
+"I have no idea! But although I should not in the least object to be
+cast for a part in this domestic drama, I don't care for it at the price
+of too much 'Jack.' To attempt to cut out Mrs. Kaye I should need a
+little genuine enthusiasm; and frankly, your beloved prodigy does not
+inspire it. I like Lord Hexam far better."
+
+"Oh, Jimmy! He's a fine fellow, but only a type."
+
+"He hasn't a rampant ego, if that is what you mean. And for every-day
+purposes--" She shrugged her shoulders. "I could endure and even be
+deeply interested in Elton Gwynne if he happened to be my brother and I
+could hook my finger in his destiny; but in any other capacity--no,
+thank you!"
+
+"Are you going to marry Jimmy?"
+
+"I did not even know he was not already married. Do you see nothing in a
+man but a husband over here? If I ever do marry it will not be before I
+am forty."
+
+"That is rather long--if you see much of the world meanwhile! And Jimmy,
+although there is not much money in the family--about twenty thousand a
+year--would be a very good match. He will be Earl of Hembolt--a fine old
+title."
+
+"You assume that such a plum may be pulled by the first comer."
+
+"Rather not! But you Americans have such a way with you! What is more to
+the point, I never saw him so bowled over."
+
+"Well," said Isabel, imperturbably, "I will think of it. This English
+country and these wonderful old houses, with their inimitable
+atmosphere, appeal to me very strongly. I have more the feeling of being
+at home here than I had even in Spain, where I have roots. And socially
+and picturesquely, there is nothing to compare with the position of an
+English noblewoman."
+
+Flora turned her eyes frankly to the classic profile beside her. Isabel
+had removed her hat, and, framed in the heavy coils of her hair, her
+features impressed the anxious observer as even more Roman than early
+American; although had she but reflected she would have remembered that
+the type of the Cæsars had its last stronghold in the United States of
+the eighteenth century. Isabel looked like a very young Roman matron,
+but her resemblance to the stately effigies in the galleries of Florence
+and Rome, strong in virtue or vice, was so striking that once more Flora
+longed for her support. A woman with such capabilities would be wasted
+in the rôle of a mere countess--but as the wife of an aspiring Liberal
+statesman! She devoutly wished that the American had arrived six months
+earlier, or that Brathland still lived.
+
+But she was a very tactful person and was about to drop the subject,
+when Isabel slowly turned her eyes. They looked so much like steel that
+for the moment they seemed to have lost their blue.
+
+"I have made up my mind to do something to prevent this marriage," she
+announced. "I do not know what, as yet. I shall be guided by events."
+
+And Flora devoutly kissed her, then gossipped pleasantly about the other
+guests and the people in the neighborhood. Isabel was curious to know
+something of the duchess she was to meet on the morrow.
+
+"Does she really look like a duchess?" she asked, so innocently that
+Flora laughed and forgot the Roman-American profile, and the fateful
+eyes that had given her an uncomfortable sensation a moment before.
+
+"Well--yes--she does--rather. It is the fashion in these days not to--to
+be smart above all things, excessively democratic, animated, unaffected,
+clever. But our duchess here is rather old-fashioned, very lofty of head
+and expression. She has a look of floating from peak to peak, and
+although passée is still a beauty. To be honest, she is hideously dull,
+but as good a creature as ever lived, and all that the ideal duchess
+should be--so high-minded that she has never suspected the larkiest of
+her friends."
+
+"Well, I am glad she looks the rôle. I have artistic cravings."
+
+They drove for an hour through the beautiful quiet green country, past
+many old stone villages that might have been the direct sequence of the
+cave era. An automobile skimmed past and the pony sat down on its
+haunches. Isabel had a glimpse of a delicate high-bred face set like a
+panel in a parted curtain.
+
+"That is the duchess," said Miss Thangue. "She wouldn't wear goggles for
+the world, and only gets into an automobile occasionally to please the
+duke. There is nothing old-fashioned about him."
+
+"She looks as if her name ought to be Lucy," said Isabel, to whom the
+pure empty face had appeared like a vision from some former dull
+existence, and left behind it an echo of insupportable ennui.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Isabel had looked forward all day to the promised talk with the somewhat
+formidable relative for whom, however, she had conceived one of those
+enthusiasms peculiar to her age and sex. Her wardrobe was barren of the
+costly afternoon gowns smart women affect, but she put on an organdie,
+billowy with many ruffles, that consorted with the season, at least.
+Blue cornflowers were scattered over the white transparent surface, and
+she possessed no more becoming frock. Had she been on her way to a tryst
+with Lord Hexam she would have thrust a rose in her hair, accentuated
+the smallness of her waist with a blue ribbon, the whiteness of her
+throat with a line of black velvet; but she had the instinct of dress,
+which teaches, among many things, that self-consciousness in external
+adornment provokes amusement in other women.
+
+She had not the least idea where to find Lady Victoria's boudoir,
+although a casual reference by Flora Thangue suggested that it was on
+the bedroom floor. She lost herself in the interminable corridors and
+finally ran into Elton Gwynne.
+
+"Your mother expects me--where is her boudoir?" she asked.
+
+He was at peace with the world, and answered, good-naturedly: "I'll
+pilot you. Her rooms are over on the other side."
+
+"You look as if you should be congratulated about something," she said,
+demurely. "There are all sorts of rumors flying about."
+
+She had half-expected to be snubbed, but he was not in the humor to snub
+anybody. "You can congratulate me!" he said, emphatically. "The most
+wonderful woman in the world has promised to marry me."
+
+"I hope you will be happy," said Isabel, conventionally. She resented
+his sudden drop from his pedestal, for he looked sentimental and
+somewhat sheepish. Still, her youth warmed to his in spite of herself,
+and again he noticed with a passing surprise that her eyes were both
+lovely and intellectual. He was hardly aware that coincidentally his
+Julia's eyes met his mental vision with a glance somewhat too hard and
+brilliant, but he caught Isabel's hand and gave it a little shake.
+
+"Thank you!" he exclaimed. "That was said as if you jolly well meant it.
+There are my mother's rooms."
+
+He went off whistling, and Isabel raised her hand and looked at it
+meditatively; his own had been unexpectedly warm and magnetic. She had
+imagined that his grasp would be cold and loose.
+
+He had indicated a private corridor, and she entered it and approached a
+door ajar. There was no response to her knock, but as she was expected,
+and Lady Victoria no doubt was still dressing, she pushed open the door
+and entered. The room was empty, but Isabel was instantly impressed with
+its reflection of an individuality, although of a side that had
+attracted her least. Here was none of the old-time stiffness of
+Capheaton, and there was a conspicuous absence of dead masters and their
+pupils. It was not a large room. The walls were covered with a Japanese
+gold paper to within four feet of the floor where it was met by a
+tapestry of Indian cashmeres, and from it was separated by a narrow
+shelf set thick with photographs in silver frames, and with odd and
+exquisite bibelots. On the walls were artists' sketches, and two or
+three canvases of the Impressionist and Secessionist schools, expressive
+of the ardent temperaments of their creators. In the place of honor was
+a painting of Salambô in the folds of her python.
+
+There were several deep chairs and a mighty divan covered with
+gold-colored cushions and a tiger-skin, whose mate was on the floor. The
+gloom of the afternoon was excluded by heavy gold-colored curtains, and
+the only, but quite sufficient light, filtered through an opalescent
+globe upheld by a twisted bronze female of the modern Munich school,
+that looked like nothing so much as Alice elongating in Wonderland.
+
+Isabel suddenly felt herself and her organdie absurdly out of place in
+this room with its enchantress atmosphere. She wished that Lady Victoria
+had made the appointment for the library, which was equally in tune with
+another side of her.
+
+She was even meditating a retreat, inexplicably embarrassed, when an
+inner door opened and Lady Victoria entered. She wore a tea-gown of a
+sort, black and yellow, open over the soft lace of a chemisette,
+although a dog-collar of tiny golden sequins clasped her throat. In her
+hair a golden butterfly trembled, and in that light she would have
+looked little older than her guest had it not been for the expression of
+her face. It was this expression that arrested Isabel even more than the
+toilette, as she moved towards the divan without a word of greeting. It
+looked as if it had been put on with the costume, both intended to
+express a mood of the wearer: which might have been that of a tigress
+whose ferocity was slowly awakening with the approach of the victim. The
+black eyes were heavy with the lust of conquest, the points of the mouth
+turned up more sharply than usual; there was an insatiable vanity in the
+commanding poise of her head. She was as little like the woman of the
+morning as the sun is like the midnight, and Isabel experienced a
+positive terror of her.
+
+Feeling sixteen and very foolish, she sank to the edge of a chair and
+muttered something about the charm of the room. Then, as Lady Victoria,
+who had arranged herself among the shining pillows, continued to stare
+at her with absolutely no change of expression, it dawned upon her that
+she had not been expected but that some one else was. With too little
+presence of mind left to retire gracefully and too much pride to appear
+to have ventured into the cave of Venus unasked, she managed to
+articulate her gratitude for the invitation of the morning.
+
+"Oh!" Lady Victoria's eyebrows expressed a flicker of intelligence. "I
+hope you have managed not to bore yourself."
+
+Isabel plunged into an account of her drive, to which Lady Victoria, who
+had lit a long Russian cigarette, paid no attention whatever. Her
+expression was still petrified, except that she might have had the scent
+of blood in her slightly dilating nostrils.
+
+Suddenly the slow flame in her eyes burned upward, and Isabel, her head
+fairly jerking about, saw that a man had entered and was advancing
+rapidly across the room, his heavy eyes wide with admiration. It was the
+Frenchman whom Lady Victoria had honored with so much of her attention
+the evening before.
+
+He raised to his lips the pointed fingers negligently extended, and
+murmured something to which Lady Victoria replied in French as pure and
+fluent as his own; and in a low rich voice, with not an echo in it of
+her habitual abruptness or haughty languor.
+
+The Frenchman accepted a cigarette and a low chair opposite the divan,
+whose golden cushions seemed subtly to embrace the yielding flexible
+figure against them. Neither took the slightest notice of the third
+person beyond a muttered introduction and acknowledgment, and as the man
+embarked on a soft torrent of speech, bearing the burden of his
+beatitude in at last meeting the only Englishwoman whose fame in Paris
+was as great as among her native fogs, Isabel rose and retreated with
+what dignity she could summon. Then Lady Victoria, seeing that she was
+rid of her, and courteous under all her idiosyncrasies, rose with a long
+motion of repressed energy and accompanied her to the door, her hand
+resting lightly against the crisp organdie belt.
+
+"Will you pour out the tea for me?" she asked, sweetly. "I doubt if I go
+down."
+
+No small part of her dangerous fascination lay in her sincerity. She
+really liked Isabel, although it was characteristic of her that she did
+not in the least care at what conclusions that puzzled young woman might
+arrive in a more solitary meditation.
+
+When Isabel found herself in the long cool corridor, set thick with
+gentle landscapes, and hunting squires, and dames haughty and humble,
+she drew a long breath of relief, as if she had escaped from a jungle.
+But she felt oddly wounded in her self-love, young and silly. She had
+thought herself old in the last three years, tremendously modern. What
+did she know? The easy morals of students in France and Germany had
+repelled her at first, but she had ended by accepting them as a matter
+of course, and had rather plumed herself upon her accumulating grains
+and blends of human nature. She felt a rush of contempt for their
+crudity. What children they were with their simple unmorality of
+artists, as ignorant of the real world as babes in a wood!
+
+When she reached her own room she astonished herself by bursting into a
+passion of tears. It was some time before she understood what had
+induced it. It was not that the illusions of youth had received a hard
+blow, for many of them had disappeared long since in Paris, when she had
+supported an American girl of decent family but too much liberty through
+the most desperate experience that a young woman, alone and friendless
+in a foreign city, well could have. The girl had died cursing all men
+and the folly of women, and after Isabel had buried her and the leading
+cause of her repentance, she returned to her lonely flat in a state of
+disillusion and disgust which seemed to encase her by no means
+susceptible heart in a triple panoply. This state of mind had lasted for
+at least three months. And there was little of which she had not
+abstract knowledge, nor had she lived a quarter of a century to learn
+for the first time of the license which the world permits to women so
+highly placed that they have come to believe themselves above all laws.
+
+But all her experience and abstract knowledge counted for nothing, and
+she had for the first time a sudden and complete appreciation of the
+evil of the world and of its odd association with even the higher
+virtues; of the fact that in the upper walks of life the balance was
+more nearly even than on planes where there existed scantier
+opportunities for development. There was no question that Victoria
+Gwynne was made on a magnificent plan, as capable of heroism, no doubt,
+as any of the salient women of history. She was an ornament in her
+world, useful, sympathetic, the author of much good, a devoted and
+inspiring mother. And yet there was no more question that this Frenchman
+was the last of a long line of favored adorers than that Victoria, for
+all her individualities, was but a type of her kind: a kind that was
+sufficiently distinct from the hundreds of wholly estimable women that
+were proud to know her, or accepted her as a matter of course.
+
+And even these good women? Had they not the same passions, the same
+inclinations in the secrecies of their souls? What was the determining
+cause of their indisputable virtue? A happy marriage? Too many children?
+Timidity? Absence of temptation? Or were they merely orthodox through a
+more uneven balancing of their qualities, the animal in abeyance? For
+this very reason were they not frequently narrow, unsympathetic,
+unuseful--unless, indeed, they were of the few who, with the mighty
+temptations of the Victoria Gwynnes, were mightier still in their
+fidelity to some inner and cherished ideal. This lofty ideal of
+womanhood Isabel had unconsciously set up in her soul, and the sudden
+conviction of its imperfection was, after all, the reason of her sudden
+despair. For the soul with its immemorial and often incommunicable
+knowledge may have its moments of terror while the mind wonders.
+
+And she was disheartened at the sense of insignificance and
+mortification inspired by this contact with a side of life, as real and
+consequent as motherhood or government, instead of feeling merely
+repelled, infinitely superior in her unstained maidenhood. She had no
+wish to emulate, but neither did she relish feeling provincial, a chit,
+an outsider. Her youthful vanity had its way in a mind too speculative,
+intelligent, observant, merely to be shocked. Her memory reverted to
+experiences that had made her feel as much older than the ordinary girl
+as she now felt at sea. What was she, Isabel Otis, after all? She felt a
+mere assortment of fluids, which might or might not crystallize into
+some such being as she had dimly apprehended, or into something quite
+commonplace; realized with a shock that her own deep personal experience
+had left her less definitely moulded than she had imagined.
+
+She rose impatiently and bathed her eyes before ringing for the maid to
+lace her for dinner--it was long past tea-time. "Perhaps I had better
+marry Lord Hexam and have ten children," she thought. "That sort of
+existence has kept more women up to the correct standard than anything
+else except poverty."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+"And is this really your first big party?" asked Hexam, wonderingly.
+
+"The first! The first! And I am twenty-five! Just think of it! Of course
+I have been to students' balls, and little parties in Rosewater. But a
+function--never before."
+
+"This is hardly a function--parties even in the big political
+country-houses are more or less informal."
+
+"Informal! The jewels fairly blind my provincial eyes. And this is a
+real castle!"
+
+"Oh yes, it is a castle," he said, laughing outright. "I suppose you
+have read up its record?" he added, teasingly. "You industrious and
+curious Americans know a lot more about us than we know about
+ourselves."
+
+"Of course I know the history of this castle. I haven't the least doubt
+you know every word of it yourself. I have already learned that the
+English are not nearly so vacant-minded as, in their curious pride, they
+would have one believe."
+
+She threw back her head, half-closing her eyes in the ecstasy of her new
+experience. The dancing was in the picture-gallery, an immense room, in
+which there were many dark paintings of the old Italian and Spanish
+schools, besides the presentments of innumerable Arcots by the usual
+popular masters of the Dutch and English. The ceiling was of stone and
+vaulted, but set thick with electric lights, blazing down from their
+great height like the crystal stars of the tropics. It had seemed to
+Isabel that after entering the castle she had walked for ten minutes
+before reaching this room, where as brilliant a company was disporting
+itself as she was likely to look upon in England. The Duke of Arcot was
+an energetic Conservative and a member of the present cabinet, but his
+social attentions were ever directed to the prominent and interesting of
+whatever party or creed. As he found a particular zest in being
+surrounded by smart, bright and pretty women, the parties at the castle,
+and at Arcot House in London, were seldom surpassed in either brilliancy
+or interest. And as his rent-roll was abnormal, there was no sign of
+dilapidation within the gray walls and towers of the ancient castle, but
+much comfort and luxury against a background of countless treasures
+accumulated throughout the centuries. He had taken an immediate fancy to
+Isabel and promised to show her the lower rooms as soon as she tired of
+dancing.
+
+Hexam watched her with an amused indulgence that in no wise tempered his
+mounting admiration. She was radiant. Her blue eyes were shining and
+almost black, her cheeks flooded with a delicate pink. She wore a gown
+of white tulle upon whose floating surface were a few dark-blue lilies.
+The masses of her black hair were piled on her head in the fashion of
+her Californian grandmothers, and confined by a high Spanish comb of
+gold and tortoise-shell. Her only other jewel was a long string of Baja
+California pearls that had glistened on warm white necks in many an old
+California ballroom before ever an American had crossed the threshold of
+Arcot Castle. They had been given by Concha Argüello, when she assumed
+the gray habit of the Third Order of the Franciscan nuns, to the wife of
+her brother Santiago and so had come down to Isabel.
+
+And to-night this descendant of that powerful clan, unimaginable in her
+modern complexities to their simple minds, was receiving homage in the
+ballroom of one of the greatest houses in Europe. For there was no
+question, even in the minds of the young married women, who carry all
+before them in English society, that the American girl had created a
+furore among the men. Isabel had confided to the duke, who had lunched
+that day at Capheaton, and to Hexam, her haunting fear of being a
+wall-flower, and both had vowed that she should have no lack of partners
+at her first English ball. But to Hexam's disgust, at least, their
+solicitude came to an untimely end, and he was able to secure but two
+waltzes and a square dance. The duke had spoken for the cotillon, which
+he had no intention of dancing. He was a most estimable person, but he
+never ignored an opportunity to talk with a new and interesting woman.
+
+Isabel could hardly have failed to be a belle that night, for her spirit
+was pitched to a height of joy and triumph that charged her whole being
+with a powerful magnetism. Possibly with a presentiment that it was to
+be an isolated experience, she abandoned herself recklessly to the mere
+delight of living, her will imperious for the fulness of one of the
+dearest of girlhood's ideals. She was one of those women, cast, as she
+well knew, for tragic and dramatic contacts with life, but Nature in
+compensation had granted her a certain wildness of spirit that sprang
+spontaneously to meet the pleasure, trifling or great, of the mere
+present; no matter for how long a period, or how hard, its wings had
+been smitten.
+
+So she danced, and talked far more than was her wont, surpassing herself
+in every way, and no more interested in poor Hexam than in twenty
+others. He took her in to supper, however, and after three hours of
+dancing she was glad to rest and be sheltered by his determined bulk,
+planted squarely before her corner. She knew that she had a coronet very
+close to her footstool, and that this brilliant night might be but the
+prologue to a lifetime of the only society in the world worth while, but
+she was not conscious of any desire beyond the brimming cup of the
+moment. Moreover, she had never so thoroughly enjoyed being a girl, and
+love-making would have bored her grievously.
+
+The duke claimed her, and after a desultory tour of the great
+reception-rooms and an infinite number of little cabinets, containing
+some of the most valuable of the Japanese and Indian treasures, he led
+her to the library, a luxurious room conducive to rapid friendship.
+
+With that amiable desire, peculiar to the kindly Englishman, to gratify
+the ingenuous curiosity of the American, he produced a huge leather
+volume containing the various patents of nobility that marked the upward
+evolution of his house from a barony in some remote period of the
+world's history to the present dukedom, and the royal letters that had
+accompanied them. It was something he never would have dreamed of doing
+for a stranger of his own country, or of any state in Europe, but the
+English humor Americans that please them much as they would engaging
+children; and Isabel's eyes sparkled with so lively an intelligence that
+the duke fancied she had literary intentions and might one day find
+such information useful. He even showed her his complicated
+coat-of-arms, which included a bend sinister, for he had royal blood in
+his veins; and this slanting rod interested Isabel as deeply as the moat
+under the window. She was even more interested in the duke's attitude;
+it was evident that he felt no more vanity in his royal descent than
+deprecation of its irregular cause and enduring emblem. It was, and that
+was the end of it; but he had quite enough imagination to appreciate the
+effect of so picturesque an incident in family history upon the mind of
+the young republican.
+
+"The best we can do is to descend irrelevantly from Washington,
+Hamilton, or Jefferson," said Isabel. "Only we have not yet reached the
+stage where we dare to acknowledge it on our coat-of-arms. The illusions
+of the American youth must be preserved. Even the fact that one of our
+Presidents was a son of Aaron Burr is still to be read only in the great
+volume of unwritten history. My father was a sort of walking edition of
+that work."
+
+"That is new to me!" The duke was quite famous as a student of history,
+and took a personal interest in America, having been over twice in
+search of big game. He asked her many questions; but his interest in the
+general subject was as nothing to the enthusiasm she aroused by a chance
+allusion to the chicken-ranch. The duke was agricultural above all
+things; he had a model estate bristling with scientific improvement. He
+was enchanted at Isabel's picture of her wire-enclosed "runs" and yards
+containing industrious chickens of all ages, engaged, however
+innocently, in the pursuit of wealth. Isabel, when she chose, could
+invest any subject with glamour, and her account, delivered in tones
+notably accelerated, of the snow-white, red-crowned flocks, their
+aristocratic little white mansions, the luxurious nurseries for the
+"chicks," and the astonishing and costly banquets with which they were
+daily regaled, was so lively that the duke vowed he would raise Leghorns
+forthwith. He asked her so many practical questions, taking copious
+notes, and inevitably embracing California ranch life in its entirety,
+in his thirst for knowledge, that Isabel had no more dancing that night;
+but she made an enduring impression upon the eminently practical mind of
+her host.
+
+It was quite two hours after supper, and Isabel was beginning to reflect
+with some humor upon the brevity of all illusions, when Hexam and Miss
+Thangue appeared simultaneously and announced that the Capheaton guests
+were leaving. Hexam looked sulky and suspicious. Flora was smiling.
+
+"For the first time--" she murmured.
+
+Isabel and the duke laughed outright, and then shook hands warmly.
+
+"When I go home we can correspond," she said to him, "and I will tell
+you all the new kinks. We are always improving."
+
+"The duke looked positively rejuvenated," said Hexam, spitefully, as
+they walked down the corridor. "Have you discovered the elixir of life
+in California, and promised him the prescription."
+
+"No," said Isabel, demurely. "I have merely been initiating him into the
+mysteries of raising Leghorns."
+
+Hexam looked stupefied, but Miss Thangue burst into a merry peal of
+laughter.
+
+"Isabel!" she exclaimed. "I begin to suspect you are a minx!"
+
+And Isabel laughed, too, in sheer excess of animal spirits and gratified
+vanity. She had excellent cause to remember the ebullition, for it was
+some time before she laughed again.
+
+The duchess, with her light sweet smile, her old-fashioned
+Book-of-Beauty style, a certain affectation of shabbiness in her
+black-and-silver gown, looked a more indispensable part of the picture
+than any of her guests, as she stood in the middle of the great
+drawing-room with a group of her more intimate friends. Among them was
+Lady Victoria, more normal of mood this evening, sufficiently gracious,
+superbly indifferent, although she had held her court as usual.
+
+She tapped Isabel lightly on the cheek with her fan. "You were quite the
+rage," she said. "I never should have forgiven you if you had not been."
+And Isabel had not the slightest doubt of her sincerity.
+
+The duchess, in the immensity of her castle, did not pretend to keep an
+eye on any one, and would have been the last to suspect that Miss Otis
+had inspired her husband with a sudden passion for chickens. She shook
+hands approvingly with the young American and asked her to come over
+informally to luncheon on the morrow.
+
+"Is your head turning?" asked Miss Thangue, as they drove home. "You
+must reap the results of your success; it would be a pity not to. After
+a few weeks here with Vicky you must go on a round of visits and then
+have a season in London."
+
+"It would be glorious!" exclaimed Isabel, in whom problems were
+moribund. "I certainly believe I shall."
+
+She was in the second of the carriages to reach Capheaton, and Gwynne,
+who was still standing on the steps, helped her down, and asked her
+pleasantly if she had enjoyed herself.
+
+"I had such a good time I know I sha'n't sleep a wink for twenty-four
+hours. I believe I'll go to the library and get a book of yours I began
+on Sunday--only--" She hesitated. A talk with this enigmatical cousin
+would be a proper climax to the triumphs of the night. She raised her
+eyes, full of flattering appeal. "There are one or two points I did not
+quite understand--I have hesitated to go on--"
+
+He too was wakeful, and rose to the bait promptly. "Suppose you give me
+an hour by the empty hearth. Will you? Well, go on ahead and I'll follow
+in a moment--after I see that the men have all they want in the
+smoking-room."
+
+In the depths of the most independent woman's soul is a lingering taint
+of servility to the lordly male, and in Isabel it warmed into subtle
+life under the flattering response of this illustrious specimen. She
+fairly sailed towards the library, wondering if any of the famous
+old-time California belles, Concha Argüello, Chonita Iturbe y Moncada,
+with their caballeros flinging gold and silver at their feet, Nina
+Randolph and Chonita Hathaway and Helena Belmont, with their pugnacious
+"courts," had ever felt as exultant as she. That last moment, as she
+stepped lightly over the threshold of the library, was a sort of climax
+to the intoxication of youth.
+
+And then she stopped short, stifling a cry of terror. The library,
+except for the wandering moonshine, was unlit, but a ray fell directly
+across a shadowy figure in the depths of a chair, half-way down the
+room. It was a relaxed figure, the head fallen on the chest; the arms
+were hanging limply over the sides of the chair, the hands ghastly in
+the moonlight. At the rustle of skirts the figure slowly raised its
+head, and the eyes of a man, haunted rather than haunting, looked out of
+a drawn and livid face. But the movement was not followed by speech, and
+Isabel stood, stiff with horror, convinced that she was in the presence
+of the Capheaton ghost. Of course, like all old manor-houses, it had
+one, and she was too imaginative not to accept with her nerves if not
+with her intelligence this ugly proof of a restless domain beyond the
+grave. But her petrifaction was mercifully brief. There was a quick step
+behind her, and then an exclamation of horror as Gwynne shot past and
+caught the lugubrious visitant by the shoulder.
+
+"Good God, Zeal!" he cried, and his voice shook. "What is it, old man?
+You look--you look--"
+
+The man in the chair rose slowly and drew a long breath, which seemed to
+infuse him with life again.
+
+"I probably look much as I feel," he said, grimly. "I'm about to go on a
+journey, and if you can give me a few minutes--"
+
+He paused and looked with cold politeness at Isabel. She waited for no
+further formalities, but shaken with the sure foreboding of calamity,
+turned and fled the room.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+That night had also been one of triumph for Elton Gwynne. He had dined
+at the castle, and--his Julia having flitted to another
+country-house--spent the greater part of the evening in the smoking-room
+with half a score of the most eminent men in political England; and
+others whose recognition was not to be despised.
+
+As there were many guests at the castle the dinner took place in the
+banquet-hall, but at six or eight round tables, and Gwynne had found
+himself distinguished above all the other young men present by being
+seated at that of the duchess. The prime-minister, the chancellor of the
+exchequer, two other members of the cabinet, and an ambassador were his
+companions. All the women were of exalted station, but for this fact
+Gwynne cared nothing, being entirely free of that snobbery which so
+often agitates even the best-born of the world; indeed, would have been
+resentful of the ripe age of the ladies--accumulated with their
+political values--had it not been for the tremendous compliment paid to
+his personal achievement.
+
+He could not sit beside her grace in that nest of titles, but at the
+suggestion of the duke he had been placed as nearly opposite her as the
+round table permitted, and he soon forgot the broken circle of
+immemorial bosoms in the manifest disapproval of the Conservative
+premier towards himself, and in the attitude of the other men, which,
+whether hostile or friendly, evinced a recognition of the rising star
+and a tolerance of his ideas.
+
+There is always a glamour about a very young man who has given
+cumulative evidence of genius and compelled the attention of the world,
+always distrustful of youth. His enemies had long since--and he was but
+thirty--admitted his gift for letters, fiercely as they might scoff at
+his conclusions; and his rewards for bravery in the field had aroused no
+adverse comment. But while his most persistent critics had never
+discovered him truthless and corruptible, his political sincerity had
+been called into question even by his colleagues, and almost unanimously
+by the opposition. His principles were by no means so rigidly outlined
+as those of the great Whig families, nor of the men who belonged to the
+Liberal party as a natural result of their more modest station and
+protesting spirit. He was strong on the fundamental principles of the
+party, and far more energetic in his advocacy of the rights and needs of
+the working-man than any Liberal of his own class, but he rarely, if
+ever, alluded to the question of Home Rule; a question somnolent but by
+no means dead; and the omission savored of Unionism, in spite of his
+avowed scorn of all compromises.
+
+These facts, taken in connection with the pride and arrogance of the
+young scion of the house of Strathland and Zeal, generated the suspicion
+that he had allied himself with the Liberal party for two reasons only:
+its weakness in first-class men, and his passion for self-advertising.
+No one disputed his pre-eminence in this branch of industrial art, for
+although he never descended to commonplace methods, and the interviewer,
+far from being sought, rather dreaded him than otherwise, there was no
+man in England who was such a mine for "copy," nor of a perennially
+greener growth in the select front lawn of "news." When he attacked the
+government he was eminently quotable, and this endeared him to both
+reporters and editors. When he was interviewed, fearsome in manner as he
+was, he sent the worm away packed with ideas and phrases. But although
+he was almost continuously on the tongue, and the object of more
+acrimonious discussion than any young man in England, distrust of him
+had grown to such proportions that he had been dropped after one brief
+sojourn in the House; and to regain his seat had taken two years of the
+hardest and most brilliant fighting Great Britain had seen since the
+Conservative majority of 1874 permitted Disraeli to rest on his prickly
+laurels. But this memorable battle of one young man against a mighty
+phalanx of enemies and doubting friends had battered down the prejudices
+of his own party, and won a meed of applause from even those of stout
+old Tory principles. The humbler class, upon whom the election largely
+depended, were captivated by his eloquence, his insidious manipulation
+of the best in their natures, filling them with a judicious mixture of
+ideals and self-approval; while the phenomenon he invariably presented
+on the platform of the gradual awakening into life of a warm-blooded
+generous magnetic and earnest inner man, so effectually concealed at
+other times within a repellent exterior, never failed to induce in them
+the belief that something responsive in their own personalities awakened
+that rare spirit from its stifled sleep. That the glamour of his birth
+and condescension to their plane had aught to do with the dazzling
+quality of his charm, they might have admitted had their minds been
+driven by the enemy into the regions of self-analysis, but in any case
+he was the theme of two-thirds of the "pubs" and reading-rooms in
+England. He had achieved a sweeping victory that loomed portentously as
+a forerunner of greater triumphs in the future; for the personal
+popularity he had achieved, the gift for leadership he had demonstrated,
+the self-control he showed at all times, and the fatally adhesive
+quality of his biting wit, had strengthened the Liberal party and caused
+the Conservative to wish that he had never been born.
+
+And flushed with self-love and the conquest of the woman of his desire,
+he had never talked better than on that night at Arcot; nor less
+offensively, for his arrogance and assertiveness were tempered by the
+warm high tide of his emotions. It was a magnificent room, the
+banquet-hall at Arcot, as large as that of many royal palaces, hung with
+old Gobelins and frescoed by a pupil of Giotto. It was a fit setting for
+the triumphant hour of the "most remarkable young man since the younger
+Pitt," a phrase which, if not notably suave, at least possessed an
+astonishing vigor, and was almost as familiar in American and
+continental newspapers as in his own proud nation; a nation always so
+keen to possess the first in all departments of excellence--creating
+them out of second-class material when the first is lacking--that the
+wonder was she had been so long accepting Elton Gwynne. Nothing,
+perhaps, but a noble desire for a really great man restrained her.
+
+Opposite Gwynne, the duchess, sweet and tactful, if little more than an
+ornamental husk in which the juices of her race possibly recuperated to
+invigorate the future generations, was as fair and stately as her castle
+demanded; and if her gown was shabby her jewels were not. On either
+side of her table, which occupied the central position in the great
+room, were some of the most beautiful women in England, the smartest,
+the most politically important; all, without exception, of an inherited
+status that brought them once a year as a matter of course within the
+sternly guarded portals of Arcot. Gwynne did not know that Mrs. Kaye had
+knocked at these sacred portals in vain; for such gossip, if by chance
+he heard it, made no impression upon him whatever. But he was by no
+means insensible to the salient fact that he was one among the chosen of
+Earth to-night, and that it was good to be the hero of such an assembly.
+
+For that he was the hero there was no manner of doubt, and when the
+dinner was over he spent but half an hour in the drawing-room,
+preferring the conversation of the heads of state, who so seldom
+gratified the vanity of a man of his years, but whom he had the power to
+interest whether they approved of him or not. He had many friends among
+women, some conquered by the magic of notoriety, others, like Flora
+Thangue, sensible of his finer side, or tolerant of him through
+life-long intimacy; and there were times when he was as alive to the
+pleasures of their society as any young sprig about town; but to-night
+their admiration was too illogical to administer to the self-love which
+in the last few days had palpitated with so exquisite a sense of
+fruition. Moreover, it gave him the keenest satisfaction to read in the
+manner of these older and long-tried men the grudging belief in his own
+sincerity.
+
+In reality his motives for joining a party at war with every tradition
+of his house had been, primarily, as mixed as are all motives that bring
+about great voluntary changes in a man's life. It was quite true that
+he was inordinately ambitious, that he had a distinct preference for the
+sensational method, as productive of speedier results; for he had no
+intention of waiting until middle-age for the activities and honors he
+craved in his insatiable youth; and it was also true that he was even
+more of an aristocrat than many of his class, with whom a simpler
+attitude had become the fashion, even if it were not marrow-deep. But
+the ruling motive had been his passionate love of battle, a trait
+inherited perhaps from his pioneer ancestors, whose roots were in the
+soil. This desire to prove his mettle and fill his life with the only
+excitement worthy of his gifts, would alone have made him turn from the
+broad ancestral paths, but, like a lawyer fascinated by his brief, he
+had long since been heart and soul with the party he had chosen, and,
+with the exercise of his faculties, become possessed of a mounting
+desire not only to be of genuine use to his country, but to lift the
+family name from the comparative obscurity where it had rested during
+the half of a century.
+
+The present head of the family had been an invalid in his early life,
+and Italy had withered whatever ambitions may have pricked him in his
+youth. When he finally found himself able to live the year round in
+England he saw no fault in a nation so superior to any of his exile, and
+he had settled down to the life of a country squire, devoted to sport,
+and supremely satisfied with himself. His eldest son, an estimable young
+man, who had worked at Christ Church as if he had been qualifying for a
+statesman or a don, died of typhoid-fever before the birth of his boy.
+The present heir, brilliant, weak, cynical, absolutely selfish, had
+rioted to such an extent that he had fatally injured his health and
+incurred the detestation of his grandfather; Lord Strathland was not
+only a virtuous old gentleman but was also inclined to be miserly. The
+subjects upon which they did not quarrel bitterly every time they met
+were those relating to Elton Gwynne, whom both loved, in so far as they
+loved any one but themselves. Deeply as they disapproved of his
+politics, they respected his independence and were inordinately proud of
+him. Zeal's daughters, who bored him inexpressibly, were parcelled out
+among relatives, and he led a roving life in search of beneficent air
+for his weary lungs. All women had become hateful to him since he had
+been forced to sit in the ashes of repentance, but he had consented to
+enter upon a second marriage through the most disinterested sentiment of
+his life, his love of his cousin, whose haunting fear of being shelved
+in his youth had been poured into his ears many times. That he also
+enraged his grandfather, who wanted nothing so much as the assurance
+that his favorite should inherit the territorial honors of his house,
+may have given zest to his act of renunciation. Not that he had the
+least intention of giving his cousin a solid basis for despair for many
+years to come, for no mother ever nursed her babe more tenderly than he
+his weak but by no means exhausted chest. During his last interview with
+Elton in London he had assured his anxious relative that he was taking
+the best of care of himself, and that, in spite of blood-shot eyes and
+haggard cheeks, his disease was quiescent; although he had decided to
+start for Davos or some other popular climate before the advent of harsh
+weather. Davos is a word of hideous portent in English ears, but Gwynne
+had expelled it with all other cares from his mind, and on this night
+when he returned from Arcot feeling a far greater man than any of his
+house had ever dreamed of being, and with a song in his heart, the
+awful face of his cousin, whom in the shock of the moment he thought
+stricken with death, gave him the first stab of terror and doubt that he
+had experienced in his triumphant life.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+"Come up-stairs," said Zeal. "We are liable to interruption here."
+
+"Have they put you up decently?" asked Gwynne, with his mind's surface.
+"The house is rather full."
+
+"I shall leave by the seven-o'clock train, and it must be three now. I
+have no intention of going to bed."
+
+"Is that wise? You look pretty seedy, old man. You haven't had a
+hemorrhage?" He almost choked as he brought the word out, and yet he was
+not in the least surprised when Zeal replied, tonelessly, "I had
+forgotten I ever had a chest;" for his mind was vibrating with a
+telepathic message which his wits attacked fiercely and without avail.
+
+As they entered his room he pushed his cousin into an easy-chair and
+turned up the lamp on the writing-table. Then he planted his feet on the
+hearth-rug with a blind instinct to die standing.
+
+"Fire away, for God's sake," he said. "Something has happened. You know
+you can count on me, whatever it is."
+
+Zeal, who was sitting stiffly forward, his hands gripping the arms of
+his chair, laughed dryly. "You will be the chief sufferer. The others
+don't count."
+
+"Has my grandfather speculated once too often? Are we gone completely
+smash?" Gwynne was rapidly assuring himself that he was now prepared for
+the worst, that nothing should knock the props from under him again,
+that it was the sight of Zeal's face that had upset him; he was not one
+to collapse before the stiff blows of life.
+
+"It is likely. Anyhow, if he lives long enough he'll make a mess of what
+is left." He raised his head slowly, and once more Gwynne, as he met
+those terrible haunted eyes, felt as Adam may have felt when he was
+being bundled towards the exit of Eden. He braced himself unconsciously,
+and after Zeal's next words did not relax his body, although his lips
+turned white and stiff.
+
+"I am going to kill myself some time to-day," said Zeal, in a voice so
+emotionless that Gwynne wondered idly if all his capacity for expression
+had gone to his eyes. "I should have done it several hours earlier, but
+I felt that I owed you an explanation. You can pass it on to my
+grandfather when the time comes."
+
+He paused a moment, and then he too seemed to brace himself.
+
+"I killed Brathland," he said.
+
+Gwynne moistened his lips. "Poor old Zeal," he muttered. "It must be a
+horrid sensation--"
+
+"To be a murderer? I can assure you it is."
+
+Gwynne's mind seemed to darken until only one luminous point confronted
+it, the visible tormented soul of his kinsman. He walked over to the
+table and mixed two tumblers of whiskey-and-soda, wondering why he had
+not thought of it before. They drank without haste, and then Gwynne took
+the chair opposite Zeal's.
+
+"Tell me all about it," he said.
+
+"Brathland and I had not been friends for some years. He was a bounder,
+and an ass in the bargain. I never, even when we were on speaking
+terms, made any particular effort to hide what I thought of him--it
+wasn't worth while. Of course, with every mother firing her girls at his
+head, and the flatterers and toadies from whom a prospective duke cannot
+escape if he would, he had an opinion of himself that would have made me
+the object of his particular rancor, even if I hadn't cut him out with
+three different women that couldn't marry either of us. When I got the
+verdict that I must pull up or go under, he chose that particular moment
+to take up with Stella Starr, the only woman I ever cared a pin for.
+Somehow, he got wind of my condition, and knowing that I would prefer to
+retire as gracefully as possible, it struck him as the refinement of
+vengeance to make a laughing-stock of me when I was no longer in a
+condition to play the game out; to advertise me as a worn-out rake for
+whom the world of Stella Starrs had no further use. We never spoke again
+until Friday night."
+
+He paused, then mixed and drank another whiskey-and-soda, lit a
+cigarette, and resumed.
+
+"I had objected to his being let into the mine, which Vanneck's agent
+and private letters had persuaded the rest of us would make our
+fortunes; but I was helpless, for he was not only Vanneck's cousin, but
+his brother is out in Africa and also interested in the mine. I
+therefore consented to attend the dinner at which the whole business was
+to be discussed, fully intending to treat him as I should any stranger
+to whom I had just been introduced.
+
+"At first all went well enough. We had the private dining-room and
+smoking-room on the second floor at the Club, the dinner was excellent,
+and Brathland, although nearly opposite me, behaved as decently as he
+always did when sober. It was champagne that let loose the bounder in
+him, and that was one reason I always so thoroughly despised him: the
+man that is not a gentleman when he is drunk has no right to be alive at
+all.
+
+"We were not long discussing the mine threadbare, for we did not know
+enough about it to enlarge into any picturesque details, and the agent,
+who had seen each of us separately, was not present. Raglin read a
+personal letter from Vanneck, and Brathland another from Dick. Then, the
+subject being exhausted long before we reached the end of dinner, we
+drifted off to other topics; and went into the smoking-room with the
+coffee.
+
+"It was at least six years since I had tasted anything stronger than
+whiskey-and-water, and what devil entered into me that night to drink a
+quart of champagne, and liqueurs, and pour port and brandy on top, the
+devil himself only knows. Perhaps the old familiar sight of a lot of
+good fellows; most likely the vanity of forcing Brathland to believe
+that he beheld a rival as vigorous and dangerous as of old--I had gained
+ten pounds and was looking and feeling particularly fit. At all events
+the mess affected me as alcohol never had done in even my salet days,
+and although my thoughts seemed to be moving in a crystal procession, I
+became slowly obsessed with the desire to kill Brathland; whose face,
+chalky white, as it always was when he was drunk--and he always got
+drunk on less than any one else--filled me with a fury of disgust and
+hatred. My mind kept assuring this thing that straddled it that I had
+not the least intention of making an ass of myself; and that procession
+of thought, in order to support its confidence, entered into an argument
+with my conscience, which was in a corner and looked like a codfish
+standing on its tail and grinning impotently. A jig of words escaped
+from the mouth of the codfish: copy-book maxims, Bible admonitions, the
+commandments, legal statutes; all in one hideous mess that annoyed me so
+I slipped out, went up to my room, and pocketed a pistol. That logical
+procession of thought in my mind assured me that this unusual move at a
+friendly business dinner was merely in the way of self-protection, for
+Brathland had once been heard to say that he wished we were both
+cow-boys on an American ranch so that he could put a bullet into me
+without taking the consequences--he never had a brain above shilling
+shockers. My thoughts, as they visibly combined and recombined in the
+crystal vault of my skull, asserted confidently that he had been reading
+such stuff lately, and that, ten to one, he had a pistol in his pocket.
+
+"When I returned Brathland was standing by the hearth, supporting
+himself by the chimney-piece. The rest were lying about in long chairs,
+smoking, and drinking whiskey-and-sodas. They were all sober enough, and
+Brathland looked the more of a beast by contrast.
+
+"I took a chair opposite him and ordered my thoughts to arrange
+themselves in phrases that should pierce his mental hide and wither the
+very roots of his self-esteem--his vanity was the one big thing about
+him. But he took his doom into his own hands and built it up like a
+house of cards.
+
+"'How does it feel to be drunk once more?' he asked, with his damnable
+sneer. 'It makes you look less of a hypochondriac, anyhow. "Granny
+Zeal"--that's what the girls call you.'
+
+"'If they do I've no doubt you taught them,' I replied, in tones as low
+as his own. Several men were seated not far off, but neither of us hung
+out a storm signal.
+
+"'I did,' he said. 'Not but that I had had revenge enough. I had made
+you ridiculous--you with your damned superior airs--like that infant
+phenomenon cousin of yours who is making the family ass of himself over
+Julia Kaye--'
+
+"Those were his last words. I pulled the pistol and fired straight into
+his abdomen--knew I couldn't miss him there.
+
+"God! what a commotion there was. He doubled up with a yell--just like
+him. The men fairly bounded out of their chairs. There were two waiters
+in the room--just come in with Apollinaris. Raglin slammed the doors to,
+and, while Ormond and Hethrington laid Brathland out on a sofa, asked
+the servants if they would hold their tongues until it was known whether
+he would die or not. They assented readily enough, knowing how damned
+well worth their while it was. Then he went off for a surgeon--didn't
+dare telephone--went straight for a young fellow named Ballast he
+happened to know, and asked him if he would probe for a bullet and call
+it appendicitis, for a thousand pounds. Apparently there was no time
+wasted in argument, for he returned in half an hour with his man. The
+surgeon probed for the bullet, but without success. Then he bandaged
+Brathland, had him carried up to Raglin's room, and sent for a nurse
+that he could trust.
+
+"We all regathered in the smoking-room, shut the waiters in the
+dining-room, and talked the matter over. By this time I was more
+hideously sober than I ever had been in my life. What they thought of me
+I neither knew nor cared, and it is doubtful if they knew themselves;
+their one thought was to keep the matter from getting out and dragging
+the Club into a scandal; and of course Raglin was equally keen on
+sheltering the family, whether Brathland lived or died. Anyhow, I fancy
+they would have stood by me, for if we have no other virtue we do stand
+by each other.
+
+"Practically the only question was the amount to be paid in blackmail,
+for every trace of the affair had been removed; even the smell of
+antiseptics and ether had gone. We finally called the waiters in and
+offered them four hundred each for their silence, or in the case of
+Brathland's death--the surgeon held out hopes--a thousand. They coolly
+replied they would take a thousand apiece before noon on the following
+day, and ten thousand each in case of death. We--or rather Raglin and
+one or two others--jawed for an hour; but the wretches never yielded an
+inch. They had us on the hip and were not likely to be put off by any
+amount of eloquence. Of course we caved in and God knows what amount of
+future blackmail the Club is in for. Then there was the thousand for the
+surgeon, and the nurse would expect a thousand more. Of course I made
+myself responsible for the entire amount. Raglin insisted for a time
+upon going halves--blood may be blood, but he had despised Bratty as
+much as I ever did--but of course I would not hear of it.
+
+"The next afternoon the surgeon probed again, and Brathland died under
+the ether. The wound after probing looked sufficiently like an ordinary
+incision to deceive any one. Raglin and Harold Lorcutt--who, of course,
+was told the truth--naturally had the body sealed up in lead before
+taking it north. The old duke and the women of the family are in a fair
+way to know nothing."
+
+He paused abruptly and lifted his eyes once more to Gwynne's, bursting
+into a laugh that sounded like the crackling of fire under dry leaves.
+
+"Lovely story, ain't it?"
+
+But Gwynne made no reply. His mind, released, was working abnormally,
+and his face was as livid as his cousin's had been.
+
+Zeal rose. The narrative had excited him out of his apathy and physical
+exhaustion, the confession shaken the rigidity from his mind. He planted
+himself on the hearth-rug with an air that approached nonchalance. His
+thin clever face had a burning spot on either cheek, his sunken eyes
+were no longer haunted, but brilliant and staring; his thin high nose
+and fine hands twitched slightly, as if his nerves were enjoying a too
+sudden release.
+
+"Heavenly sensation--to be a murderer. What beastly names things have
+and how we are obsessed by them! The word rings in my brain night and
+day--I haven't slept three hours since it happened, and I never had the
+remotest hope that he would live. It's the second time in my life I've
+been up against a cold ugly fact that stands by itself in a region where
+rhetoric doesn't enter. I believe I could tolerate the situation if I'd
+done it in cold blood, if I'd thought it out, determined to gratify my
+hatred of the man; if, in short, the deed had been the offspring of my
+intelligence, for which I have always had a considerable respect. But to
+have been under the control of a Thing, like any navvy, to be a criminal
+without the consent of my will--
+
+"I don't know that that fact alone would make life insupportable. But
+there are other and sufficient reasons. I shall never get the hideous
+sight of Brathland as he doubled up, and his horrid gurgling shriek, out
+of my mind this side of the grave. And I am practically cleaned out. You
+know how much I have left of my mother's property! It barely covers
+what I paid out to-day. There isn't a penny for the girls. They will be
+dependent on Strathland--as I should be if I lived; a position for which
+I have as little relish as for that of a murderer on the loose. And
+should I ever be really safe? If this stinking quartet takes it into its
+head to levy annual blackmail, where is the money coming from? I won't
+have the others let in while I'm alive. If it did come to that--and of
+course it would--I'd get out anyhow, so I may as well go now and save
+myself further horrors. Besides, with all our precautions, we may have
+overlooked some significant detail, there may have been an eavesdropper,
+the undertakers may have had their suspicions--for all I know I may be
+arrested to-morrow--well, Jack, what would you do in my place?"
+
+Gwynne shook himself and stood up. "I don't know. I have been feeling as
+if I had killed Bratty myself. But I cannot imagine myself committing
+suicide--talk about ugly words! In the first place I don't think that
+one crime is any reason for committing another, and in the second--"
+
+"It is cowardly! You don't suppose that old standby slipped my mind, do
+you? Well, I am a coward. There you have my dispassionate opinion of
+myself. I don't see myself in the prisoner's dock, in the graceful act
+of dangling from the end of a rope; or, if the judge was inclined to
+have pity on the family, of dying in a prison hospital. Even if I
+trumped up the necessary fortitude I should be a blacker villain than I
+am to bring disgrace upon my five poor girls and the woman that has
+promised to marry me, to say nothing of Vicky and yourself. Nor, on the
+other hand, do I see myself skulking in some hole abroad with the hue
+and cry after me. I have just as little appetite for the rôle of the
+haunted man in comparative security. Well, what would you do yourself?"
+
+Gwynne shuddered. His own eyes were hunted. "How, in God's name, can any
+man tell what he would do until he is in the same hole? I should like to
+think that I would speak out and take the consequences. There is little
+danger of your swinging, and as for imprisonment--one way or another
+you've got to answer for your crime, and it seems to me that the honest
+thing is to accept the penalty of the law you live under."
+
+"Well, it doesn't to me," said Zeal, coolly, and lighting another
+cigarette. "I asked the question merely out of curiosity, as the
+workings of your mind always interest me. But I have quite made up my
+own mind. The only reason I hesitated a moment--to be exact, it was half
+a day--was on your account. Of course I know what my death will mean to
+you."
+
+"It was for that reason I was almost coward enough not to remonstrate."
+Gwynne scratched a match several times before he succeeded in getting a
+light. "Nevertheless, I meant it."
+
+"Don't doubt it. And I am sorry--it is about the only regret I shall
+take with me, that and some remorse on account of the girls. I suppose
+Strathland will throw them a bone each--"
+
+"I will look out for them. But you are not bent on this horror!" he
+burst out. Wild plans of drugging his cousin, of locking him up, chased
+through his mind, and at the same time he was sick with the certainty of
+his own impotence. He knew his cousin, and he had the sensation that an
+illuminated scroll of fate dangled before his eyes.
+
+Zeal nodded. His excitement, his fears, had left him. He felt something
+of the swagger in calm peculiar to the condemned in their final hour,
+that last great rally of the nerves to feed the fires of courage. He
+finished his cigarette and flung himself on the sofa.
+
+"Wake me at twenty to seven, will you?" he asked. "I have ordered the
+trap."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+The young Marquess of Strathland and Zeal sat alone in the smoking-room
+at Capheaton--the guests, with the exception of Flora Thangue and Isabel
+Otis had departed six days ago--sunk in a melancholy so profound that
+his brain was mercifully inactive: if the history of the past week was
+dully insistent the future was not.
+
+He had witnessed the descent of his grandfather and cousin into the
+vault of the chapel at Strathland Abbey two days before, and after the
+necessary interviews with stewards and family solicitors had returned
+this afternoon to Capheaton with his mother. Lady Victoria, even her
+dauntless soul sick with grief and horrors, had gone to bed at once, and
+after a funereal dinner, where he had made no response whatever to the
+feeble efforts of the girls to illuminate the darkness in which he
+moved, had gone to the smoking-room alone, wishing to think and plan,
+yet grateful that he could not.
+
+He had known nothing of the weakness of his grandfather's heart, and the
+old gentleman, as ruddy and debonair as ever, had just come in from the
+coverts when he arrived at the Abbey a few hours after Zeal's departure
+from Capheaton. Always vain of his health and appearance since his
+complete recovery, now many years ago, Lord Strathland had turned a
+haughty back upon the one physician that had dared to warn him; not even
+his valet was permitted to suspect that he had been forced to pay to
+Time any debt beyond bleaching hair and an occasional twinge of gout.
+The care he had taken of himself in his delicate youth had given him a
+finer constitution than he would have been likely to enjoy had he been
+able to go the wild way of many of his family; and it was his familiar
+boast that he intended to live until ninety.
+
+Elton's visit roused no curiosity in his complacent breast, for the
+favorite seldom announced his coming, and it was quite in order that he
+should run down for congratulations, and delight his affectionate if
+disapproving relative with personal details of the great fight. He had
+come with the intention of being the one to break the news of his
+cousin's death to his grandfather, should it be necessary; but he
+permitted himself to hope that Zeal would rise above his type. He had
+driven him to the station himself, dispensing with the groom as well,
+and pleaded with him to wait at least a month; to consider the matter
+more coolly and carefully than had hitherto been possible; begged him to
+return to Capheaton; offered to travel with him if he preferred to leave
+England. Whatever might threaten in the future there could be no
+immediate danger of arrest, for if the shot had carried beyond the
+private rooms of the Club there would have been evidence of the fact at
+once, and if the undertakers had suspected the truth and delayed giving
+information, their purpose was blackmail and could be dealt with.
+
+And while he argued and pleaded he wondered, as he had during the hours
+he watched beside his cousin sleeping, if, in spite of certain
+principles which he had believed to be immutable, he could have found
+any other solution himself. Honor has many arbitrary inflections, and
+Zeal's act, being wholly abominable, there must seem, in his code, to be
+no place for him among men. To walk among them unscathed, punished only
+by a conscience that time would inevitably dull, and the loss of a small
+fortune that his promised wife would more than replace, while some
+passionate creature without powerful friends or money for blackmail went
+to the noose, was an outrage abroad in the secret regions of the spirit
+even if it made no assault upon public standards. He deserved
+extinction, one way or another, and it would be almost as great an
+outrage were he to cover his family with his own disgrace. Certain men
+might, after such a lesson, live on to devote their lives to repentance
+and beneficent works, but not Zeal; and Gwynne had no great respect for
+a character made over after some terrifying explosion among its baser
+parts. And the question would always remain if the highest honor would
+not have commanded confession.
+
+He made a deliberate effort to put himself in Zeal's place, and after
+several failures accomplished the feat. He was willing to believe that
+his first impulse would have been to destroy himself, not so much
+through fear as through a blind sense of atonement, for when he
+endeavored to argue that the crime belonged to the law and the public,
+he swore at himself for a prig. Either way was suicide, and if the more
+deliberate might damn a man's soul, no doubt he deserved nothing less,
+and at least he had done his duty by his family and his class. Gwynne
+had in the base of his character a puritanical stratum by no means mined
+as yet, but with too many outcroppings to have been overlooked. But the
+very strength it gave him served to confuse the simplicity of the
+religious instinct; and duty, like the code of honor, endures many
+interpretations in complex minds. He was quite sure that ultimately he
+would have decided with his cold intelligence; and he was equally sure
+that if he had doggedly determined to conquer life and be conquered by
+nothing, that the best part of his mental existence would have gone into
+the grave with his ideals.
+
+Although there was still some confusion in his mind, he kept it out of
+his words, and as he drove home from the station he was sanguine enough
+to hope that he had at least dissuaded Zeal from precipitancy; for his
+cousin, flippant, cynical, appeared to be quite his usual self, and as
+he nodded from the window of the train bore little resemblance to the
+demoralized wretch of the night.
+
+Nevertheless, he hastened to his grandfather, for he knew how little the
+mood of the moment may presage that of an hour hence; although he was
+reasonably sure that if Zeal lived until the following morning it would
+be some time before he brought himself to the sticking-point again. He
+announced to his mother and his guests that it was his duty to spend
+twenty-four hours with his grandfather, promising to return in time for
+two hours' shooting on the morrow.
+
+He took for granted that Zeal had gone to London. What then was his
+foreboding horror when Lord Strathland, as they sat alone at
+luncheon--the unmarried aunts were visiting--remarked with acerbity:
+
+"Zeal arrived on the train before yours--went straight to his room,
+giving orders he was not to be called until dinner--has not honored me
+with so much as an intimation that he was in the house--Where are you
+going?"
+
+Gwynne had half risen. He sat down hastily.
+
+"I was afraid he might be ill," he replied, coolly. "But doubtless he
+merely had a bad night and wants sleep."
+
+In a flash he had understood. It was like Zeal's cynicism to die as
+close to the family vault as possible.
+
+No meal had ever seemed as long as that last luncheon with his
+grandfather, who promptly dismissed the subject of his detested heir and
+asked a hundred questions about the campaign. A fierce sense of
+protecting the two men he loved best enabled Gwynne to answer as
+collectedly as if he had not been possessed with the sickening idea that
+the very bones had gone out of him. When luncheon was over he
+accompanied his grandfather to the library, then after smoking a third
+of a cigar, left him to his nap, frankly stating that he thought he had
+better look up Zeal, who had been rather seedy of late; he would risk
+being unwelcome.
+
+He walked slowly up the stair and along the corridor to his cousin's
+suite; he was in no hurry to reach it, but neither could he wait for the
+possible discovery of the servants at the dinner-hour.
+
+He knocked at the door of the sitting-room. There was no answer. He
+turned the handle. The door was locked. Then he pounded and called. He
+was about to fling himself against the door when he heard a quick step
+in the corridor, and before he could retreat Lord Strathland was beside
+him. There was no defect in the old gentleman's eyesight nor in his
+perceptions. Zeal's abrupt arrival without servant or luggage, and his
+more than usual rudeness, had charged him with vague suspicions as well
+as annoyance. When Gwynne, in spite of his self-control, had turned
+livid upon hearing that Zeal was in the Abbey, and had risen as if to
+fly to his rescue, a dark if undefined foreboding had entered his
+grandfather's mind. But Lord Strathland respected the reserve of his
+guests, no matter how nearly related, and, dismissing the subject, had
+forgotten his apprehension until Gwynne revived it by his untimely
+pilgrimage. Then Lord Strathland thought the time had come to hear the
+truth.
+
+"Well?" he demanded, sharply. "What is it? What's up? Why doesn't Zeal
+open? I saw him in Piccadilly on Saturday and he stared at me as if he
+had never seen me before. I thought at the moment it was some of his
+damned impertinence, but concluded that he had something on his mind. He
+looked more dead than alive."
+
+Gwynne's back was to the light, and he controlled his voice, although
+his heart was thumping. "Well, he has been, poor chap--awfully seedy--I
+am really worried. He may have anticipated a final hemorrhage, and
+crawled home to die." He cherished the hope that Zeal had been at pains
+to procure an untraceable drug.
+
+"Ah! Well--I hope that is it if the poor fellow is dead. He looked as if
+he had more than ill-health on his mind. I thought he had pulled up, but
+no doubt he went to pieces over some wretched woman again. Come, let us
+get in. I don't want the servants to know anything of this at present."
+
+They threw themselves against the door. The old gentleman was heavy and
+Gwynne sound and wiry in spite of his delicate appearance. The door was
+stout but its hinges were old, and after several attempts they drove it
+in. Lord Strathland's face was pale and he was panting, but he led the
+way rapidly through the sitting-room into the bedroom.
+
+Zeal had undressed, extended himself on the bed, and covered his body
+with an eider-down quilt. Lord Strathland jerked it off, and both saw
+what they had expected to see, for a faint odor of burnt powder lingered
+in the rooms.
+
+Lord Strathland's face was ghastly, almost blue. He had anticipated
+death, not with the imagination of the young, but dully, through the
+atrophied faculties of his age, and the shock could hardly have been
+greater had he found his grandson without warning.
+
+"What does this mean?" he demanded, thickly. "You know and I will know."
+
+Gwynne took him firmly by the arm and turned him about. "Not here," he
+said. "Come to the library. I will tell you, but I am no more fit to
+talk just now than you are to listen."
+
+His grandfather submitted, and Gwynne dropped his arm and rearranged the
+quilt over his cousin's body. At the same moment Lord Strathland's eyes
+lit on a sealed letter addressed to himself. Before Gwynne could
+interfere he had broken the seal. It ran:
+
+     MY LORD,--I murdered Brathland. In cold blood--saving the fact
+     that I was drunk. My entire private fortune has gone for purposes
+     of blackmail. Even that might not have saved me eventually from the
+     hangman, we have grown so damned democratic. All things considered,
+     I am sure you will agree that it is quite proper I should make the
+     exit of a gentleman while there is yet time. Jack will give you
+     further particulars, should you care to listen to them. ZEAL."
+
+He too had known nothing of the condition of his grandfather's heart,
+and it had amused him to plan a last shock to the perennial optimism
+and complacency of the person he disliked most on earth. The smile was
+still on his frozen lips that expressed the amused anticipation of his
+brain. Death, to do him justice, he had met with none of the cowardice
+he had vaunted, and consistently with his arid cynical soul.
+
+"Don't read it! Don't!" Gwynne had exclaimed, in agony, and forgetting
+the awful figure on the bed in his alarm at the sight of his
+grandfather's face. "If you must know the truth let me tell it in my own
+way."
+
+But Lord Strathland read, and fell at his feet like a bundle of old
+clothes.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Gwynne wondered if he should ever shake off the pall-like memories of
+the past week: the testimony before the coroner, in which every word had
+to be weighed as carefully as if life instead of the honor of the
+worthless dead were at stake, the reporters from the less dignified of
+the British newspapers, and the American correspondents, two of whom
+dodged the vigilance of the servants, entered the Abbey by a window, and
+took snap shots of the lower rooms and of the coffins in the
+death-chamber; the painful scenes with the women of the family, who had
+descended in a body; the wearisome interview with the family solicitor,
+in the course of which he had learned that he was heir to little more
+than the entailed properties; which must be let in order to insure an
+income for his three unmarried aunts, Zeal's five girls, and himself;
+the hideous reiteration of "your lordship" by the obsequious servants,
+that reproduced in his mind the slow deep notes of the passing bell,
+tolled in the village for his grandfather and cousin.
+
+A letter from Julia Kaye had fluttered in like a dove of promise, but he
+had never been able to recall anything in the six pages of graceful
+sympathy but her allusions to the dead as "the marquess" and "the earl."
+He told himself angrily that his brain must have weakened to notice a
+solecism at such a time, but it is in moments of abnormal mental strain
+that trifles have their innings; and during the beautiful service in the
+chapel he caught himself wondering if any woman of his own class could
+have made such a slip. Always deaf to gossip, he had no suspicion that
+his Julia had been laughed at more than once for her inability to grasp
+all the unwritten laws of a world which she had entered too late. With
+an ear in which a title lingered like a full voluptuous note of music,
+she was blunt to certain of the democratic canons of modern society.
+Although it gave her the keenest pleasure to address the highest
+bulwarks of the peerage off-handedly as "duke" and "duchess," there had
+been moments of confusion when she had lapsed naturally into "your
+grace." And it would have seemed like a lost opportunity to have alluded
+to a titled foreigner without his "von" or "de," even where there was a
+more positive title to use as often as she pleased. It was the one weak
+spot in a singularly acute and accomplished mind.
+
+But of all this Gwynne knew nothing, and he was dully wondering if a
+great love could be affected by trifles, and if his brain and character
+were of less immutable material than he had believed, his mental vision
+still straying through the insupportable gloom of the past week, when he
+heard a light foot-fall beyond the door. He sprang to his feet, cursing
+his nerves, and was by no means reassured upon seeing the long figure of
+a woman, dressed entirely in white, a candle in her hand, approaching
+him down the dark corridor. He had never given a moment's thought in his
+active life to psychic phenomena, but he was in a state of mind where
+nothing would have surprised him, and he had turned cold to his
+finger-tips when a familiar voice reassured him.
+
+"I am not Lady Macbeth," said Isabel, with a tremor in her own voice, as
+she entered and blew out the candle. "But I felt like her as I braved
+the terrors of all those dark corridors and that staircase in my wild
+desire to talk to a living person. I had arrived at that stage where all
+your ancestors gibbered at the foot of my bed. Flora has been sleeping
+with me, but your mother wanted her to-night, and I am deserted."
+
+"What a lot of babies you are!" Gwynne was delighted to wreak his
+self-contempt on some one else, but glad of the interruption, and
+unexpectedly mellowed by the sight of a pretty woman after the red noses
+and sable plumage of the past week. It was true that he had seen Isabel
+at dinner, but like Flora she had worn a black gown out of respect to
+the family woe, and he hated the sight of black.
+
+Now she wore a gown of soft white wool fastened at the throat and waist
+with a blue ribbon; and even her profile, whose severity he had
+disapproved, having a masculine weakness for pugs, was softened by the
+absence of the coils or braids that commonly framed it: her hair hung in
+one tremendous plait to the heels of her slippers.
+
+"I see that you have no more sleep in you than I have," he said. "Let us
+make a night of it."
+
+It had rained all day and he was suddenly alive to a sense of physical
+discomfort. He rang and ordered a servant to make a fire and bring the
+tea-service.
+
+"How did you know I was here?" he asked Isabel, when they were alone
+again.
+
+"I felt that you were, but I went first to your room and tapped. I was
+quite capable of waking you up. Thank heaven I summoned the courage to
+come down. This is delightful."
+
+The fire was crackling in the grate, the water boiling in the big silver
+kettle. Isabel made his tea almost black, but diluted her own, lest she
+should be left alone before she too was ready for sleep.
+
+"You have had a beastly time these last days," he said, for he was
+genuinely hospitable. "I am sorry you did not happen to come a month
+earlier. Have you seen anything of Hexam? He was going on to Arcot."
+
+"He rode over, or walked over, every day. We should have fallen a prey
+to melancholy without him, although you may believe me when I assure you
+that we thought more of you than we did of ourselves. I am your own
+blood-relation, so I have a right to feel dreadfully sympathetic--may I
+have a cigarette?"
+
+"What a brick you are to smoke! I don't mind being sympathized with for
+a change. I have had to do so much sympathizing with others in the last
+week that I have not had time to pity myself. Even my mother went to
+pieces, for she was fond of Zeal, poor old chap, and her conscience
+scorched her because she was always rather nasty to my grandfather--she
+likes and dislikes tremendously, you know; although to most people she
+is merely indifferent. But when she dislikes--" He blew the ashes from
+the tip of his cigarette with a slight whistling sound.
+
+Flora Thangue had extracted all the particulars of the death and suicide
+from Lady Victoria--who knew nothing, however, of the tragic cause of
+both--and imparted them to Isabel, whose mind, in consequence, was free
+of morbid curiosity. She had also read the newspapers. The speculations
+and veiled hints of the sensational sheets had not interested her, but
+she had pondered deeply over leaders in the more dignified organs, which
+had abounded in comment upon the changed conditions in the meteoric
+career of the young man who was no longer Elton Gwynne, but a peer of
+the realm.
+
+"Do you mind it so awfully much?" she asked, after a short silence
+during which they had both smoked absently and gazed at the fire.
+
+"What?" Gwynne turned the cold surprise of his eyes upon her. "Losing
+two of the four people I cared most for on earth?"
+
+"Of course not. Being suddenly made a peer and having to begin all over.
+You never will be called Elton Gwynne again, and you will have as much
+trouble educating the public up to your new name as if you were emerging
+from obscurity for the first time."
+
+The words, brutally direct, rolled away the last clouds of his lethargy.
+He vividly realized that he had been skulking before the closed shutters
+of his understanding, accepting the new conditions with but the dulled
+surface of his brain.
+
+Now his naked soul stared at her out of his white face and tortured
+eyes, and she looked away. She had not believed that he could be racked
+with feeling of any sort, and it was as if she heard him cry: "Oh, God!
+Oh, God!" although his lips were silent.
+
+But she did not change the subject.
+
+"I suppose you haven't seen the newspapers," she said. "I cut out all
+the editorials and paragraphs I thought would interest you. One of the
+big dailies, I forget which, said that the interruption of your career
+was a greater political tragedy than Parnell's or Lord Randolph
+Churchill's."
+
+"Do they say that?" asked Gwynne, eagerly. "Well, God knows, it is a
+tragedy for me."
+
+"Don't you like being a peer the least little bit? I am too feminine,
+possibly too American, not to see a certain picturesqueness in a title,
+especially in such a pretty one as yours; and there is no doubt that you
+are a more imposing figure in the eyes of the world to-day than you were
+a week ago. Are you really indifferent to that side of it?"
+
+"Am I? One does such a lot of self-posing and self-imposition. There are
+few things in this world that gratify a man's vanity more than being a
+peer of Great Britain, and, no doubt, had I happened to be born without
+what you might call a fighting ambition, and certain abilities, I
+should--barring natural grief--feel that I was one of the favorites of
+destiny--that is to say if I had a commensurate income. The fact that I
+must let the Abbey and Capheaton, and after portioning off all the
+unmarried women of the family, shall have barely enough left to keep up
+my flat in Charles Street, may have something to do with my absence of
+enthusiasm. But--yes--I _am_ sure of myself!" he burst out. "I am the
+most miserable man on earth to-night, and the reason is not that I have
+lost two good friends, but because my career is ruined, broken off in
+the middle."
+
+"You could become a militant Liberal peer."
+
+"Paradoxes don't happen to appeal to me. And the only chance for a
+genuine fighter is the House of Commons. Besides, it is impossible for a
+man to be a peer and remain a true Liberal. Power, and inherited
+influence, and exalted social position have a deadly insinuation. I
+don't believe any man is strong enough to withstand them. There is never
+an hour that a peer is not reminded of his difference from the mass of
+humanity; and human nature is too weak to resist complacency in the
+end--long before the end. And complacency is the premature old age of
+the brain and character. If this tragedy had not occurred, even if my
+grandfather had lived on for fifteen years more, as there was every
+reason to believe he would, I might have gone on that much longer before
+discovering weak points in my character. Now God knows what I shall
+develop."
+
+"Have you made any plans?"
+
+"Plans? I hadn't faced the situation until you spoke."
+
+"You have weak spots like other people, of course. You would be a horrid
+prig if you hadn't. But you surely must know if your Liberalism is
+sincere, ingrained. There is no question that you are a hopeless
+aristocrat in essentials. But so have been certain of America's greatest
+patriots--Washington and Hamilton, for instance. I do not see that it
+matters. One can hold to what seems to me the first principles of
+advanced civilization--that hereditary monarchy is an insult to
+self-respecting and enlightened men--without wishing to associate with
+those that offend grammar and good taste. Education, intellect,
+breeding, would create an aristocracy among anarchists on a desert
+island--supposing any possessed them; and in time it would become as
+intolerant of liberties as if it harked back to the battle of Hastings.
+There is no plant that grows so rapidly in the human garden as
+self-superiority, and it is ridiculous only when watered by nothing more
+excusable than the arbitrary social conditions that exist in the United
+States. I don't see that the qualities you have inherited should
+interfere with your ability to see the justice and rationality of
+self-government."
+
+"They do not!" She seemed to beat his thoughts into their old coherent
+and logical forms. "Whatever may have been the various motives that
+impelled me into the Liberal party in the beginning, there is no
+question that I have become even more extreme and single-minded than I
+have let the world know. Perhaps it is my American blood, although I
+never thought of that before. At all events, had the time been ripe I
+should have devoted all the gift for leadership I now possess, and all
+the power I could build up, to overturning monarchy in this country and
+establishing a republic. There! I never confessed as much to a living
+soul, but I think you have bewitched me, for I never have been less--or
+more--myself!"
+
+"With yourself as President?"
+
+"Sooner or later--the sooner the better. But I waste no time in dreams,
+my fair cousin--although I have something of a tendency that way. It was
+enough that I had a great and useful career before me and might have
+gone into history as the prime factor of the great change."
+
+"Well, that is over," said Isabel, conclusively. "There is only one
+thing left you and that is to come over and be an American."
+
+"What?" He stared, and then laughed. "Ah!"
+
+"You will have all the fighting you want over there. You will have to
+work twenty times harder than you ever did here, for your accent, your
+personality, the thirty years you have lived out of the country you were
+born in, all will be against you. You will have to be naturalized in
+spite of your birth--I happen to know of a similar case in my father's
+practice--and that will take five years. In those five years you will
+encounter all the difficulties that strew the way of the foreigner who
+would gain the confidence of the shrewd American people--they are most
+characteristic in the small towns and farming districts. You will win
+because you were born to win, but you will learn for the first time what
+it is to stand and fight absolutely alone--for if they learn of your
+exalted birth they will but distrust you the more; and you will taste
+the sweets of real success for the first time in your life. In spite of
+your youth and enthusiasm, there is in you a vein of inevitable
+cynicism, for you have had far too much experience of the flatterer and
+the toady. You are too honest not to confess that if you had been born
+John Smith there would have been no editorial comments of any sort upon
+the tragic end of your relatives, and the great world would have taken
+as little notice of your abilities until you had compelled its unwilling
+attention by many more years of hard work. America will take you for
+exactly what you are and no more. But you will have to become more
+American than the Americans; although you may continue to say 'ain't it'
+and 'it's me' and drop your final gs, because those are all the
+hall-marks of the half-educated in the United States, and will rather
+help you than otherwise. Of course you will assume charge of your own
+ranch, for that will not only give you plenty to do, but it will be the
+quickest way of becoming one of the people; and after you have been out
+in all weathers for a year or two, turned a dark brown down to your
+chest, ridden a loping horse on a Mexican saddle, talked politics on
+street corners and in saloons, left your muddy or dusty wagon once a
+week at the Rosewater hitching-rail while you transact business in a
+linen duster, or yellow oil-skin overalls and rubber boots, you will
+feel so American--Californian, to be exact--that the mere memory of this
+formal cut-and-dried Old World will fill you with ennui."
+
+There was a glint of laughter in Gwynne's eyes, but they were widely
+open and very bright.
+
+"I see! You are determined to make a convert of me. You began the night
+of your arrival. I suspect you of having come over on a crusade."
+
+"That was the moment of inspiration--that first night. I won't deny that
+I have thought a great deal about it since--of little else since I read
+those editorials."
+
+He leaned back and regarded the sole of his shoe as if it were a
+familiar. "That is a large order," he said, in a moment. "Colossal!
+There might be worse solutions. And the life of a cow-boy, for a while
+at least--"
+
+"Don't delude yourself. You would not be the least bit of a cow-boy.
+You wouldn't even look picturesque--if you did you might be sorry.
+You would just be a plain northern California rancher. Of course
+you would have all the riding you wanted, but there are no round-ups
+worth speaking of on a ranch the size of Lumalitas. And probably you
+would continue to let sections of it to men that wanted to raise cattle
+or horses on a small scale. You had better devote yourself to the dairy
+and to raising hay and grain, and turn about five hundred acres into a
+chicken-ranch--nothing pays like that."
+
+He threw back his head and laughed as heartily as if death and disaster
+had never been.
+
+"From the English hustings and the greatest parliamentary body the world
+has ever known to chickens and butter in California! From Capheaton to
+Rosewater, oil-skin overalls and a linen 'Duster!' Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!
+But give me a comprehensive idea of the place, in your own inimitable
+unvarnished diction. That will keep the ghosts off, at all events."
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Julia Kaye was one of those women designed by nature for the rôle of a
+Valérie Marneffe, or of that astute Parisian's bourgeoise and more
+romantic daughter, Emma Bovary; but tossed, in the gamble of the fates,
+into a setting of respectable opulence, where her instincts for prey
+were trimmed of their crudities, and the vehemence of her passions
+subdued by the opportunity to gratify all other whims and desires.
+
+Her father, born in the sooty alley of a manufacturing town in the north
+of England, had run away to sea in his boyhood, deserted in the port of
+New York, starved, stolen, peddled, washed dishes in cheap restaurants,
+shovelled snow, tramped to Chicago, starved and peddled and shovelled
+again, finally found a position with a firm of wholesale druggists. He
+attended a night school, proved himself a lad of uncommon sharpness, and
+in less than a year was first packing and then dispensing drugs. Five
+years later he was drawing a large salary, and at the age of thirty he
+had opened a retail drug store of his own.
+
+It was during his earlier period of comparative leisure and peace of
+mind that he began to test the inventive faculty that had pricked him in
+small but significant ways during his boyhood. His first inventions were
+of a minor importance, although they increased his income and were
+permanently remunerative; but when he turned the torch of his genius
+upon the fatal antipathies of vermin, his success was so deservedly
+rewarded that he was a millionaire in less than three years. He returned
+to England, and, avoiding the alley of inglorious memory, courted and
+won the daughter of a manufacturer, his ambition driving him to compel
+social recognition in his native city. It soared no higher, but his
+wife, now no longer one of a large family, but with the income of a
+generous millionaire at her disposal, was open to higher promptings; and
+he to conversion. They moved to London and laid their plans with some
+skill.
+
+But although London can stand a good deal in the cause of resupply and
+novelty, the violence of Mrs. Tippett's accent, and the terrible
+solecisms of a gentleman whose education had begun in a Lancashire alley
+and finished in the business purlieus of Chicago, who had acquired the
+American vice of brag in its acutest form, and who, when in his cups,
+shouted and spat and swore, were more than the most enterprising among
+them had been called upon to endure. The social ambitions of the
+Tippetts were so definitely quenched that the indignant millionaire
+threatened to return to Chicago. But Mrs. Tippett moved him firmly to
+Brighton, where, in the course of time, she toned him down. They made
+their way slowly into society of a sort, and attracted the attention of
+the public. There was no law to prevent them from dining at the
+fashionable hotels, where Paris gowns could not pass unobserved; and
+their turnouts were irreproachable.
+
+Mrs. Tippet, an astute woman, by this time had realized that hers was
+not the destiny of the social star, and she concentrated her hopes and
+ambitions upon her one child, an uncommonly clever little girl. This
+child grew up in a luxury that would have stifled even her precocious
+mind had it not been for the rigid laws of the school-room. Her
+governesses and tutors were selected with a sharp eye to the number of
+titles in their reference-books, but dismissed promptly if they were
+unworthy of their hire. Later, the little Julia was sent to a
+distinguished school near Paris, where, with an eye to her future
+well-being, remarkable in one so young, she divided her affectionate
+affluence among the few whose exalted station made them worth the while
+of a maiden with an indefinite future.
+
+These friends did not prove as useful as she had hoped. At home there
+were her parents to terrify theirs, and although she visited at several
+châteaux, and more than one title was laid at her gilded feet, she made
+up her mind to read her name in Burke.
+
+She took her parents for a tour round the world with a view to polishing
+off their lingering idiosyncrasies, and her chance came in India, where
+she buried them both. They succumbed to cholera, and the kindly wife of
+the viceroy, to whom she had had the forethought to secure a letter,
+sent for her to come to Simla and remain as her guest until she found
+courage and a chaperon for the return to England. Here she met Captain,
+the Honorable Augustus Kaye, heir to an ancient barony, chivalrous,
+impressionable, and hard-up. They were married with the blessings of old
+friends and new, and, to do her full justice, she made him a good wife
+according to her lights. She was quite insanely in love with him at
+first, for he looked like one of Ouida's guardsmen, and his pedigree was
+so long, and so varied with romantic historic episode, that she was
+fully a week committing it to memory.
+
+When he left the army and they had returned to England--via Paris--she
+had the wardrobe and establishment of a princess, the right to dine at
+the Queen's table, and not a relative in London. She was immoderately
+happy, and during the five years of her wedded life she exhausted the
+first strength of her affections, buried her feminine caprice, and
+whatever of impulse youth may have clung to as its right. When Gussy
+Kaye died, the predominant feeling in her bosom was rage at his
+inconsiderateness in leaving the world before his father, and nothing
+behind him but a courtesy prefix which she could not even use on her
+cards.
+
+She opened her soul to searching, and decided that five years of love
+were quite enough for any woman, and that her attentions hereafter
+should be directed towards the highest worldly success obtainable with
+brains, talents, and wealth. To be merely a rich woman in the right set
+did not come within measurable distance of her ambition's apex, and she
+determined to gratify her passionate self-love by becoming a
+personality.
+
+She had long since simulated the repose of the high-born Englishwoman,
+until, like all imitators, she far surpassed her models, and her manners
+were marked not so much by the caste of Vere de Vere as by an almost
+negative stolidity. This at least provided her with an unruffled front
+for trying occasions--others besides the Arcots were insensible of her
+offerings--which in the United States of America would have been
+admiringly characterized as "nerve." This manner became solidified after
+her popular husband's death, and if it was generally referred to as
+"aplomb" or "poise," allowances must be made for the poverty of the
+average vocabulary.
+
+It is not difficult for a clever, handsome, correct, and wealthy woman
+to reach and hold a distinctive position even in London, that world's
+headquarters of individualities. In addition to a judiciously lavish
+hospitality, it is only necessary to personalize intelligently, and this
+Mrs. Kaye did with an industry that would have carried her to greatness
+had she been granted a spark of the divine fire. She cultivated the
+great and the fashionable in art, letters, and the drama, mixed them
+tactfully with her titles, attended the banquets of the ruling class in
+Bohemia attired flatteringly in her best, and founded a society for the
+study of Leonardo da Vinci. She became intimate with several royal
+ladies, who were charmed with her endless power to amuse them and her
+magnificent patronage of their charities; and she formed close relations
+with other dames but a degree less exalted, and generally more
+discriminating. She cultivated a witty habit of speech, the society of
+cabinet ministers, and her _chef_ was a celebrity. Her gowns would have
+been notable in New York, and she was wise enough to avoid eccentricity
+and openly to regard all forms of sensationalism with a haughty disdain.
+
+Her attitude to men was equally well-advised. Detrimentals and
+ineligibles never so much as came up for inspection; she had a
+far-reaching sense of selection and a proper notion of the value of
+time. Therefore, the many that had the run of her luxurious mansion
+contributed personally to her prestige, and she flattered herself that
+her particular band was little less distinguished than the Royal
+Household. And they invariably found her witty, entertaining, or, like
+Madame Récamier, ready to listen "avec seduction." Her knowledge of
+politics was practically unbounded.
+
+In such moments as she happened to be alone with any of her swains, she
+became distractingly personal, inviting, gently repelling, afforded
+dazzling glimpses of possibilities awaiting time and the man: so
+accomplishing the double purpose of agreeably titillating her own depths
+and wearing the halo of a well-behaved Circe. Altogether her success was
+what it always must be when brains and ambition, money and a cold heart
+are allied; but it was small wonder if the head of the daughter of the
+House of Tippett was a trifle turned and certain of her perceptions were
+blunted.
+
+Although ofttimes large with complacency, she by no means lost sight of
+her original purpose to wed a coronet, and if she endured four years of
+widowhood it was merely because she knew that she could afford to wait
+for transcendence. This she had finally run to earth in Lord Brathland,
+imminent heir to a dukedom, and personally more agreeable to her than
+any man in London. That he was notoriously inconstant but added zest to
+the chase, and it was, perhaps, the illusion she at times achieved of a
+certain resemblance to the ladies of his preference that finally
+overcame his intense aversion from respectability. He had offered
+himself to her on the day of his undoing.
+
+This was the woman with whom Elton Gwynne was infatuated at the most
+critical moment of his career. Of her profound aybsses he suspected
+nothing. She reigned in his imagination as the unique woman in whom
+intellect and passion, tenderness and all the social graces united in an
+exquisite harmony. There had been a time when, dazzled by the brilliancy
+of his ascending star, and Brathland being but a name to her, she had
+considered marriage with a man who assuredly would be the next leader of
+a Liberal House, and was no less certain of being prime-minister. She
+was under no delusion that she could one day induce him to accept a
+peerage, but she was reasonably sure that Zeal would not marry again,
+and there were times when the heir looked so ill that she tightened her
+bonds about the heir-presumptive, while assuring him that she was too
+much in love with liberty to think of marriage. Even when Zeal came back
+from Norway or Sorrento looking almost well, she never permitted Gwynne
+to escape, to see so much as a corner of her ego that might disturb the
+image of herself she had created in his mind; and when she met Brathland
+and her senses swam with the subtle scent of strawberry leaves, she saw
+no reason for losing the stimulating society and flattering attentions
+of the brightest star in the political firmament. Therefore, when he was
+ready to hand, in the crushing hour of her riven ambitions, and his own
+of serenest effulgence, she promptly reflected that the distance between
+a marquisate and a dukedom was quickly traversed by a powerful
+statesman. Meanwhile, although Elton Gwynne would no doubt be a hideous
+trial as a husband, his wife's position, supported by a million in the
+funds and another in Chicago, would be one of the most brilliant in
+England. And she too had seen Lord Zeal in Piccadilly on Saturday.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+The sudden elevation of her Jack to a marquisate, beside whose roots,
+gripping the foundations of Britain's aristocracy, and ramifying the
+length and breadth of its society, the lost dukedom was a mere mushroom,
+created for a favorite of the last George, and notorious for its
+_mésalliances_, did not cost Mrs. Kaye a moment's loss of poise. She
+merely wondered that she had ever questioned her star. People that
+disliked her found a subtle suggestion of arrogance in her manner, and
+the slight significant smile on her large firm lips was a trifle more
+stereotyped. Those that she favored with the abundance of her offerings
+remembered afterwards that she had never been so brilliant as during the
+month that followed the announcement of her bethrothal, and attributed
+the fact to the electrified springs of affection.
+
+Gwynne and she had been invited to the same houses for the rest of the
+autumn, but he cancelled his engagements while begging her to fulfil
+hers, as he should be too busy to entertain her were she so sweet as to
+insist upon coming to Capheaton. This she had not the least intention of
+doing, for she not only yearned for the additional tribute due to her,
+but she always avoided long sojourns in Lady Victoria's vicinity,
+knowing her as a woman of caprice, who often dropped people as abruptly
+as she took them up. Susceptible to the charm of novelty, so far Mrs.
+Kaye had wholly pleased her; but the clever Julia gauged the depths of
+her future mother-in-law's credulity and kept her distance. With all her
+reason for self-gratulation, in the depths of her cynical soul she was
+quite aware of her natural inferiority to the women she emulated in all
+but their license. That prerogative, with the wisdom that had marked her
+upward course, she had flagrantly avoided, knowing that the world is
+complacent only to those that fire its snobbishness, never to those that
+fan the flame; and while she bitterly envied these women, she never
+forgot the market value of her own unimpeachable virtue. She could not
+in any case have been the slave of her passions, but her serenity was
+sometimes ruffled as she reflected that, in spite of eminence achieved,
+her caution in this and in other respects branded her in her secret soul
+as second rate.
+
+But if she tactfully did not insist upon flying to Capheaton, she wrote
+such charming letters, happily free of solecisms, that Gwynne wondered
+at his failure to sound the depths of her charm. But he refrained from
+meeting her, and the reason was that he was slowly working towards a
+momentous decision, and wished to arm himself at all points before
+braving her possible disapproval. When he was his cool normal collected
+self again, he gave way to his impatience to see the woman he had every
+reason to believe was deeply in love with him. He telegraphed her a
+peremptory appeal to go up to her house in London, and she was too wise
+to refuse. It was now October and London quite bearable. She telegraphed
+to her servants to strip her house of its summer shroud, and returned
+early on the day of his choice.
+
+It is hardly necessary to state that Mrs. Kaye lived in Park Lane. She
+had cultivated half-tones with a notable success, but to symbolize her
+new estate was a temptation it had not occurred to her to resist.
+Shortly after her return from India she had bought a large house in the
+façade of London, and furnished it with a luxury that satisfied one of
+the deepest cravings of her being, while her admirable sense of balance
+saved her from the peculiar extravagances of the cocotte.
+
+She had seen Lady Victoria's expressive boudoir at Capheaton, and its
+mate in Curzon Street, and relieved the envy they inspired in a caustic
+epigram that happily did not reach the insolent beauty's ear. "These old
+coquettes," she had lisped, with an amused uplift of one eyebrow. "They
+surround themselves with the atmosphere of the demi-monde and forget
+that a wrinkle is as fatal as a chaperon."
+
+The pictures in her own house were as correct as they were costly, and
+she had no boudoir. She invariably received her guests in the
+drawing-room, an immense and unique apartment, with a frieze of dusky
+copies of old masters, all of a size, and all framed in gilt as dim with
+time. From them depended a tapestry of crimson silk brocade of
+uncheckered surface. By a cunning arrangement of furniture the great
+room was broken up into a semblance of smaller ones, each with its group
+of comfortable chairs, its tea-table, or book case, or cabinet of
+bibelots, or open hearth. And all exhaled the inviting atmosphere of
+occupation.
+
+Mrs. Kaye, rested, and more self-possessed than if the hastening lover
+had been the late Lord Brathland, but agreeably stirred nevertheless,
+awaited the new peer in a charming corner before a screen of dull gold,
+the last reviews on a table beside her, the afternoon sun shining in on
+her healthy unworn face. When he entered and advanced impetuously across
+the room she decided that he certainly was a dear, even if he lacked the
+fascination of Brathland and his kind. And his halo was almost visible.
+She therefore yielded enchantingly when he enveloped her, smothered her,
+stormed her lips, and even pulled her hair. She finally got him over to
+the little sofa--she had advanced to meet him--but remained in his arm,
+the very picture of tender voluptuous young womanhood. Indeed, she was
+well pleased, and found her Jack, with that light blazing in his eyes,
+quite handsome, and fascinating in his own boyish imperious
+self-confident way.
+
+It was half an hour before she rang for tea, and then she looked so
+pretty and domestic on the other side of the little table, with its
+delicate and costly service, that Gwynne was obliged to pause and summon
+all his resolution before proceeding to another subject that possessed
+him as fully as herself; but he succeeded, for not even passion could
+turn him from his course; and she gave him his opening.
+
+"Poor Lord Strathland!" she exclaimed, with a tear in her throat. "He
+was always so jolly and amusing, quite the most cheerful person I ever
+met. And before your cousin became--lost his health--we were great
+friends. Indeed he never quite forgot me. But it was for you I was so
+horribly cut up. I cried for two nights."
+
+"Did you? But I was positive you did not make those tears in your first
+letter with your hair-brush." He laughed like a happy school-boy, while
+she protested with a roughish expression that made her look like a very
+young girl.
+
+"It need not prevent our immediate marriage," he said. "What do you say
+to the last of this month?"
+
+"I could get ready. Only girls, who never have any clothes, poor things,
+get trousseaux in these days. I had set my heart upon spending the
+honeymoon at the Abbey, but it would be rather indecent yet awhile;
+don't you think so?"
+
+He had not an atom of tact and rushed upon his doom. "We shall have to
+cut the Abbey," he said, firmly. "I start for California three weeks
+from to-day."
+
+"Indeed?" she said, stiffly. "I should have thought you would have
+consulted me. Not but that I shall be enchanted to visit California,
+but--well, you _are_ rather lordly, you know."
+
+"My dear girl, I have been too harassed to consider the amenities. And
+when a man is rearranging his whole life he must isolate himself or run
+the risk of clouds in his judgment."
+
+He paused. She disguised her mortification and answered, kindly: "I can
+understand that in this sudden demand for readjustment you have had many
+bad moments. It was far too soon for you to go up to the Peers'. But
+with your marvellous energies, your genius--there is no other word for
+it--you can soon astonish the world anew with a patent for
+defossilization. At all events the Peers' will enter upon a new life as
+a sort of mastodon cave swept out and illuminated by the most energetic
+and aspiring of knights-errant."
+
+Gwynne laughed dryly. "The rôle does not appeal to me; nor any other in
+the same setting. I have done a month of the hardest thinking of my
+life. Everything that went before looks like child's play. I have
+arrived at the definite conclusion that my career in England has come
+to a full stop, and I have made up my mind to create another--out of
+whole cloth--in the United States."
+
+She stared at him, her face not yet unset, but her eyes expanding with
+incredulous apprehension. "You mean to desert England?" she asked,
+quietly.
+
+"Forever. Absolutely. It is all or nothing. I cannot become an American
+citizen until five years after entering the country, and I do not wish
+to lose any valuable time. Having made up my mind, I have ceased to
+wonder if I shall like it. That is now beside the question. I shall drop
+my title as a matter of course, and hope that I shall pass undiscovered
+as John Gwynne. In short, I shall begin life all over again--as if I
+were a criminal in disguise instead of the sport of circumstances. I
+have ceased to regret the inevitable and begun to be stimulated by the
+thought of a struggle to which all that I have had here was a mere game,
+and I am sure that you, with your brains and energy, will enjoy the
+fight as much as I. I am not going into the wilderness. We shall be only
+two hours from San Francisco, which I am told is the only city in
+America that in the least suggests Europe; it should be very attractive.
+On the ranch you shall have every comfort and luxury. You must be sick
+of London, anyhow. You have conquered everything here."
+
+He paused and regarded her in some trepidation. In spite of his
+self-confidence he had had his moments of doubt. And although he had
+anticipated tears and remonstrance, he was unprepared for the more
+subtle weapon of amusement, flickering through absolute calm. He
+suddenly wished that she were younger. He had never given a thought to
+her age before, but he remembered that she had lived for two years
+longer than himself, and it made him feel even less than thirty.
+
+"My dear boy," she said, wonderingly, "I never heard anything so
+romantic and impossible. Of course it is the American cousin with whom
+you have been shut up all these weeks that has been putting such
+preposterous ideas into your head. I always said that nature just missed
+making you a poet. But if you wish to work out your manifest destiny--to
+be immortalized in history--you will remind yourself that England is the
+one place on earth where an Anglo-Saxon can cut a really great figure.
+Not only because he has the proper background of traditions, but because
+he has an audience trained to recognize a man's greatness during his
+lifetime. If you go in for those unspeakable American politics you will
+never be given credit for anything higher than your medium; in other
+words, should you develop into a statesman on American lines you would
+never be recognized for anything but a successful politician. Even if
+you survived in their hurly-burly of history, you would be judged by
+contemporary standards--infused with a certain contempt because you were
+not American-born."
+
+"I have thought it all out. The obstacles to greatness, even more than
+to success, have whetted my appetite for the struggle. I must fight!
+fight! fight! I must exercise my powers of usefulness to some good end,
+and now, now, when I am young and ardent. I should go mad sitting round
+doing nothing. I have no temper for attacking the passive resistance of
+inertia. I want to fight out in the open. If I fail I will take my
+beating like a man. But I have not the least intention of failing. I am
+acutely aware of the powers within me, and I can use them anywhere."
+
+"Then why not in the Upper House?" she asked, quickly.
+
+"For the reasons I have given you, and because I should fear the results
+on my character. You know what it means to be a peer of Great Britain.
+Flattery without accomplishment is demoralizing--would be to me, at all
+events. It is wine to me when I am achieving, but it would drug me in
+idleness. Are you so wedded to London?"
+
+"London is the _raison d'être_ of life. Has it occurred to you," she
+asked, gently, "that I might refuse to go to America?"
+
+"I was afraid the idea would be something of a shock, but I was sure you
+would see the matter in my light."
+
+"It is not wanting in power! But it seems that I am. I have never
+aspired to the rôle of Amelia Sedley. I have, in fact, rather a
+pronounced individuality; and yet you have taken upon yourself to
+dispose of my future as if I were a slip of eighteen--delighted at the
+prospect of a husband."
+
+"Indeed you are wrong!" he cried, distressed to have bruised so beloved
+an ego. "But, I repeat, it was a question I was forced to decide alone.
+Nor would it have been fair to ask you to assume any part of so great a
+responsibility. Do you suppose I did not think of that? Do you suppose I
+have ever lost sight of your happiness? Let me think for both and you
+shall not regret it."
+
+She could have smiled outright at this evidence of the ingenuousness of
+man, but her breast was raging with a fury of disappointment and
+consternation. She kept her eyes down lest they should betray her. But
+suddenly she had an inspiration. She controlled herself with a masterly
+effort, flooded her eyes with tenderness, raised them, and said,
+softly:
+
+"I do love London, love it with what I called a passion before I--before
+we met. And I cannot believe that this extraordinary resolution of yours
+has had time to mature. Promise me at least that you will not apply for
+letters of citizenship for at least a year after your arrival--"
+
+"I shall apply the day after I arrive in Rosewater." He steeled himself,
+for he had had his experience of woman's wiles; and his faith in
+masculine supremacy as a habit did not waver. "I only regret that the
+time of probation must be so long. I am on fire to throw myself into the
+arena--however, there will be opportunities to make myself known and
+felt. I have decided to study law meanwhile--and the law, it seems, is a
+career in itself in America."
+
+And then he watched her eyes, fascinated. They slowly hardened, until,
+with the sun slanting into them, they looked like bronze. She was too
+intent upon studying his own to hide them, and upon arriving at a final
+conclusion. She reached it in a moment, for to her habit of rapid
+thought and her understanding of the workings of the masculine mind she
+owed no little of her supremacy among the clever women of London.
+
+"I see that your decision is irrevocable," she said. "You are yourself;
+no one could make or unmake you, and God forbid that I should try.
+But--and I forbear to lead up to it artistically--I dissever myself from
+your chariot wheels. I am not afraid of being crushed, for no doubt you
+would always remember to be polite, if not considerate. I am not sure
+that you would even permit me to become unrecognizable with dust. But I
+am no longer plastic. I am thirty-two, and I am as much I as you are
+you. I shall watch you from afar with great interest, and I sincerely
+hope, for both your sakes, that Miss Otis will succeed in marrying you.
+I cannot fancy anything more suitable."
+
+He had turned white, but he looked at her steadily. He felt as if the
+round globe were slipping from under him; and vaguely wondered if she
+had gone about alluding to him as "the marquess." Then he sprang to his
+feet, lifted her forcibly from her chair, deposited her on the sofa, and
+taking her in his arms defied her to dismiss him, to live without him.
+As the body, so yielding before, declined even to become rigid in
+resistance, he poured out such a flood of pleading that, believing
+passion had conquered reason, she flung her arms about his neck and
+offered to marry him on the morrow if he would promise to remain in
+England. But there was a crystal quality in Gwynne's intellect that no
+passion could obscure. He merely renewed his pleadings; and then she
+slipped out of his embrace and rose to her feet.
+
+"We are wasting time," she said. "I always drive before dinner, and I
+cannot go out in a tea-gown." She paused a moment to summon from her
+resources the words that would humiliate him most and slake the desire
+for vengeance that shrieked within her. She had never hated any one so
+bitterly before, not even in her youth, when snubs were frequent. For
+the third time she watched a coronet slip through her strong determined
+impotent fingers. She could forgive her husband and Brathland their
+untimely deaths, but for this young man, passionately in love with her,
+who tossed the dazzling prize aside as an actor might a "property
+crown," she felt such a rage of hatred that for almost a moment she
+thought of giving her inherited self the exquisite satisfaction of
+scratching his eyes out. But it was too late in her day to be wholly
+natural, and, indeed, she preferred the weapons the world and her
+ambitions had given her. As he rose and stared at her doubtingly, she
+said, without a high or a sharp note, in her clear lisping voice:
+
+"I think it wise to put an end to all this by telling you that I was
+engaged to Lord Brathland when he died. I was more in love with him than
+I ever shall be with any one again. You caught me in the violence of the
+rebound, for I was confused with grief, and distraction was welcome: you
+are always sufficiently amusing. I have not the least idea it would ever
+have come off, for, to tell you the truth, my friend, you are too
+hopelessly the _enfant gaté_ for a woman who is neither young enough nor
+old enough to crave youth on any terms. As a husband, I fear, not to put
+too fine a point on it, you would be a bore. At the risk of being
+thought a snob--to which I am quite indifferent--I will add that as
+plain John Gwynne you seem to have so shrunk in size as to have become
+as insignificant as most men are, no doubt, when you catch a glimpse of
+their unmanufactured side. However"--with the air of a great lady
+dismissing an object of patronage--"I wish you good-fortune, and
+sincerely hope that we shall one day read of John Gwynne, senator, and
+recall for a moment the brilliant Elton Gwynne so long forgotten in this
+busy London of ours."
+
+During quite half of her discourse Gwynne had felt his soul writhe under
+a rain of hot metal, gibber towards some abyss where it could hide its
+humiliation and its scars for ever. His brain seemed vacant and his very
+nostrils turned white. But like many clever people goaded to words by a
+furious sense of failure, she overshot her mark, and before she
+finished his pride had made a terrified rebound and taken complete
+possession of him. He still felt stripped, lashed, a presumptuous youth
+before a scornful woman in the ripeness of her maturity, but it was
+imperative for his future self-respect that he should reassert his
+manhood and retire in good order. He let her finish, and then, as she
+stood with a still impatience, he lifted his eyes and drew himself up.
+His face was devoid of expression. His eyes did not even glitter; he
+might have been listening with voluntary politeness to the speech of
+majesty laying a corner-stone.
+
+"You are quite right," he said. "You have given me the drubbing I
+deserve, and I am grateful to you. It was the only thing I needed to
+snap my last tie with England and brace me for the struggle in America.
+It emboldens me to ask another favor--that you will regard what I have
+told you of my plans as confidential. I shall give out that I am going
+to travel for a time. As I believe I mentioned, I do not wish to be
+recognized in the United States; and that by the time I have made my new
+name my old one will be forgotten, is one of the sure points upon which
+I have reckoned. Have I your promise?"
+
+"My oath!" she said, flippantly; and although she was not generous
+enough to admire, and still felt as if the world itself were a corpse,
+every inherited instinct in her united in a visible respect for a poise
+that was a gift of the centuries, not a deftly manufactured mask.
+
+She rang the bell and extended her hand. Gwynne shook it politely; and a
+moment later was walking down Park Lane in that singular state of
+elation that in mercurial natures succeeds one of the brutal blows of
+life, when all the forces of the spirit have leaped to the rescue.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+1905
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+For Isabel Otis the _genius loci_ had a more powerful and enduring
+magnetism than any man or woman she had ever known. She had felt the
+consolation of it, although without analysis, in her lonely girlhood by
+the great Rosewater Marsh; definitely in Tyrol, Perugia, Toledo, in
+Munich where she had lingered too long, in a hundred tiny high-perched
+and low-set villages of Austria and Italy of which the tourist had never
+heard, at Konigsee and Pragserwildsee; and deeply in England. But no
+place had ever called her, disturbed her, excited her into furious
+criticism, mockingly maintained its hold upon the very roots of her
+being, like the city of her birth. Her childhood's memories of it
+clustered about the old house on Russian Hill where the most cordial
+neighbors were goats; the beach by the Cliff House on a stormy day; long
+rides up and down the almost perpendicular hills of the city in the
+swift cable cars; and certain candy stores on Polk and Kearney streets.
+At long intervals there was a children's party at one of the fine houses
+on the ledge below her home; or out in the Western Addition, where an
+always migratory people were rivalling the splendors of Nob Hill--as
+that craggy height had long since humbled South Park and Rincon Hill
+into their abundant dust. She also cherished many charming memories of
+her mother, with dinner or ball-gown so prudently looped under her
+rain-coat that it gave her slender figure the proportions of the
+old-fashioned hoop-skirt; always laughing as she kissed the little girls
+good-night before braving the two flights of steps to the carriage at
+the foot of the cliff. Two years before her death Mrs. Otis was glad to
+bury her mortification and misery in Rosewater. After that Isabel had
+never so much as a glimpse of San Francisco until she was sixteen, when
+her father was induced to visit his adopted daughter and take his
+youngest martyr with him. Isabel had planned for this visit throughout
+six long months, and arrived in the city of her heart radiant in a frock
+every breadth of which was new--heretofore her wardrobe had risen like
+an apologetic ph[oe]nix from the moth-eaten remnants of her mother's old
+finery--and such uncompromising trust in the benevolence of fate as a
+girl rarely knows twice in a lifetime. There were three days of
+enchanted prowling about the old house on Russian Hill, where, as the
+tenant, in the rocking-chair by the bedroom window, did not invite her
+to enter, she consoled herself with the views and the memories; and of
+an even more normal delight in the shopping streets and gay restaurants
+of a real city. After that the visit existed in her mind with the
+confused outlines of a nightmare.
+
+Her adopted sister's peevish complaints at being obliged to remain in
+the foggy windy city all summer, the crying baby, the whirlwinds of dust
+and shivering nights, she might have dismissed as unworthy the spirit of
+sixteen, and dreamed herself happy. But Mr. Otis, who had been sober for
+seven months, selected this occasion for a fall which resounded from
+Market Street to Telegraph Hill, and rejuvenated the long line of
+saloons that had graced Montgomery Street since the days when "Jim" Otis
+had been one of the wildest spirits in the wildest city on earth. That
+was "back in the Sixties," when his lapses were as far apart as they
+were unrivalled in consumption, span, and pyrotechny. By the late
+Eighties he had disappeared into the north, and the careless city knew
+him no more.
+
+During the Seventies and early Eighties there had been a period of
+reform, incident upon his marriage with a pretty and high-spirited girl,
+and one of the city's estimable attempts to clean out its political
+stables. His brilliant and desperate encounter with Boss Buckley was
+historic, but its failure, and the indifference of the gay contented
+majority to the city's underworld, soured him and struck a fatal blow at
+the never vital roots of personal ambition. When he began to water the
+roots at his old haunts, the finish of his career and of his splendid
+inheritance passed into the region of problems that Time solves so
+easily. When she solved his problem he was glad to subside into one of
+his cottages in Rosewater. Here he reformed and collapsed, reformed and
+collapsed; but, with fewer temptations, and a remnant of his legal
+brilliancy, he supported his family after a fashion; and fed his pride
+to the day of his death with the fact that his wife, unlike the
+forgotten half of many another comet, had never been obliged to do her
+own work.
+
+During that last visit to San Francisco, Isabel, guided by her amused
+brother-in-law, routed him out of no less than fourteen saloons, and
+spent night after night walking the streets with him to conquer the
+restlessness that otherwise would find a prolonged surcease beyond her
+influence. When she finally steered him back to Rosewater he fell into
+an exuberant fit of repentance, during which he was so charming and so
+legal that Isabel forgave him, laid by her bitterness and
+mortification, and hoped. But although no repentance could maintain a
+grip upon that slippery flabby substance which he still called his
+character, at least he never went to San Francisco again. Occasionally
+he permitted Isabel to spend a week with her sister, while he pledged
+himself to good behavior during her absence; and kept his word. He
+always kept his word; and he took care to withhold it except when he was
+sure of himself. Isabel decided that as everything was relative it was
+better to have a dipsomaniac as her life portion than a drinking-machine
+of more steady and industrious habits.
+
+Finally his patient clients left him, he sold the cottage in
+Rosewater--all that remained of his inheritance--to pay its mortgages,
+and moved with Isabel out to the ranch-house, preserved with a few
+hundred acres by the more canny and less thirsty Hiram. When the elder
+brother died James would have returned forthwith to the sources of
+supply, but by this time Isabel had the upper hand, and although he
+disappeared for days at a time, he was always forced to return to the
+ranch when the small monthly sum allowed him by the terms of his
+brother's will was exhausted; no one in Rosewater would give him credit.
+As he invariably left a note behind him promising to "be quiet about
+it," Isabel ceased to haunt his footsteps. His appetite was far beyond
+his control or hers, and as he kept his word and spent his time in the
+back parlor of a saloon, and had no longer the digestive capacity to
+achieve his former distinction, she merely sat at home and waited.
+Fortunately he did not live long enough after his brother hopelessly to
+embitter his daughter's youth. Liberty came to her when she had ceased
+to hate with young intolerance and begun to pity; and before too much
+longing for freedom, and its insidious suggestions, had poisoned her
+nature. Indeed, when she had seen her father buried with much pomp in
+the cemetery behind Rosewater, and returned to the permanent peace of
+her home, she missed her cares and responsibilities, so long and
+systematically borne, and mourned, not as a child for its parent, but as
+an adoptive mother suddenly bereft. Nevertheless, she was bent upon
+enjoying her freedom to the utmost and rebelled against the obduracy of
+her uncle's executors, who disapproved of her pilgrimage to Europe
+unattended by a matron of Rosewater. Hiram Otis, who trusted no man, had
+appointed four executors; and had not Judge Leslie been one of them the
+other three might have delayed the settling of the estate beyond the
+legal term. But at the end of a year Isabel was absolute mistress of her
+property and herself.
+
+One of the happiest moments of her life was when she sat before her
+lawyer's table in San Francisco and watched the pen strokes that
+cancelled the mortgage of the house on Russian Hill. The house and its
+acre, encumbered by the inevitable mortgage, had been all that remained
+of Mrs. Otis's personal inheritance when she left San Francisco for
+ever. James Otis had promised his dying wife that he would never sell
+the place, which she bequeathed to Isabel; and when his last client left
+him and he could no longer pay the interest, Hiram, who was morosely
+devoted to his niece, met the yearly obligation: he would not redeem the
+mortgage unless he were permitted to buy the property. But to this James
+Otis, clinging to his solitary virtue, would not consent; and Hiram,
+although he intended to leave all he possessed to Isabel, could not
+bring himself to part with any sum in four figures.
+
+Before leaving for Europe Isabel had leased the house to a young
+newspaper man whose wife had an income of her own, and not only an
+artistic appreciation of the view, but a more practical esteem for a
+site so far removed from the "all-night life" below. Immediately after
+Isabel's return Mrs. Glait had asked permission to sublet the house,
+remarking cynically that time had inured her to the desultory phenomena
+of journalism, but never to the stable prospect of her husband's death
+struggle with foot-pads, or her children falling down the cliff of this
+wild bit of nature in the heart of a city.
+
+Isabel took back her old home with another spasm of delight, and vowed
+that not until she was a pauper would she part with it again. Five or
+six days of every week must be spent on the chicken-ranch, which had
+grown to such proportions that she was now one of the persons that
+counted in her flourishing community. But in time she would live more
+and more in her lofty home, become a notable figure in San Francisco,
+drawing with both hands from its varied best; and meanwhile, once a
+week, she could sit for hours and look down upon the city, which, even
+in rainy weather, was a wild and beautiful sight from her eyrie.
+
+Mrs. Otis had been a niece of the Mrs. Montgomery who had reigned on
+Rincon Hill twenty years ago, and a cousin of the Helena Belmont who had
+been the greatest belle the city had seen since that earlier time when
+Nina Randolph, Guadalupe Hathaway, Mrs. Hunt McLane, and "The Three
+Macs" had made history for themselves in spite of the momentous era of
+which they were so unheeding a part. Mary Belmont would have been no
+mean heiress herself had not her father been too adventurous a spirit
+on the stock-market during the Belcher Bonanza excitement of 1872. For a
+time it looked as if Gordon Belmont would be a far richer man than his
+famous brother, Colonel Jack, always contented with a modest million;
+but in ten mad days there was a decline of sixty million dollars in the
+aggregate value of stocks on the San Francisco market; and six months
+later, when he died of sheer exhaustion, he had nothing to leave his
+only child but the house on Russian Hill, and a small income generously
+supplemented by her uncle and guardian until her marriage. She was
+thirteen at her father's death, and as her mother had preceded him, she
+spent the following five years in a New York boarding-school. Then she
+returned home, and, after a year's gayety, married James Otis. Colonel
+Belmont surrendered her small property. Skilfully "turned over" it would
+have multiplied indefinitely. But James Otis and his wife knew far more
+about spending money than making it, and to-day nothing was left to
+commemorate the meteoric and eminently typical career of Gordon Belmont
+but the ancient structure whose nucleus he had taken over just after his
+marriage as a "bad debt." His wife, too, had insisted upon living in it,
+for reasons subsequently understood by her daughter and Mrs. Glait, and
+complacently enlarged it with all the hideous improvements of the day.
+
+That part of Russian Hill conspicuous from the city is little more than
+a great cliff rising abruptly from the extreme north end of the graded
+ledge on the summit of Nob Hill, which, in its turn, almost overhangs
+the steep and populous ascent from the valley. In "early days" none but
+the goat could cling to those rough hills that all but stood on end, and
+the brush was so thick and the titles so uncertain that their future
+distinction was undreamed of. Then came a determined period of grading
+which embraced the heights in due course, titles were settled, and many
+that foresaw the ultimate possession of that great valley now known as
+"South of Market Street"--but which in its haughty youth embraced South
+Park and Rincon Hill--by the tenacious sons of Erin and Germania, moved
+to the uplands while lots could still be bought for a song. The Jack
+Belmonts, the Yorbas, the Polks, and others of the first aristocracy to
+follow the Spanish, made Nob Hill fashionable before a new class of
+millionaires sprang up in a night, and indulged its fresh young fancy
+with monstrous wooden structures holding a large portion of converted
+capital. Mrs. Yorba, who led society in the Eighties, when it was as
+exclusive as a small German principality, was disposed to snub all
+parvenus. But the young people made their way. When Mary Belmont
+returned from school, and, chaperoned by a widowed relative, gave at
+least a dance a month until she married, and many a one after, the heirs
+of all grades thought nothing of leaving their carriages at the foot of
+the cliff to climb the precarious stair; groping blindly more often than
+not through the rains of winter or the fogs of summer. To-day Isabel's
+neighbors wisely made no such demands upon the pampered, but in that
+incomparably older time the young people would have climbed to the stars
+for the sake of the lavish hospitality of the gay indulgent young
+hostess; and if some of the youths rolled down the hill when the lights
+went out, that was hardly a matter to excite indignant comment in a city
+where drink was so admittedly the curse that it was philosophically
+accepted with such other standing evils as fogs, trade-winds,
+small-pox, mud-holes, dust-storms, and unmentionable politics.
+
+When Mary Belmont became the wife of James Otis, one of the greatest
+ranchers in California--in which State, unlike other fervent patriots of
+that era, he had been born--and a brilliant figure in one of the most
+notable legal groups of any time, she long held her position as a social
+favorite. But children came and died too quickly for her health and
+fragile beauty, and the storms of life beset her. She continued to live
+in her inconvenient eyrie, not only in the waning hope of ultimately
+separating her husband from the convivial beings on the lower plain, but
+because she felt an intense pride in owning a home two generations old
+in that young community. She was determined that it should remain in the
+family and be occupied by at least one of her children. So the ugly
+brown wooden structure with its bay-windows, its central tower, its
+Mansard-roof--added for the servants--had, contrary to all tradition,
+actually joined three generations of San Franciscans in one unbroken
+chain. It owed its proud position, no doubt, to the fact that when the
+Otis fortunes collapsed there was but one child left to inherit it and
+to be supported meanwhile.
+
+Isabel intended in time to give the house a new façade, and had gloated
+over such of the Burnham plans as had been reproduced by the city press.
+These lovely plans were designed to make the city as classic and
+imposing as Nature had dreamed of when she piled up that rugged
+amphitheatre out of chaos; and Isabel had long since resolved that, if
+she could not be the first to plant a bit of ancient Athens upon a brown
+and ragged bluff, the high tide of her fortunes should coincide with the
+awakening of the city to the sense of its architectural guilt. She
+banished much of the tasteless furniture of the old time, and refitted
+with a stately comfort that expressed one side of her nature. She too
+clung to traditions--and to the long mirrors in their tarnished gilt
+frames, with the little shelf below; the multitude of family portraits
+engraved on wood, and surrounded by a wide white margin and tiny gilt
+frame. That they might strike no discordant note, she made use of a
+lesson learned in London, where she had spent a month with Lady
+Victoria, and had the walls and wood of the living-room painted white,
+covered the windows and furniture with a plain stuff of a dark but
+neutral blue. In the dining-room were a few paintings of her New England
+and Spanish ancestors, and she disturbed them only to replace the
+wall-paper with leather; at the same time sending the black walnut
+furniture to the auction-room.
+
+Being the one practical member of her family, and the product of an
+earthquake country, she repaired the uncertain foundations of her house
+before removing the walls that had cut up the lower floor into the
+conventional number of rooms and hallways. The house, of no great depth,
+was so close to the hill-side, still rising above it, that more than one
+enterprising cook had made use of the natural ledges before the windows.
+Besides the kitchen department and pantries, there were now but three
+rooms on the lower floor: the dining-room, a small reception-room in the
+tower, and an immense living-room, broken by the white pillars that
+supported the storys above.
+
+Mrs. Belmont and Mrs. Otis, in the time-honored American fashion, had
+made a day nest of their bedroom, but Isabel was far too modern for that
+lingering provincialism, and lived luxuriously in the big room
+down-stairs when she was not in the porch. She had reserved her mother's
+old alcoved bedroom with its mahogany four-poster for her own use, but
+the rest of the second-story rooms she had fitted for her English
+cousins, that they too might have headquarters in town.
+
+Neither appeared to be in any haste to visit the city of their
+ancestors. Gwynne had left England in October, now nearly a year ago,
+but, having discovered from his solicitor that he could apply for
+letters of citizenship as late as the end of the third year after
+landing, had announced to Isabel his intention to travel slowly about
+the country "before settling down in its remotest part, which, from all
+accounts, was sufficiently unlike the rest to provincialize his point of
+view unless he saw something first of the East, South, and Middle West."
+He had written to her several times, but only on business. She had
+returned in January, after a round of visits in England, and had put his
+house in order at once. The lease had expired, and Mr. Colton had
+engaged a temporary superintendent, but Gwynne sent Isabel his power of
+attorney and she was temporarily in possession. She wrote to him from
+time to time that all was well, or to send him an account of her
+expenditures; but felt no promptings towards a friendly correspondence
+with one who showed as little disposition to encourage it.
+
+From Victoria she had not heard directly since she bade her good-bye in
+Curzon Street, but Flora Thangue had written that her ladyship's superb
+health had (to her ill-concealed fury) given way, following an attack of
+influenza, and she would not be able to leave her doctor for an
+indefinite time. A few months later she wrote that "dear Vicky" was
+outwardly herself again, but in reality very nervous, the result, no
+doubt, of her illness, and of the prolonged stress of business. However,
+she had finally succeeded in letting the Abbey and Capheaton to
+advantage, and it was on the cards that she would reach California
+before the end of the year. Isabel hoped that, unfed by her son's
+exacting presence the maternal fires burned low; she had a clearly
+defined intention to be a factor in the new career of Elton Gwynne, and
+no desire for the capricious interference of his mother.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+As Isabel stood in her little porch that brilliant September morning,
+she dismissed her occasional regret that she had not remained in England
+for a London season. Not only had she put the time to better use on her
+ranch, but no doubt her agent would have relet this house, and delayed
+the fulfilment of one of those dreams upon which she unconsciously fed
+her soul. The shrieking trade-winds and the dense white fogs were
+hibernating somewhere out in the Pacific. All the city, in the great
+irregular amphitheatre below, was sharply outlined in the yellow light;
+Isabel wondered if the sun renewed its stores from the golden veins to
+north and south. On the wide broken ledge just beneath her pinnacle was
+the concrete evidence of an architectural orgy to be seen nowhere else
+on earth: wooden mansions with the pure outlines of the Renaissance; a
+Gothic palace with bow-windows, also of wood; a big brown-stone house in
+the style of New York; piles of shingles and stones; here and there a
+touch of Romanesque, later French, and Italian; the majority of those
+plutocratic and perishable masses, of no style in particular, unless it
+were that of Mansard combined with the criminalities of him who invented
+the bow-window and the irrelevant tower. On the slopes were a few old
+houses in gardens, some with cottage roofs, others square, brown, dusty,
+melancholy. But the majority were of the "house in a row" type,
+radiating in all directions from the "boarding-house blocks" on the
+lower slopes. Then, down on the plain, came the big compact masses of
+stone and concrete, brick and steel, devoted to business and housing of
+the itinerant. The lofty domes of the City Hall and a newspaper
+building, a few church spires and the great white-stone hotel on a crest
+not far from Isabel's, were the sole pretenders to architectural beauty
+within her ken.
+
+Far away she could make out the Mission Church, once called after St.
+Francis of Assisi, now named Dolores for the vanished lake. It was the
+last reminder of the work of the Spanish fathers, and looked
+indescribably ancient in the midst of that busy and densely populated
+district. At night Isabel watched the lights of the electric cars
+flashing about that old monument of an almost forgotten conquest--like
+the angry haunted eyes of the padres that had labored in the wilderness
+for naught. But although this old church and the Presidio, which still
+retained its quadrangle and a few of the original adobe houses, appealed
+deeply to Isabel on account of the romance of Rezánov and Concha
+Argüello that distinguished her family, her more personal sympathies
+were with the streets just below her hill-top, packed as they were with
+memories, tragic, humorous, gay, pathetic, of a people that had made the
+city great.
+
+Even the dilapidated houses, with their sixty steps or more toppling
+above the cut that had widened and levelled the street, had been very
+hospitable in their time, and Isabel knew that her mother and
+grandmother had toiled up those perpendicular flights in satin slippers
+and ballooning skirts on many a rainy night. Mrs. Otis had told her
+little girls stories of all those old houses, fine and simple, more
+particularly of the fortunate mansions on Nob Hill's brief level. Isabel
+longed for the time when she should enter them and pick up the threads
+dropped from her mother's nerveless fingers. The Belmont house was
+closed, the still restless Helena occupying a palace in Rome at the
+moment. The Polk house had been sold to the energetic son of one of the
+plodding old money-makers that had fought shy of stock gambling and
+railroads. Nicolas Hofer belonged to the latest type the prolific city
+had bred: the son of a millionaire, but a keen man of business, whom the
+wildness of the city had never tempted, highly educated, honorable, and
+an ardent reformer.
+
+Magdaléna Yorba--Mrs. Trennahan--like most of her old neighbors, still
+dwelt in the ancestral mansion, although she had given it a stucco
+façade and shaved off the bow-windows. In each, Isabel was sure of
+welcome, and she longed particularly to wander through the old Polk
+house, where one of her Spanish great-aunts had reigned for a time. Like
+all San Franciscans of family, she took more pride in her young-old city
+than a Roman in his Rome. Its forty-two square miles had seen so many
+changes, its story was so romantic and unique, that its age was not to
+be measured by the standards of Time. Her grandfather had stood on this
+hill after his Sunday climb and looked over and down a ragged wilderness
+to the city bursting out of its shell--a wretched huddle of shacks and
+tents by the water's edge. The bay no doubt was crowded with ships from
+every corner of the world, many of them deserted, unmanned, forced to
+lie idle until the return of the hungry disappointed gold-seekers. That
+was less than sixty years ago. In the first ten years of its rapid
+growth the city had burned seven times, millions blazing out in an hour.
+
+To-day San Francisco was replete not only with life but with wealth,
+talents, and every variety of enterprise; it was as full of fads and
+cults and artistic groups as London itself; it had sent forth authors,
+artists, mummers, singers--and millionaires by the score. Many of the
+art treasures of the world had been brought here and hidden from the
+vulgar in those awful impermanent "palatial mansions." Some of the
+finest libraries of the world were here. It had its bibliomaniacs, its
+collectors, its precieux. And yet what a lonely city it was, stranded on
+the edge of the still half-vacant western section of the United States,
+with all the Pacific before it. Save for the rim of towns across the
+bay, which were little more than a part of itself, it watched the Orient
+alone, and was far too gay and careless, too self-absorbed and insolent,
+to keep its jaws on the alert. Tact it was much too high-handed to
+cultivate. It welcomed the hungry Oriental for so long as he was useful,
+and when he outstayed his welcome, incontinently kicked him out. San
+Francisco's intensity of independence as well as of civic pride was due
+in part no doubt to the isolation which compelled it to be self-centred,
+and to its unconscious dislike of the elder breeds beyond the Rocky
+Mountains; but largely to the old adventurous reckless gambling spirit
+and the habit of sleeping on its pistol. These first causes had
+developed individuality to such proportions that the hair of a
+Californian bristled when he was alluded to as a "Westerner," or even as
+a mere American.
+
+And with time the patriotism of the San Franciscan waxed rather than
+waned. It was no longer the fashion to take one's money to New York,
+merely because of the higher cost of living that made a millionaire
+"feel his oats," and of the allure of the older and more difficult
+society to his women. San Franciscans still fled from the winds and fogs
+of summer to their beloved Europe, and country-house life gained ground
+very slowly, but deserters were few; and of late the rich men had shown
+their faith not only by investing the greater part of their capital in
+the city--until "improved real estate" was become a current phrase--but
+the best of them, including Hofer and the mayor who had preceded the
+present figurehead and his omnivorous Boss, were engaged in a desperate
+battle with the highly organized gang of political ruffians that owned
+and pillaged and dishonored the city in a manner with which nothing in
+the history of municipal corruption could compare save the old Tweed
+Ring of New York. For at least ten years previous to 1901, San Francisco
+had enjoyed a period of not only decent but honorable government. There
+was no "graft" in high places, the city was out of debt, it held up its
+head with the cleanest municipal governments in the land. But, as ever,
+the disinterested grew somnolent with content, and gave no heed to the
+burrowing of the hungry recuperated and wiser rats in that prolific
+underworld whence never a high-minded citizen emerges. The few that saw
+and warned were disregarded; and circumstances, proper in themselves,
+swelled the ranks of the petty politicians with thousands of greedy and
+insurgent laborers. San Francisco awoke one morning to find herself in
+the drag-net of a machine to which old Boss Buckley and the illustrious
+Tammany doffed their hats. But the majority still gave little heed, too
+content in their various blessings, and the gay light spirit the
+climate gave them, to foresee the time when their pleasant city would be
+utterly debauched, and life among arrogant thieves, prostitutes, and
+socialists have become as impracticable as it already was in Chinatown
+or on Barbary Coast.
+
+A group of the more thoughtful and patriotic citizens, assisted by the
+one militant editor the city boasted, were doing all that was humanly
+possible to prevent the re-election of the mayor, who had already
+represented the worst element twice, and to break the power of the Boss.
+Isabel in her lonely ranch house, when her chickens were asleep,
+followed the fight with a passionate interest, and was tempted to come
+forth from her seclusion and meet at least the representative men of her
+city. But she was not yet ready to take up her own share of the burden,
+and was far too modest to imagine that she could be useful until she had
+become a person of importance in San Francisco. Nevertheless, as she
+looked down to-day on the sharp outlines of the city under the hard blue
+sky, almost glittering in their golden bath, she was impatient to become
+a part of its life, or at least to discuss its interests with some one.
+Rosewater, which of late years had become virtuous to excess, and almost
+blind and deaf with local pride, took no interest in San Francisco
+whatever, except as a market for eggs. When driven to the wall it
+confessed the superiority of the metropolis in the matter of shops and
+theatres; but its politics it invariably dismissed with adjectives more
+forcible than elegant.
+
+It was at this point in Isabel's meditations that her eye happened to
+rove along the plank walk to the rickety old flight of steps that led
+from Taylor Street up Russian Hill. There was something vaguely
+familiar about a tall, thin, well-groomed, but by no means graceful,
+figure rapidly ascending the steps. In a moment her mind lost its
+tensity of projection and she was almost flying down her own long stair.
+
+Gwynne broke into a run as he saw her. She wondered if he intended to
+kiss her, but he merely shook her hand for a full minute.
+
+"I never in my life was so glad to see anybody!" he exclaimed, with the
+joyousness of a school-boy come home for his first holiday. "It was such
+luck to hear that you were in San Francisco."
+
+"But why didn't you telegraph? In a way I am disappointed--glad as I am
+to see you. I intended to meet you at Oakland and take you directly up
+to Lumalitas, where everything was to have been in gala array. And how
+did you know I was in town?"
+
+"While I was taking my lonely breakfast this morning--I arrived late
+yesterday afternoon--and glancing over one of your newspapers, my eye
+caught your name. I learned that 'the charming and beautiful young
+mistress of the old Belmont House on Russian Hill, who had excited so
+much interest of late, had come down as usual for Sunday."
+
+"No?" Isabel flushed for the first time within Gwynne's knowledge of
+her. "That is the very only time I have been the subject of a newspaper
+paragraph--outside of Rosewater, which doesn't count--and I am as
+delighted--as I have no doubt you were the first time you saw your name
+in print!" she added, defiantly.
+
+There was nothing cynical in Gwynne's smile. "I understand," he said;
+and then, as he ceased to smile, the light died out of his face, and
+Isabel noticed that it was older and thinner. It had lost more than a
+little of its aloof serenity, and his crest was visibly lowered. But on
+the whole he was improved, for he had cut his hair, his lilting locks
+having been too conspicuous a feature in the cartoons of _Punch_ and
+_Vanity Fair_. But there was something subtly forlorn about him, and
+Isabel's maternal promptings, once too active, but long moribund,
+suddenly awakened.
+
+They mounted the steep flight of steps to the house slowly, exchanging
+ejaculatory remarks. When they reached the porch she motioned to a long
+wicker chair.
+
+"It is only ten," she said. "Luncheon will not be ready until one, and
+my California hospitality demands that your entertainment shall begin at
+once. Make yourself comfortable while I brew you a cup of Spanish
+chocolate. I have actually one of the molinillos of our ancestors."
+
+When she returned with the frothy and fragrant beverage he was standing
+with his hands in his pockets staring down at the city. He turned
+swiftly at the sound of her step on the wood, but something was rushing
+to the back of his eyes, and once more Isabel had the singular
+impression of hearing his spirit cry: "Oh God! Oh God!" But his lips
+were hard pressed and his eyes became suddenly contemptuous, then
+smiling.
+
+"This is jolly of you," he said. "I have a weakness for
+chocolate--cultivated during the winter I was in Munich with my tutor. I
+never cared for beer--don't like anything bitter. Do you remember the
+Café Luitpoldt, and all those little tables in the garden of the
+Residenz--"
+
+He paused and narrowed his eyes. Isabel had turned white. "I must hear
+that story," he said, quietly. "You are my only friend out here. In a
+way you have altered the whole course of my life. I shall always have a
+sense of relationship with you quite different from anything I have ever
+known. So there must be perfect confidence and openness between us. I
+told you frankly the unpleasant finish of my episode with Mrs. Kaye. I
+hate mystery. I saw you go white once before, when I tried to make you
+talk about Munich; and the romantic Flora was full of surmises.
+Confession is good for the soul, anyhow. I want the atmosphere
+cleared--not out of curiosity--I don't care tuppence about other
+people's affairs--but I don't know you! I must know you! I am always
+conscious of a wall about you--and in this damned God-forsaken country I
+must have one friend!" he burst out.
+
+Isabel had quite recovered herself. "I will tell you everything, but not
+now. We must be in the mood. This moment I am interested in nothing but
+yourself. Sit down. What has happened to you in all these months?
+Something not altogether pleasant. Have you had any adventures? Have you
+been recognized?"
+
+He had finished his chocolate, and he clasped his hands behind his head
+and leaned back in his chair, giving the railing a slight kick.
+
+"No," he said, grimly, "I have not been recognized. At first I avoided
+all the big hotels, lest I might be; then growing more secure, and
+disliking the inferior ones, I became quite reckless. The second time I
+visited New York I went to the Waldorf-Astoria, and the third time to
+the St. Regis. In the smoking-rooms of all the hotels and trains I
+talked with any one whom I found disposed to conversation. Not that I
+was; but I was perambulating the country for an object and determined to
+accomplish it. As you had told me to improve my manners I did my best,
+and have reason to believe that, if not effusive, I am almost cynically
+approachable. In New York I was at times repelled with a haughty stare
+or a negative frigidity which no duke I know could compass. But in
+Boston they were more friendly, and farther West so expansive that I was
+frequently invited to houses before I had presented my modest card. Very
+often I had long talks with newspaper men, and made no attempt to
+conceal the fact that I was a Britisher. Once or twice that fact was
+commented on, but taken as a matter of course. There are a good many
+Britishers in the United States. My identity was never suspected. I
+never saw a newspaper paragraph about myself."
+
+He laughed, but looked at her between lids so narrowed that she could
+not see the expression of his eyes. She nodded, smiling; and she could
+make her smile very sweet and encouraging.
+
+"The time came when I felt like a shipwrecked mariner. Stranded!
+Abandoned! Forgotten! Finally--take all the circumstances into
+consideration and make due allowance--I felt that I would risk
+everything to see my name in print once more. I arrived in Chicago late
+one night. There had been a break-down that doubled the time of the
+beastly trip. I went to its first hotel and registered myself as Elton
+Gwynne. The night clerk, with the haughty indifference of the stage
+duke, or the New-Yorker who fancies himself, called a bell-boy and
+turned his back on me. I remained in Chicago three days. Not a reporter
+sent up his card. Not a line appeared in a newspaper. It was the most
+chastening experience of my life. No doubt it did me good. My ego has
+actually felt lighter." He smiled. But he added in a moment: "It left a
+scar, nevertheless."
+
+"Never mind," said Isabel, consolingly. "All that will read delightfully
+in your biography. What on this difficult globe is not difficult, first,
+last, and always? The only thing for you to do is to snap your fingers
+at everything, as we do out here, and see nothing in the future but
+success. How do you like the land of your birth?"
+
+"I hate it!" he said intensely. "Washington is a crude unwieldy village.
+New York is like one of those nightmares a certain class of writers
+project and label 'Earth in the Year 2000.' Chicago is the entrails of
+the universe. The small interior towns and villages of the Eastern
+States are open mausoleums for people so old and so dried up that their
+end will be not death but desiccation. There is nothing picturesque in
+those old towns, for they were dead before they were civilized. Some of
+the cities and villages of the South are certainly attractive to look at
+and have a background of a sort, but they are as lifeless as their
+negroes. The cities of the West are hives, and when you have seen one
+you have seen all. Its smaller communities are horrors, pure and simple.
+Much of the country is magnificent. The Adirondacks, the Hudson River,
+Yellowstone, those great prairies and deserts, atone for a good deal.
+The last three weeks I have spent in southern California. It seemed to
+me--below Santa Barbara, at least--little more than a reclaimed
+desert--and with nothing of the wonderful atmospheric effects of the
+great interior deserts; nothing but dirt and a hideous low shrub caked
+with prehistoric dust. Precious little of it reclaimed at that. I am
+glad that ranch is in good hands. I never want to see the place again.
+That eternally grinning sky! That dead atmosphere! It blunted my nerves
+for the time, but the reaction is all the worse. However--" He stood up
+and leaned over the railing. "I did not expect the earthly paradise. I
+am not going to treat you to a continued diatribe--"
+
+"But you must like California--love it!" cried Isabel, in alarm. "Of
+course you have hated everything--natural enough--but not California! It
+is your State, your home, your future. You must begin by liking it, at
+least."
+
+"Very well, mentor, I shall do my best. One might certainly indulge in
+an illusion or two up here. I thought as I walked--climbed--through the
+city, guided a part of the way by a messenger-boy, who ejaculated at
+intervals, 'Say, mister!' and described Nob Hill as the 'millionaire
+bunch,' that I had seldom seen so many ugly buildings together; but from
+this perch of yours it looks quite beautiful. Still I long for the
+country. Can we go to the ranch this afternoon?"
+
+"Why not?" Isabel stifled a sigh. She had intended to ride all round the
+city on the electric cars; but she felt as if she had an adopted
+homesick child on her hands, and he was a responsibility that she had
+deliberately assumed. Moreover, she felt deeply sorry for him.
+
+"You can express all your luggage but a portmanteau, and we will go in
+my launch. It is down on the bay side of the Hill. We must start at four
+to catch the tide. You have no idea how cosey and pretty your
+ranch-house looks, and I have sent out my uncle's law--and
+farm--library. I have arranged everything with Judge Leslie, and you
+enter his office at once. He is the first lawyer of northern
+California. I wrote you that it would be impossible to conceal the truth
+from him, as his firm has done all the legal business of the estate for
+the last thirty years, and he knows your mother has only one son. But he
+is the more interested. No one else knows but Mr. Colton and his son
+Tom--your Rosewater bankers and agents. Your secret is safe with them.
+Gwynne is not an uncommon name in California, although some of its
+letters have been dropped. Lumalitas has been leased for so many years
+that your name has ceased to be associated with it in the public mind,
+and the deeds are so deeply buried in the archives of St. Peter--the
+county-seat--that the most curious would hardly attempt to unearth them.
+Of course most townspeople all through the State take in a San Francisco
+paper, and your name has doubtless appeared now and again in the
+telegrams. But they are not the sort that take the least interest in the
+career of a young Englishman--those that do, at all events, are few and
+far between. Judge Leslie is deeply interested; so is Tom Colton, the
+only son of the bank, so to speak. He is a Democrat, by-the-way--but I
+don't suppose you have made up your mind--"
+
+"I have quite made up my mind. In practice one party seems about as bad
+as the other, but at least the Democratic ideals more nearly correspond
+with my own. Besides, the Democratic party is the under dog, and that
+always appeals to me, to say nothing of the fact that it is weak in
+strong men, that all its salient leaders are what you so elegantly term
+'blatherskites.' If I go in for American politics, I must fight so hard
+that I cannot help becoming absorbed body and soul; with only the
+present and the future--no past. Let us take a walk over these hills."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+"Do you run this thing yourself?" asked Gwynne, as they boarded the
+launch, which was at anchor by the end of the sea wall at the foot of
+Russian Hill.
+
+"Rather. How do you expect me to make a fortune in this paradise of the
+labor-union if I don't do things myself? I have a hard time being
+economical, and I suspect that where I save once I spend twice, but I
+try not to think about it. Theories make life so palatable! This old
+launch belonged to Uncle Hiram. I had it repaired, and take my eggs to
+the hatcheries and my produce to Rosewater three times a week. There I
+deal direct with the San Francisco buyers--and in this launch; it serves
+me very well as an office. Then I come down in it every week. The
+railroad is exorbitant, and the boats are too slow. It may be that
+gasolene and repairs cost more than a railroad fare once a week, but I
+have abstained from making a comparison. The trip is so delightful!"
+
+The launch was about twenty feet long with a small cabin and a fresh
+coat of brown paint. It shot lightly over the smooth water, and Gwynne
+sat on top of the cabin above Isabel swinging his long legs, and looked
+with some envy at the hundreds of yachts that skimmed the bay. They
+appeared and vanished about the corners of the Islands and promontories
+like birds swooping after prey. The Islands and all the mainland had
+lost their greens long since, but the burnt grasses shone in the sun
+like hammered gold; were tan and brown and fawn on the shadowed eastern
+slopes. The chain of mountains beyond the towns across the bay and
+facing San Francisco glittered like bronze, but the lofty volcanic peak
+of Monte Diablo, farther still, was a pale and misty blue. North of the
+Golden Gate and high above the mountains of Marin County, Mount
+Tamalpais was so intense and hard a blue, and was cut against the
+fleckless sky with so sharp an outline, that it produced in Gwynne a
+vague sense of unreality and uneasiness. The Marconi poles on the summit
+looked like the masts of a mammoth ship, and every window of The Tavern,
+close by them, shone like a plate of brass.
+
+They steered for the southern point of Angel Island, and Gwynne looked
+about him with much interest. The mainland of the great northern cove
+and the eastern side of the Islands were thick with trees: oaks,
+buckeye, willows, madroño. And almost as thickly set, although sometimes
+half hidden, were the villas: light and airy of architecture, gayly
+painted, with broad verandas and overhanging vines. At the foot of
+Belvedere and the little town of Tiburon were house-boats, in which
+people lived for eight months of the year.
+
+And everywhere, people, people, people. They swarmed in the yachts, on
+the house-boats, on the driveways, the verandas. Gwynne twisted about
+and looked at San Francisco. The palaces were on the heights and in the
+Western Addition--out towards the Presidio and the Golden Gate; but
+hundreds of tiny dwellings clung to the precipitous sides of Telegraph
+Hill and Russian Hill as if their foundations were talons. And each had
+its bit of garden, or its balcony full of flowers. Telegraph Hill, the
+great bluff where the city turned almost at a right angle from north to
+south, was given over largely to Mexicans and Italians, and was
+uncommonly vivid. And the streets were full of people. The city had
+turned itself inside out. Everywhere were bright gowns and parasols,
+whizzing cars packed to the rails.
+
+And the wealthy class by no means monopolized the bay with their yachts
+and luxurious launches. There were fishing-smacks filled with whole
+families of Italians and Chinese; in fact every tongue floated over the
+water in the course of a brilliant Sunday afternoon. And at the docks
+there were steamers, sailing vessels, from all the ports of the world, a
+forest of spars and funnels; odd little Italian craft and even a Chinese
+junk. A man-of-war was coming down from Mare Island. Gwynne had seen a
+big Australian liner flying the Union Jack enter the Golden Gate as the
+launch rounded Angel Island. It made him homesick, and he was not sorry
+to lose sight of it.
+
+They passed steamboats crowded with holiday seekers coming home from a
+day's outing in Sausalito, San Rafael, Mill Valley, sporting parks; the
+majority noisy and vulgar, but a mass of color. It was a scene of
+surpassing variety, life, gayety, prosperity, importance. Gwynne, as the
+light electrical breeze began to prick his veins, experienced a
+sensation of pride in the country where his lines were cast, in those
+ancestors of his that had memorably helped to develop its vast
+resources: a tremendous concession, for he had barely acknowledged these
+ancestors before. A slight meed of resignation descended upon him. He
+smiled down upon Isabel, who was frowning at the sun and sighing for
+her forgotten veil; she had a tender regard for her complexion. Gwynne
+thought her very pretty in her smart crash suit and sailor hat, not
+nearly so severe and fateful in appearance as when she had adjusted
+herself to the formalities of Capheaton; although he remembered that he
+had heard much discussion of her beauty and had not been unappreciative
+himself. But he liked her far better here in California. Her eyes were
+more alert, her voice was less monotonous; and those little black moles
+looked particularly fascinating on the ivory white of her skin, fairly
+luminous in the sunlight. He fancied they would drift into matrimony;
+and that she appeared to be as indifferent and passionless as she was
+handsome and clever but the better suited his present mood. His love for
+Mrs. Kaye had died a sudden and violent death, but it had left him
+callous, somewhat contemptuous of the charms of woman. He doubted if his
+heart would ever beat high in his breast again, but in the course of
+events he should need a partner, and Isabel seemed to him fashioned to
+be the helpmate of a busy and ambitious statesman.
+
+But all he said was: "You have a little freckle on your nose. I saw it
+come."
+
+Isabel shrugged her shoulders and sniffed. He lost interest in her for
+the moment, for he distrusted a woman without vanity. He knew girls too
+little to suspect that the most business-like were often smitten with a
+desire to pose; and were as likely to forget the pose of to-day in the
+naturalness of to-morrow. Secretly, Isabel was grievously afflicted at
+the thought of the freckle, and did not speak for some time, recalling
+the antidotes of her early girlhood, when she and Anabel Leslie
+experimented in secret with various beauty recipes cut from the
+newspapers. She smiled as she recalled that Anabel, who had pretty
+golden hair, had washed it with lye to acquire a reddish tinge, and been
+forced to retire for a month; and a semi-tragic experience of her
+own--smothered from crown to toe in a blanket taking a hot-air bath for
+the benefit of her complexion, the spirit lamp, in a wash-basin under
+the chair, exploded, and there was one interminable moment of panic, and
+several days of discomfort. She quite forgot her companion in these
+lighter reminiscences of a period that seemed far more than ten years
+agone.
+
+Gwynne had discovered at Capheaton that one of his cousin's charms was
+her absence of effort in conversation and a corresponding indifference
+to effort in others. They did not exchange a syllable as they sped up
+the wider expanse of the bay east of the Islands, and he watched the
+hills and mountains close on his left, with their bright little towns
+and sombre depths of forest. Many of the rounded cones of the foothills
+were bare, and so was the rocky crest of Tamalpais, but the old redwoods
+still held triumphant possession of several of the slopes and all of the
+cañons. Here and there factories and warehouses marred the almost
+primeval beauty of the scene, but to-day at least there was no smoke to
+cobweb the radiant sky. Even the Chinese shrimp-pickers were lounging on
+the beach before their little shack village.
+
+They passed the last of the towns. Towers and sharp roofs rose above the
+mass of cultivated trees in some private park; the trees a motley
+collection of pines and palms, eucalyptus and oak, madroño, laurel,
+locust, and acacia. The gardens were full of children and birds. On the
+roads horses in old-fashioned buggies danced at automobiles whizzing by.
+In the yachts even the men had laid aside their keen anxious look--as
+peculiar to the young San Franciscan of business as to the New-Yorker or
+Westerner--and were bent upon absolute relaxation for the day. One
+millionaire was alone in his big luxurious launch, a broad grin on his
+homely ingenuous countenance, and even his mouth open to inhale the
+clean and sparkling air. His hands were clasped on his curves.
+
+"He inherited," said Isabel, in reply to Gwynne's comment that he did
+not look as if he ever expended his energies in the piling of dollars.
+"And he doesn't want any more. But they all look well enough. It is not
+only the climate but the cooking."
+
+They left San Francisco Bay and Isabel steered more carefully: the
+channel in the Bay of San Pablo is narrow and the current treacherous.
+When they reached the drawbridge they were not only alone on the wide
+silvery expanse of water, but there was scarcely a country-house to
+break the wild loneliness of mountain and cañon. After they entered
+Rosewater Creek the mountains with their broken and multiplying ridges
+were more imposing still, and before long another range began to taper
+northward on the opposite shore. They were in the great tidal marsh now,
+green, where all the rest of the world was burnt and dry. At times the
+creek was as wide as an ordinary river, at others so contracted that one
+could gather grass on either side. Isabel told Gwynne to "watch out for
+other boats," for the creek wound and twisted and doubled like a mammoth
+brown snake into an infinite perspective, broken here and there by
+sailing boats that had the effect of skimming the land. It was a scene
+reminiscent of Holland, but far more beautiful, with the wild primeval
+character of the landscape and the grandeur of the mountains.
+
+Isabel indicated an island well out in the marsh. It was crowned with a
+white house shaded by many trees. Men in duck trousers, and coatless,
+were lounging in the shade.
+
+"That is a country club," she said. "Tom Colton will put you up. But if
+you are still disinclined to sociabilities you can shoot all the ducks
+you want on my place."
+
+"Shoot what?"
+
+"Best duck-shooting in the world is out here--canvas-back, teal, English
+widgeon--fancy your not knowing that. It begins on the fifteenth of
+October. I have not rented my marsh-lands this year, and intend to shoot
+ducks for the market. You can help me and we'll go halves."
+
+Gwynne's eyes were sparkling. He had expected to kill his bear and deer,
+but any variety of sport new or old gave him joy. Isabel pointed to many
+little shanties on the edge of the marsh.
+
+"The more enthusiastic sit in those and wait for the tide to come back.
+I avoid being left high and dry, for if the ducks go elsewhere it is
+rather a bore."
+
+The mountains on the left diminished in height, turned off abruptly to
+the northwest, following the coast line. Those on the right took form in
+the pink mist that enveloped them, for the sun had set. All the lower
+sky was pink, melting imperceptibly into the still pale blue of day. Far
+to the north other mountains seemed suddenly to heave from the level,
+villages appeared, with great stretches of farming land between. Then
+the glow faded into the gray of twilight and the vast landscape took on
+a sudden aspect of desolation; as of a country stranded, forgotten,
+with a heap of stones here and there to mark some ancient civilization.
+
+"There is Rosewater--over there where the lights are coming out; and
+here we are," said Isabel.
+
+Gwynne turned with a start and found that Isabel had run her launch up
+to a little pier. Behind it was a cluster of low hills set with narrow
+fields and tiny white houses. In the foreground was a large house of two
+stories and no architecture whatever, although the roof was mercifully
+flat. It was painted white and surrounded by a broad veranda. The garden
+was full of bare rosebushes and blooming chrysanthemums, but save for
+two mournful eucalypti and a naked acacia, there was not a tree in
+sight. Just behind were many out-buildings, stark and white.
+
+"Is this where you live?" asked Gwynne, wonderingly. He had vaguely
+pictured her in a romantic setting, a bit of California epitomized.
+
+"It was like Uncle Hiram to sell off the prettiest parts, but I don't
+bother about anything I can't help, and I have a lovely view opposite.
+Where is that boy?" She raised her voice and called, "Chuma! Chuma!" and
+in a moment a Japanese boy came running down to the pier.
+
+"The two men spend Sunday in Rosewater, but I have trained my Jap to do
+a little of everything," said Isabel, as they walked up to the house.
+"He is one of the willing sort; most are not. Chuma is my cook and
+butler and chambermaid--"
+
+"Do you mean that you live here without any other woman?"
+
+"Why not? No girl would stay in this lonely place. I should have to send
+her in to Rosewater every night and get a second girl to keep her
+company. Mac--who was with Uncle Hiram before I was born--sleeps in the
+house. It was a hotel forty years ago, by-the-way, and is still known as
+Old Inn. That was in the days of picturesque ruffianism, and there are
+terrible stories about the house, but no ghosts."
+
+It had been decided that Gwynne should dine with Isabel and spend the
+night at the hotel in Rosewater. Isabel had telephoned to her patient
+Jap, and there was a log fire in the "parlor"--now transformed into a
+comfortable living-room. Gwynne looked about him with considerable
+curiosity while Isabel was up-stairs dressing. The walls were "ceiled"
+with redwood and hung with the photographs she had accumulated in her
+travels, a motley collection of many climes, from the snows of the Alps
+to the patios of Seville; all, she had informed him, with a personal
+association: "she was no photograph fiend." Several artist's sketches
+arrested her guest's attention and he wondered what her life in Paris
+had been. He fancied that her three years abroad were full of curious
+chapters, most of them untold; but although she mystified him he could
+not associate her with license of any sort. There was even a hint of
+austerity about her, as if she drew strength from her Puritan
+forefathers.
+
+It was patent, however, that she felt herself entitled to physical
+comforts after the labors of her day. There were half a dozen
+easy-chairs and a big divan covered with cushions. The carpet and
+cushions were red, but although the room was delightfully comfortable
+and homelike it might have been a bachelor's, so entirely were lacking
+all the little devices of femininity. The only ornaments in the room
+were an odd assortment of Tyrolese pipes and Indian baskets. On a shelf
+above the divan, however, were many books, and Gwynne ran his eye over
+them. They included masterpieces of the modern Russian, German, French,
+and Italian schools; only three or four volumes of English criticism. A
+set of shelves opposite was filled with the standard English and
+American histories, essays, and novels, many of them old and bound in
+calf. The upper shelf was devoted entirely to the Russian novelists, and
+the bindings were new.
+
+When Isabel came down, looking very pretty in a blue evening frock,
+simple enough to make her guest feel at ease in his travelling-clothes,
+but carefully selected with an eye to effect, she sent him up to her
+room to make his own simple toilet.
+
+"I suppose I should furnish a spare room," she remarked. "But if I did I
+should have Paula--my adopted sister--and her family here whenever they
+happened to want to come, which would be always when I didn't want them.
+But you won't mind."
+
+Gwynne made a wry face as he sat down before the dressing-table that he
+might reflect his visage while he brushed his hair. Nevertheless, he
+cast about a curious and apologetic eye, in the belief that a woman's
+bedroom must reveal some secret of her personality. This bedroom was so
+simple and girlish that it gave him a vague sense of pleasure. The
+windows and dressing-table were covered with white muslin, and there was
+a canopy of the same above the little brass bedstead. The flounces were
+so full and fluffy that he held his knees back nervously lest he should
+disturb a puff. There was no other furniture in the room but two
+rocking-chairs, and the only color was in the blue Japanese rugs
+scattered over the white matting, and in two immense bows above the
+dressing-table and bed. He decided, as he ran down the stairs to the
+warm room below, that she understood both taste and comfort, and looked
+forward to his own lonely ranch-house with more equanimity than when he
+had paid the bill.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+There were two miles between Rosewater and Old Inn, but although Isabel
+rode briskly and was sensible as ever of the keen buoyant quality of the
+morning air that so often filled her with a pagan indifference to the
+human side of life, her thoughts were with the pleasant evening by her
+fireside, the supper in the low raftered room which once had been the
+office of the hotel--a supper of fried chicken, transparent asparagus,
+and soda biscuit, which Gwynne had disposed of with a school-boy's
+enthusiasm--the hundred and one impersonal topics they had discussed in
+a cloud of smoke before the logs, until Abe, the second hired man--who
+was to drive Gwynne in to Rosewater--had opened the kitchen door three
+times and coughed. Not since Isabel's return to California had she sat
+at a fireside and talked to anybody; nor, indeed, with the exception of
+her father in his lucid intervals, and her uncle in his rare moments of
+expansion, had she ever talked with any one that covered the large range
+of her own interests. Gwynne had snapped the lock on his unquiet spirit,
+but in that comfortable domestic environment, half lying in an
+easy-chair, with his gaze travelling indolently between the fire and the
+animated face of his cousin, he had talked of her favorite books and
+told her much of lands she had never visited. He had transferred himself
+to the buggy with a grumble of disgust, and begged her to come for him
+early in the morning. He refused to pay his first visit to his ranch
+without her; and she had promised that Abe should go early for his
+saddle-horse and meet her at the hotel.
+
+Pleasurable as the evening had been, Isabel was not in a sentimental
+frame of mind; she was stirred at the prospect of a companion, and
+wondered that she had been content in her solitude so long. Solitude and
+complete liberty might be indispensable elements in her ideal of mortal
+existence, but desultory companionship might be as necessary to
+intensify them.
+
+It was nearly a year since her return, and outside of the bank parlor
+and Judge Leslie's office, she had held naught but business converse
+with any man. Nor with any woman. Although Rosewater society offered her
+nothing and she was glad to live out of town, still she liked her old
+school friends and had expected them to call on her. But weeks had
+passed and not one of them had paid her the mere civilities. She met
+them sometimes on Saturday afternoons, when all the world of Rosewater
+shopped on Main Street, and they invariably greeted her with effusion,
+and assured her they were "going out soon." Finally, busy and absorbed
+as she was, she fell a prey to curiosity. She knew that the young men
+had always rather feared her, as she had a forbidding reputation in the
+way of "bookishness"; and as most of them had either left Rosewater or
+married, in the four years of her absence, she had expected nothing from
+them. But the girls? The young married women, who had been her comrades
+at the High School? Did they resent her three years abroad and the sense
+of superiority implied? It was patent from their manner that they
+resented nothing. Did they disapprove of her becoming so energetic a
+business woman? It was true that the girls of California's country
+towns, except when forced by poverty to work, were the laziest mortals
+on earth. But nothing could exceed their good-nature and entire
+indifference. Isabel might have started a race-track or opened a
+livery-stable and they would have vaguely admired, and been thankful
+that themselves were as God made them. Her friend Anabel Colton was in
+the south with an ailing child, and Mrs. Leslie was with her, or the
+problem would have been quickly solved.
+
+One morning she met the beauty of Rosewater on Main Street, Miss Dolly
+Boutts, a girl who had been half grown when she left, but one of her own
+rapturous admirers. Main Street was crowded, but Miss Boutts rushed up
+and kissed her, protesting that she had been trying for two months to
+get out to see her. Isabel guided her firmly to an ice-cream table in
+the candy store, and while Miss Boutts, who was a superb specimen of
+animal beauty with a corresponding appetite, disposed of two saucers of
+the delectable and a plate of cakes, Isabel dived to the heart of the
+mystery.
+
+She began by dilating upon her pleasure in being home again, and then
+congratulated her handsome friend, with a touch of sarcasm, upon the
+overwhelming gayeties of Rosewater.
+
+Miss Boutts stared. "Gayeties?" said she.
+
+"What else? I never knew people so absorbed, although I fail to see why
+I should be wholly excluded. Or have the fashions changed, and was I
+expected to call first--"
+
+Miss Boutts, who was not particularly quick of apprehension, here threw
+back her head and gave a musical laugh, which was out of tune with her
+drawling nasal voice and abundant slang.
+
+"You innocent!" she cried. "Where have you been? I suppose you have been
+imagining us at dances and dinners and teas and things. Why, we have
+only danced twice in two whole years. It's cards, my dear. We are card
+mad, the whole bunch of us, old and young, women and girls. Mrs. Leslie
+and Anabel Colton are about the only exceptions, at least in our set.
+But I fancy the whole town has got it. We play morning, noon, and
+night--literally. Those who have no servants--and that question gets
+worse instead of better--don't make their beds for days, and their
+husbands get dinner at any old hour. Those who have a servant or two
+belong to six clubs at least. I belong to every one of them, and two
+meet in the morning."
+
+It had been Isabel's turn to stare. The older people had always played
+bézique or whist, but rather somnolently of an evening. She wondered if
+the old gambling spirit had broken out again, and asked if they were
+playing poker or monté. Miss Boutts looked at her with positive scorn.
+
+"You girls that go to Europe and stay there too long get fearfully
+behind things. Poker! Monte! We play bridge and five hundred." Then her
+genuine affection for Isabel overcame her contempt. "We have spoken
+often of asking you to join the clubs," she added, sweetly. "But there
+isn't a vacancy at present."
+
+"I couldn't think of it. Chickens and cards don't rhyme. What do you
+play for--money?"
+
+"No!" The scorn returned to her voice. "We are still too provincial for
+that. San Francisco is ahead of us there. We don't even have real big
+prizes--just a dinky little spoon sitting up on the mantel-piece to
+excite us as if it was a tiara. I've won a whole bunch of them. They're
+better than nothing and mean a lot of fun. I'm as proud as punch of
+them."
+
+"And the men?" asked Isabel. Did they play, too? Miss Boutts replied
+that they were too busy in the daytime, but were asked once a week to a
+"bang-up" affair. Their other evenings they spent at the lodges--"or any
+old place," added Miss Boutts, who had no brothers, and a very busy
+father. When Isabel asked her if she had not the natural yearning of her
+age and sex for beaux, she shrugged her shoulders and replied:
+
+"Rather. But where are you going to find them here? Pa won't live in the
+city, and all the young men run away. Once in a while I visit in San
+Francisco, and we go down to all the new plays, so I suppose I'll meet
+my fate in time. Meanwhile, as there's nothing doing in that line here,
+cards are a mighty fine substitute for beaux, and no mistake."
+
+Isabel had been glad to be rid of her, and of her other old friends, who
+did call in due course. Anabel had not returned and was the worst of
+correspondents. So it had fallen out that she had held no real converse
+with youth until Gwynne's advent, and she accepted it with delight, and
+shook her head with young triumph in being able to interest him--or in
+joy of the sparkling air; she hardly knew which.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As Gwynne left his room the Japanese "chambermaid," who had been about
+to knock, informed him that Miss Otis awaited him below. He ran
+down-stairs and found her still on her horse. Abe held another horse by
+the bridle.
+
+"It is nine o'clock--" began Isabel, but Gwynne interrupted her, rarely
+apologetic.
+
+"I hardly slept. There was such an infernal racket. A theatrical
+troupe--"
+
+"There generally is. How do you like your horse?"
+
+Gwynne examined the horse, and was good enough to remark that it was a
+credit to California. Then he added: "It did not occur to me last
+night--my luggage is expressed to the ranch and I haven't my
+riding-togs--" Then he reddened at Isabel's gay laugh and Abe's
+suppressed smile.
+
+"Oh, well," said Isabel, as she sprang from her horse. "The bloods will
+be too busy to notice as we ride down Main Street, and after that it
+won't matter."
+
+She went with him into the dining-room of the hotel, a room scrupulously
+clean, but with no attempt at decoration beyond the various
+advertisements of beer on the white walls. There was a long table down
+the middle of the room and a great many small ones. Most of the latter
+were empty, although two beside the door were covered with steaks and
+eggs and coffee and rolls. One man, who had evidently finished, had
+swung his chair about, tipped it against the wall, and was addressing a
+political monologue to his toothpick.
+
+Gwynne led Isabel to a table in a corner by a window, and indicated the
+company occupying more than half of the long table.
+
+"'Busted,' was the word they used, and I cannot think of a better one to
+describe them. I talked with the men in the bar, and later wandered into
+the parlor where the women were, some tearful, others indignant. One
+had an infant, and there were several small children running about,
+although it was midnight. The soubrette was chewing gum and
+anathematizing Rosewater as the 'jayest town on the slope,' and others
+were calling for the blood of the manager, who had absconded with the
+receipts of an unprofitable week. They interested me, as all your weird
+specimens do, and I found them a surprisingly decent lot, considering
+that it is the cheapest sort of a vaudeville troupe. That poor little
+woman with the red eyes and the parti-colored hair is the mother of the
+infant. I saw one of the children carrying it about the hall as I left
+my room. She wears spangled tights--she told me with a lively regret at
+the prospect of pawning them--and shoots balls from the head of that
+young man that looks like a parson. And the soubrette--all my ideals are
+shattered! Look at her."
+
+The soubrette had a lank young body neatly attired in a store suit and
+shirt-waist. Her face was sallow and her black hair as lank as her body,
+but her eyes were keen and bright, and she was indisputably respectable.
+She was drinking her coffee with both elbows on the table and listening
+with a sort of indifferent sympathy to an elderly untidy woman who was
+sniffling.
+
+"Drop it," she shot out, finally. "'Tain't worth it. The landlord's
+given us a free breakfast, anyhow, and it's more'n most of 'em does.
+We'll get back to 'Frisco somehow, and will run into Jake first thing.
+I'll give him a slice of my mind right in the thickest of the
+Tenderloin. You just shut up and be thankful you ain't got no kids."
+
+"She is positively discouraging," said Gwynne, as he attacked his
+excellent breakfast. "I thought that the frozen surface of the American
+woman thawed on the stratum soubrette."
+
+"The class is not always remarkable for its asceticism," said Isabel,
+dryly. "I often lunch here, and see many varieties. The leading lady is
+generally a large voluptuous person with a head like a hay-stack seen
+through the wrong end of an opera-glass, and some of the soubrettes are
+all hats and eyes and wriggling grace. The men are what we call 'tough,'
+which is not exactly what you mean by 'toff.' Occasionally, however,
+there are the most respectable family parties, including the children
+whom they won't be parted from. We have three places of amusement,
+including quite a fine opera-house, so they do very well, as a rule. Was
+it your sympathy that kept you awake?"
+
+"I am not an ass. But they were in and out of one another's rooms all
+night, and of course the baby cried. Then my room was over the
+bar--well, what will you? Such is life. I am sorry you cannot eat
+another breakfast. This seems to be the land of good cooking. If I did
+not scorn to be unoriginal I should dilate upon the pie and doughnuts I
+had for breakfast on the other side of your continent."
+
+He seemed still light of heart at the sudden end to his wanderings and
+isolation, and they forgot the troupe and chatted about his ranch. He
+had much to ask and his sponsor more to tell.
+
+The theatrical party appeared to finish their breakfast simultaneously.
+Three, including the soubrette, reached under the table, dislodged the
+morsel of gum they had mechanically attached to the under side of the
+board, closed on it with a snap, and filed out. Most of them looked
+quite cheerful. Several bowed to Gwynne. The soubrette gave him a
+haughty suspicious nod.
+
+"She looked at me like that last night," said Gwynne, complainingly.
+"What designs does she attribute to me? I never treated any one with
+more respect."
+
+"They are all like that when they are respectable. Their fierce
+Americanism resents any hint of patronage. Later on they invite it. You
+will find these waitresses--the class, as a rule, is thoroughly
+decent--much the same in manner."
+
+Two girls, white clad, their extended arms loaded with dishes, were
+stalking about the room, anæmic, disdainful. A portly woman, whom Isabel
+knew to be the mother of a brood, was far more anxious to please. She
+came up to the table in the corner and asked Gwynne affably if his
+coffee was "all right" and if he was a stranger in "these parts." He was
+under Isabel's amused eye, but he acquitted himself with credit; and
+when he rose from the table she thanked him indifferently for his tip,
+but her eyes glowed softly. It was rarely thought worth while to tip a
+mere waitress.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+As they rode slowly down the hill towards Main Street Gwynne examined
+his cousin from head to foot, but, he prided himself, out of the corner
+of his eye. She wore a dust-colored habit with divided skirt, and a soft
+felt hat and gloves of the same shade. Her horse was a very light
+chestnut, and he was obliged to confess that the effect was harmonious,
+although this Western style of riding by no means pleased his fastidious
+taste.
+
+Isabel shot him an amused glance. "You don't approve of women riding
+astride," she said. "We invented it; although it is now the fashion in
+many other parts of America. Necessity is the mother of most fashions.
+Wait till you see our mountain roads. They are a disgrace to
+civilization--so broken and narrow that even in summer it is dangerous
+for a woman to ride a side-saddle, and in winter impossible. I have
+forgotten how, and that is the reason I never rode in England.... Here
+is the centre of your existence for several years to come. Main Street
+is to this section of the country what Wall Street is to the United
+States."
+
+They had entered a street that turned abruptly in from the country a
+block below them, and rose gently for several hundred yards, when it
+straggled unevenly along a higher level, to melt into the older
+residence district and then out into the open country again. There was
+nothing quite like this Main Street in California. At its southern end
+was a long double hitching-rail--as old as the State--already flanked by
+several dusty wagons and big strong horses. The long unbroken block had
+as many and as various stores as are generally spread over the entire
+area of a town. Jammed against one another like cabins opening out of a
+steamer's gangway, and yet of no mean size, were banks and saloons;
+stores for chicken feed, groceries, fruit, candy, jewelry, clothing,
+hats, fancy goods, stationery; and five drug stores with tiled floors.
+Many of the windows made a brave display that would not have disgraced
+San Francisco. The entire west pavement was roofed, making a promenade
+like a ship's deck against rain or the severities of summer; and from
+this roof depended an extraordinary number of signs, often eccentric of
+color and design. Above the buildings of the opposite side of the street
+rose the spars of several fishing-boats; the creek finished at
+Rosewater. Gwynne glanced about him with an interest that nothing else
+Californian save the Mission and San Francisco had inspired. Here was a
+bit of a civilization of a building era, that was almost old, everything
+being relative. At all events it was old-fashioned. It was thoroughly
+countrified and yet suggestive of the concentrated activities of a city.
+Isabel, after leaving the hotel had made a detour, giving him a brief
+glimpse of the town. On the higher streets--Rosewater lay on a cluster
+of gentle hills--between Main Street and the "residence" district, he
+had noticed several modern buildings of brick or stone: offices,
+churches, school-houses, a solid little opera-house of colonial design,
+a fine City Hall, and one of those forlorn "Carnegie Libraries" in a
+state of arrested development for want of funds, but with an imposing
+façade and the name of the "donor" conspicuously advertised. All this
+had interested him little, although he had thought the town on its
+slopes looked very pretty and quiet; but this----the word "pioneer"
+suddenly came to him, and he looked up and down with a keenness of
+interest that was almost like a reviving memory. This beyond question
+was a remnant of the old thing, and here, no doubt, the
+great-grandfather whose first name he had forgotten, had been a familiar
+sight; his fortune and enterprise had helped to lay the very foundations
+of this landmark of a wild and stirring time.----Then they rode past a
+square park high on a terrace, walled up with stone most modernly, the
+green shaded with pines and palms, acacia and oaks; and the dream
+passed. At the same moment he became aware that his partner was talking.
+
+"Rosewater is the financial and trading centre of an immense farming
+district. There are four banks, as solid as the best in the world. Three
+are as old as American California. The farmers come in daily for feed
+and supplies, the chicken-ranchers with their produce for the San
+Francisco buyers, and eggs for the great hatcheries. Many, like myself,
+find the last less trouble and expense than bothering with incubators.
+Something like four thousand dollars change hands daily in Rosewater,
+and it has less than five thousand inhabitants."
+
+Having parted with her information she relapsed into silence, and, the
+town lying behind them, he transferred his attention to her. She looked
+severe, remote again, and he wondered if she would grow quite hard and
+business-like in time. In the hotel office as he paid his bill he had
+overheard one man say to another that she was "as good as the best, and
+no man could get ahead of her." In this sexless get-up and with her
+features set she looked hardly a woman. She certainly had capacities for
+good-fellowship, and yesterday she had been almost tender. He had just
+decided that he would as soon marry a portrait of George Washington,
+when, in response to a light call behind them, Isabel wheeled about with
+the pink in her cheeks and eyes wide with pleasure. She galloped back to
+an approaching buggy, in which there was an extremely pretty
+golden-haired young woman, and as she and Isabel simultaneously alighted
+and flew into each other's arms, Gwynne also descended, prepared to
+raise his hat when his existence was recognized. For some moments the
+girls talked a rapid duet, then Isabel turned suddenly and beckoned.
+
+"This is my oldest friend, Anabel--Mrs. Tom Colton," she said,
+apologetically. "She only returned last night--just caught sight of us,
+and followed."
+
+Gwynne's disapproval vanished as he shook hands with the blooming young
+matron and met her bright laughing eyes. She was a small imposing
+creature and received him in quite the grand manner. Her accent of
+America was as slight as Isabel's, and she used no slang. There was
+about her something of the primness that characterizes American women in
+the smaller towns, but her simple linen frock had been cut by a master,
+and she looked so warm, so womanly, so hospitable as she welcomed Gwynne
+to Rosewater, that he liked her more spontaneously than he had liked
+anybody since he crossed the Atlantic, and was almost enthusiastic as he
+rode on with Isabel.
+
+"Anabel is a perfect dear," said his companion, whose eyes and cheeks
+were still glowing, and who looked like a mere girl. "I am much fonder
+of her than I am of Paula, although we haven't a thing in common. She
+was domestic and wild about children before she was done with dolls. Of
+course she married at once. When we were at the High School together she
+regarded my ambition to be first as a standing joke, and has never read
+anything heavier than a classic novel in her life. Why I am so fond of
+her I can't say, unless it is that she is absolutely genuine, and that
+counts more in the long-run than anything else. Besides, she was my
+first friend when I came here as a little girl. Her mother--Mrs.
+Leslie--belongs to one of the old San Francisco families, and had always
+known my mother. I love her as much as ever, but I am bound to confess
+that I have missed her little. I suppose complete happiness comes when
+you miss nobody."
+
+They rode on in silence, for the heat was increasing and the dust lay
+thick on the road and swirled about their heads. There had been no rain
+since March, and the sea that sent its daily fogs and breezes to cool
+San Francisco and the towns about the bay was forty miles from
+Rosewater.
+
+"Never mind," said Isabel, as Gwynne mopped his brow for the third time
+and ostentatiously rubbed his face. "The nights are cool and the hot
+weather will soon moderate down into the mellowness of October. When the
+rains come--well it is a toss up, which is worse--the dust or the mud."
+
+"Heavens knows what we have swallowed," muttered Gwynne, who had served
+on sanitary boards and heard much talk of germs. But Isabel only laughed
+and told him to go to Anabel, who had a nostrum for every ill. A moment
+later the road led up a hill-side, and at the summit she caught his
+bridle and reined in.
+
+"I brought you this roundabout way on purpose," she said. "Is it not
+what the poet would call a fair domain?"
+
+Below them was a vast flat expanse bounded opposite by a mountain chain,
+that rose abruptly from the level, breaking into much irregularity of
+surface above, but all its hollows blurred with woods. Beyond a dip
+rose, far in the distance, a huge crouching formidable mass--St. Helena,
+named after a Russian princess, the wife of the last of the Russian
+governors of northern California. On the plain were golden fields,
+orchards, compact masses of the eucalyptus-tree planted as shelters for
+the cattle in time of storm or unbearable heat. Many cattle were roaming
+about; on the grazing land in the far distance towards the town of St.
+Peter--a mere white cluster in the north at the base of the range--were
+the horses. Over the mountains lay a shimmering haze, blue or pink; it
+was difficult to define whether the colors flowed through each other or
+subtly united.
+
+"It is all yours," added Isabel, emerging from the rôle of the mere
+cicerone. "Are you not proud of it?"
+
+Gwynne did in truth dilate, but hastily assured himself that it was at
+the beauty of his estate, not at its paltry nineteen thousand acres. Had
+he not shot over many an estate as large? Had not his grandfather come
+into four times that number? True, most of them had not been entailed,
+and this at least was his, his own. He quite realized it for the first
+time; even as a source of income he had barely given it a thought; even
+after Isabel's descriptions he had never exerted himself to picture it.
+As a resource in his crisis it was all very well, but not worth while
+shaping into concrete form until he could avoid it no longer.
+
+But now, as he gazed down and over the great beautiful expanse--for even
+the mountain-side and much beyond was his--he felt a sudden passionate
+gratitude to that Otis whose first name he had forgotten, pride fairly
+invaded his chest; then, as he realized that it was visibly swelling
+under Isabel's intent gaze, he blushed, laughed confusedly, turned away
+his head. But his annoyance was routed by a speechless amazement, for
+Isabel suddenly flung both arms round his neck and gave him a hearty
+kiss.
+
+"There!" she exclaimed. "I never really liked you before, though I never
+denied you were interesting enough. Men are nothing but overgrown boys,
+only some are nice and some are not. You are. I'll really adopt you now,
+instead of merely doing my bounden duty. Now look at those mountains in
+the south."
+
+More disturbed than he would have believed possible at the young warmth
+and magnetism of her embrace--although it was disconcertingly evident
+that she would have kissed a small boy in precisely the same manner--he
+composed his features to indifference and followed the motion of her
+whip.
+
+In the dim perspective of the south she indicated Tamalpais and Monte
+Diablo opposite, vague dim blue masses behind San Francisco. "Monte
+Diablo and St. Helena are both old volcanoes," she continued. "I never
+say dead volcanoes after the history and performances of Vesuvius and
+Pelée. I wish one of our volcanoes would liven up. We might have fewer
+earthquakes--although, to be sure, ours are supposed to be caused by
+faulting--in so far as they know anything about it."
+
+"Do you think of nothing but earthquakes out here? You have made at
+least three casual allusions since we met twenty-four hours ago, and in
+southern California they are a part of every tradition."
+
+"If you had been brought up on earthquakes they would never be far from
+your own mind. There is a theory that the reason for Californians taking
+everything as it comes with a happy-go-lucky philosophy, lies in the
+electrical air and the eight months of sunshine; but I believe it is due
+even more to the earthquakes. If we can stand those we can stand
+anything. It is in tune with the old gambling spirit that still colors
+the country; no doubt has kept it alive. We never know what is going to
+happen next, and we don't care. _Vive la bagatelle._ We have more to be
+thankful for than the rest of the world, anyhow. Well, let us go down to
+the house."
+
+The house with its out-buildings stood below them on a high knoll, three
+sides surrounded by a grove of white oaks, the other open to the
+mountains, although the front veranda was shaded by several spreading
+trees, far apart. The large soft leaves and the pendent moss of the oaks
+were gray with dust, but the shade was cool and delicious. Down in the
+valley an old comrade here and there helped to tell the story of the
+time when all these miles of valley and mountain were unbroken forest,
+known only to the red man. And that was not a century ago.
+
+The house was frankly ugly, like all the farm-houses of its era,
+although vastly to be preferred to the "artistic" structures succeeding
+them. As the couple gave up their horses to a stately Jap, who had been
+engaged by Isabel as butler, chambermaid, valet, and footman, and
+entered the large living-room, Gwynne generously gave voice to his
+approval. There were books to the ceiling, easy-chairs, the photographs
+of friends that had decorated his rooms in London and Capheaton. His
+eyes contracted as he saw a pile of London newspapers on the table, and
+he turned away hastily and remarked that he was glad the fittings were
+red, as it would be more companionable in winter; the rest of the year
+he should live out-of-doors. The veranda, which surrounded the house,
+was quite wide enough to live on, and below it was a border of garden
+full of old-fashioned flowers. The bedrooms, gayly furbished with chintz
+and matting, were up-stairs.
+
+"I didn't think it worth while to furnish a dining-room," said Isabel as
+they returned to the lower floor. "It has always been the custom to eat
+at the end of the living-room--when they didn't eat in the kitchen. And
+what more dreary than to take your meals in a big country dining-room by
+yourself! All the rooms here are large."
+
+She took him into the kitchen and introduced him to his cook, a stout
+Mexican woman, who received him with excessive dignity, and wore nothing
+but a single calico garment open to the chest. Then they mounted their
+horses again and Isabel escorted him down to the great hay-barns, the
+dairy, and cattle-sheds, introducing him to his hired men, who looked
+him over frankly, but, somewhat to his surprise, addressed him as "sir."
+He commented upon the unexpected deference as they rode back to the
+house.
+
+"Oh, these country folk are naturally polite," said Isabel, dryly. "They
+are not yet entirely corrupted by the yellow press, although independent
+enough, as you will discover. Tact will manage any one. I have been
+managing people all my life, and have prepared this force to like you.
+Now I must be off. I am to lunch with Anabel."
+
+"You are not going to leave me!" cried Gwynne, in dismay.
+
+"The tragic moment must come sooner or later," she said, gayly. "And you
+have forgotten your mail. It is somewhere under all those newspapers.
+I'll ride out in a day or two and see how you are getting on."
+
+She gave him a cavalier little nod, touched her horse with the whip, and
+a moment later was lost in a cloud of dust. Gwynne, angry and
+disappointed, looked after her a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and
+went in to his mail.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Mrs. Tom Colton lived on one of the higher slopes of Rosewater in a
+charming little double house all brown shingles and big chimneys.
+Opposite was the paternal mansion on a high terrace, a modern
+Renaissance structure, painted white and shaded with gigantic palms and
+acacias. There was a porte-cochère but no balcony.
+
+All the "residences" of this quarter were modern and "artistic," even
+the cottages; it was only on the lower slopes, close to the nucleus of
+the town, that the many old-fashioned structures were but occasionally
+thrown out of tune by a pile of shingles and stone. But all had gardens,
+and there were several squares whence the streets radiated with as
+puzzling an irregularity as London's own, but set thick with shade trees
+tropical and boreal. On the high rim of the hills enclosing the town
+were many small farms, and all were white with the Leghorn that laid the
+golden eggs. These looked like a light fall of snow on the sunburned
+hills, and were as refreshing as the garden trees upon which the hose
+played night and morning.
+
+As Isabel left her horse at a livery-stable and walked up the wide clean
+boulevard towards her friend's house, she met no one on the glaring
+pavements, although here and there a buggy was hitched, and a patient
+horse stood with his fore feet on the line of grass beside the
+concrete, his head under a tree, and his eyes fixed expectantly upon
+the door of the house. Indeed one might walk here at almost any hour of
+the day and rarely meet another; all the energies were concentrated in
+Main Street, although it was the town's standing grievance that it was
+not the county-seat with a court-house that should make the pretensions
+of St. Peter ridiculous. No small part of those energies in the business
+district were devoted to humbling the rival, in the matter of commerce.
+St. Peter retaliated with the accent of a fierce contempt.
+"Chickenville!" "The Eggopolis!" quoth the local wits, and who shall say
+that the darts did not quiver and sting, although the more flourishing
+community never lowered its self-satisfied front? Even the rich banker
+families were not at the trouble to put on airs. They did not possess a
+handsome turnout between them, and as for dress there were few that did
+more than keep themselves cool in summer and warm in winter. It was true
+that Mr. Boutts possessed a runabout automobile in which he bumped his
+family to San Francisco occasionally, but he was of the newer gentry and
+owed his social pre-eminence to his wife and pretty daughter, and to his
+conversion from the Congregational to the Episcopal Church.
+
+Isabel, of course, was a conspicuous member of the ancient aristocracy,
+by virtue of her forefathers having owned half the county when the smoke
+still rose from the wigwam; and although Mrs. James Otis had maintained
+a haughty aloofness on her husband's ranch in summer, and later in a
+Rosewater cottage, her neighbors thought none the less of her for that,
+and Isabel, after school hours, played with their children. Later, even
+the transgressions of her father, and her unchaperoned trip to Europe,
+left her position secure. An Otis was an Otis. _Noblesse oblige._
+Aristocracies are aristocracies the world over.
+
+Mrs. Tom saw Isabel coming and opened the door herself; then as lunch
+would not be ready for an hour, led her up to her large sunny bedroom,
+where her three children, pretty fragile creatures in spite of their
+tan, sweet-fed and spoiled, were playing on the floor. Isabel tossed and
+kissed them, presenting them with a box of toys she had bought in Main
+Street. Then she sat down with Anabel in the window to have a long talk.
+But she quickly discovered that Anabel talked with one wing of her
+brain, so to speak, and her roving gaze beamed constantly at the noisy
+brood on the floor. Complacency, maternity, happiness, radiated from all
+her sweet womanly little person, but in half an hour Isabel was casting
+about for an excuse to leave directly after luncheon, although she had
+promised to spend the day. As Anabel babbled on, while embroidering a
+little frock, relating anecdotes of her marvellous children, commenting
+upon the increasing extortions of the labor class, the iniquities of
+servants, the mounting of prices in California, and the shocking mania
+for cards that possessed Rosewater in common with the rest of the world,
+there stole over Isabel a feeling of intolerable ennui. She had felt it
+often enough in her sister's uneven domestic atmosphere, and now and
+again in more regulated interiors, but never had the wings of her spirit
+beaten so furiously as in this happy home of the most beloved of her
+friends. The wave ebbed when the nurse came and carried off the
+protesting trio, and as she sat with Anabel in the beautiful little
+dining-room panelled and furnished with redwood, highly polished, the
+table set with silver and crystal, the dainty meal beyond criticism and
+served by a noiseless Chinaman, she was able to feel grateful that
+Anabel was as happy in her way as herself in her own, and praised
+everything with such warmth that the placid little lady waxed radiant.
+Mrs. Tom was very golden-haired and blue-eyed and pink and white, but
+none was further removed from insipidity than she. Her features were
+strong, particularly her mouth and chin, and she had a repose of manner,
+a squareness of shoulder, and a serenity of expression that gave her an
+almost solid appearance. It was patent that she was making a success of
+her life, and Isabel kissed her at parting with a hearty good-will; but
+only the excessive dignity inherited from her Spanish ancestors arrested
+a war-whoop as she almost ran down the hill. She had been detained until
+five o'clock in spite of ingenious excuses, and when she mounted her
+horse she galloped for the country at such a rate of speed that the
+drowsy town turned over. When she reached a long and lonely stretch of
+road she indulged herself in snatches of Spanish songs, and when she was
+at home she did not go to bed till near midnight, so happy was she in
+the contemplation of her solitude.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Gwynne found few letters awaiting him; he had not encouraged
+correspondence, and only his mother, Flora Thangue, and his solicitors
+knew his address. It had been announced and reiterated in London that he
+was making a tour of the world. During the first month of his absence
+Lady Victoria had sent him a large bundle of clippings from newspapers,
+some acid in comment upon his obvious intention of neglecting his duties
+as a peer of the realm, his fruitless exposure of a chagrin at an
+elevation in which he would find more and more consolation as time went
+on. A few were sympathetic. Others went so far as to indicate a program
+in which he might serve his country with modesty, if not with the
+scintillations of the free-lance; and reminded him that peers had risen
+to the post of prime-minister ere this, of viceroy, lord-lieutenant,
+governor-general, and ambassador. Then, apparently, they dismissed him.
+The fiscal question was acute. Dissolution threatened. There were bright
+particular stars still in both parties, and the press and public had
+enough to do with sitting in judgment upon their respective rays.
+
+In the two letters from his mother, written at Homburg, there was no
+news beyond the letting of the properties and a bulletin of her health,
+which promised an imminent fitness for travel. His solicitors wrote that
+the income from the two estates was ample to keep the numerous women of
+the family in comfort, and leave a surplus which should be paid to his
+mother, according to his directions. This, with the southern ranch and
+the San Francisco property, should yield her an income of two thousand
+five hundred pounds a year. The confidential member of the firm hinted
+that if his lordship found means of increasing her ladyship's income in
+that land of gold and plenty it would be wise to do so, as her ladyship
+knew less than nothing of economy and was even more deeply in debt than
+usual.
+
+He missed Flora's gay letter of gossip, and looked with narrowing lids
+at the pile of newspapers. None had been sent him before, and he had
+left not a subscription behind him; but it was evident that his mother
+and Flora were under the mistaken impression that he would welcome this
+greeting in his new home. They had accumulated for a month. He
+recognized the type of the leading dailies, and could guess the names of
+the numerous illustrated weeklies. Suddenly he took them in his arms and
+walked quickly over to the stove, his eye roving in search of a
+match-box. But even as he stooped he rose again, and, blushing for his
+weakness, carried them back to the table, tore them open with nervous
+haste. He skimmed the great pages of the dailies from start to finish,
+telling himself that he must have a breath from home, news from
+authoritative sources, stated in excellent English; sickened with the
+knowledge that he was but searching eagerly for a word of himself;
+sickening more when he found none. Then he fell upon the weeklies, his
+eye glancing indifferently from the paragraphs and presentments of the
+royal and the engaged, but scanning every personality. He had had one
+rival and there was much of him.
+
+Before he had finished the third his struggling pride conquered. He
+gathered the heap and flung it into a corner, then caught up his hat and
+struck out for the loneliest part of the ranch. He writhed in the throes
+of disappointment, jealousy, disgust of self. He attempted consolation
+by picturing all the other ambitious men he knew exhibiting a similar
+weakness and vanity when there was no eye to see. His imagination did
+not rise to marvellous feats--and what if it did not? He had never
+aspired to be in the same class with other men.
+
+The bitter tide receded only to give place to apprehension. His
+temperament was mercurial, balanced by a certain languor in the earlier
+stages of emotion, and there had been little to depress his spirit
+during those thirty years when all the fairies had danced attendance on
+him; even defeat had but intoxicated his fighting instinct and given
+another excuse for flattery and encouragement. During the eleven months
+since he had left England he had experienced neither encouragement nor
+flattery. He could not recall having made a profound impression upon any
+of his casual acquaintances; he certainly had created no sensation. It
+was true that his rôle had been that of the listener, the student, but
+he had so long accepted himself as a personality, as the most remarkable
+of England's younger productions, that he had been deeply mortified more
+than once at the cavalier treatment of middle-aged business men with no
+time to waste upon a young Britisher of no possible use to them.
+
+To-day he boldly faced the haunting doubt if he were really a great man;
+if his success in England, as well as his phenomenal self-confidence,
+had not been merely the result of an inordinate ambition fed by
+fortuitous circumstances. He recalled that from childhood his
+grandfather and his mother had practically decreed that the bright,
+lovable, mischievous boy was to be a great man; that as he grew older
+the entire family connection joined the conspiracy. It is easy enough to
+believe in yourself when the world believes in you, and easy enough to
+make the world take you at your own valuation when you have a powerful
+backing, a reasonable amount of cleverness, a sublime audacity, the
+power of speech, and a happy series of accidents. Were all great men
+two-thirds accidental or manufactured? He felt inclined to believe it,
+but while it soothed his torn and throbbing pride, it by no means
+lessened his apprehension.
+
+Was he not a great man, even so? He felt anything but a great man at the
+moment. He recalled that he had indulged in few lapses into complacency
+since his departure incognito from England, and that he had deliberately
+held self-analysis at bay by incessant travel and a compulsory interest
+in subjects that did not appeal to him in the least. It was this absence
+of interest after close upon a year in the country that appalled him as
+much as his inner visioning. He hated the country. He hated its
+politics, both parties impartially. He hated all the questions that
+absorbed the American mind, from graft to negroes. He had sat in the
+Congressional galleries in Washington, attended political meetings
+wherever he could obtain admittance, studied the press in even the
+smaller towns, travelled through the South and relieved himself of
+whatever abstract sympathy he may have cherished for the colored race,
+visited the sweat-shops of New York, the meat-packing establishments of
+Chicago, the factories of New England, every phase of the great
+civilization he knew of; and while he found much to admire and condemn,
+both left him evenly indifferent. With all his soul he longed for
+England. She might have her selfishness and her snobberies, lingering
+taints in her political system, but she stood at the apex of
+civilization, and her very faults were interesting; far removed from the
+brazen crudities of the New World's struggle for wealth and power. And
+although the blood of reformers was in his veins, and in his secret soul
+he was an idealist to the point of knight-errantry, the desire for
+reform had ebbed out of him during his American exile. And he knew the
+fate of a good many American reformers. There were several in high
+places at present, cheerfully trimmed down from the statesman to the
+political ideal. Julia Kaye--clever woman!--had put the matter into an
+epigram. The American statesman was the superior politician.
+
+And how was he, out of tune with every phase of the country, to find the
+ghost of an opportunity to lead it? He was no actor. If he had a merit
+it was sincerity, a contempt for subterfuge as beneath both his powers
+and the lofty position to which he had been born. Moreover, he was
+honest; an equally aristocratic failing and drawback.
+
+He recalled a conversation he had held in the smoking-compartment of a
+Pullman with a sharp young politician, who had become voluble after
+Gwynne had "stood him" two high-balls.
+
+"It's graft or quit," he had announced. "All this cleaning up in
+insurance and what not, all this talk of curbing the trusts and the rest
+of it don't fool yours truly one little bit. It's just the ins trying to
+get ahead of the outs. It's not the honestest or the best man that gets
+there in God's own country, but the smartest--every time. Those that are
+crying the loudest against the grafters are just waiting for a chance to
+graft good and hard themselves. I am, and I don't care who knows it.
+Only I don't waste any strength kicking. The labor party works itself up
+over trusts and capitalists, and most of the capitalists come out of
+that factory, and are the first to grind those left behind them, under
+both heels. They know what I know, and what you'll know before you get
+through, that the only fun in life is to be got out of power and money."
+
+The face as sharp as a razor but by no means dishonest rose before
+Gwynne. He had been a very decent little chap, and in the two days they
+had travelled together he had displayed a photograph of his wife and
+"kids," to whom he seemed even sentimentally devoted. Although Gwynne
+had parted from the man with satisfaction it was impossible to despise
+him utterly. Since then he had met many of his kind, more or less
+honest, able, pettily ambitious, fairly educated, unlearned on every
+subject except politics and the general business of the country; and all
+equally unsympathetic. He made no pretence to judge the country on its
+social or intellectual side, for he had been forced to avoid all groups
+that might have enlightened him--although he found no difficulty in
+assuming that well-bred and intellectual people were much the same the
+world over, and was willing to give the United States the benefit of
+every doubt. But its obvious side was the one that concerned him and his
+career. In order to succeed--and without success life would mean less
+than nothing to him--must he in a measure conform to conditions that
+were the result of a century of complexities? He recurred to the dry
+biographical sketches he had received, from certain of his travelling
+companions, of the most distinguished--and successful!--men in American
+politics to-day. Their ideals and their zeal for reform had played
+between horizon and zenith like a flaming sword, so compelling the
+attention of all that would pause to look that the diminishing
+effulgence had been even more conspicuous; and now, although the sword
+was occasionally brandished for form's sake, and was even sharper than
+before, having learned to cut both ways, it had the rust of tin not of
+blood on it, and deceived no one. But it had served its purpose--if to
+be sure it had been needed at all--and its owners were past-masters of
+success. Had he in him the makings of the mere trimmer and politician,
+in addition to the miserable vanity that had riven him to-day? And would
+some measure of great success won on those lines stir the dormant
+greatness in him?--if there were any greatness to stir. This was the
+fearful doubt, after all, that beset him. He almost saw with his outer
+vision his ideals lying in a tumbled heap, as he felt himself on the
+point of crying aloud that to feel once more that sense of power which
+had exalted him above mere mortals, and given him an ecstasy of spirit
+that no other passion could ever excite, he would sacrifice everything,
+everything!
+
+He paused abruptly and looked about him. He was half-way up the
+mountain. The great valley, that looked as if it might embrace the State
+itself, lay before him. North and south the scenery was magnificent,
+ethereal in the distance, melting everywhere into one of those lovely
+mists that seem to have extracted the spiritual essence of all the
+colors. But the very beauty of his new domain added to the sense of
+unreality, of uneasiness, that had so often possessed him since he had
+crossed the borders of the State. And it was all on such a colossal
+scale. There could never be anything friendly, anything possessing, in a
+land destined for a race of primeval giants. He felt so passionate a
+longing for the sweet embracing historied landscapes of England that the
+very violence of the nostalgia drove him homeward with the half-formed
+intention of taking the first train for New York and the first steamer
+out of it. Moreover, he was suddenly obsessed with the belief that if he
+had greatness in him England alone held its magnet.
+
+But it was a long walk to his house, and he reached it late in the
+afternoon, very tired and very hungry. When he entered his comfortable
+living-room, redolent of flowers, he received something like a shock of
+peace, and after he had taken a cold bath, he cursed himself roundly for
+permitting the mixed blood in his veins to contrive at times the
+temperament of an artist or of some women. As he sat down to a more than
+palatable supper, he felt thankful that he had had it out with himself
+so early in the engagement, and thought it odd if the Anglo-Saxon in him
+could not drive rough-shod over his weaker outcroppings.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+He did not see Isabel again for three weeks. Several days after his
+arrival he received a note from her, briefly stating that she was
+starting for Los Angeles to exhibit her prize Favarolles and Leghorns at
+a "Chicken show," and after that would pay a long deferred visit to her
+sister. "But I shall not be long," she added, possibly with a flicker of
+contrition, "only they have been planning things for me for ages and I
+am always putting them off. I will spend a week--not with them, exactly,
+but at their disposal, and it will be a relief to have it over."
+
+Gwynne felt himself ill-treated, but shrugged his shoulders with a new
+philosophy not all doggedness, and easily stretched to embrace the
+vagaries of woman. And, in truth, he found an abundance of occupation.
+Ascertaining that Mr. Leslie was away, he spent his time on the ranch,
+examining its various yields, divisions, possibilities; to say nothing
+of its books and history. The dairy was now an insignificant affair,
+experiments having proved disastrous, and his superintendent advised him
+to let it remain so. The greatest yield was in hay, and cattle raised
+for the market. The last lessee had come to grief over blood horses, and
+Gwynne's agents had accepted what remained of the racers and breeders in
+default of apocryphal cash. Although advised that they could be sold to
+advantage if haste were not imperative, Gwynne, who had a large balance
+in the bank, determined to continue the experiment. Many acres of the
+ranch were profitably let, although by the month only, as pasture both
+for cows and horses. The orchards always made a handsome yield, and the
+vegetable garden and strawberry beds needed only proper care to become
+remunerative. Moreover, several acres had recently been planted with
+kale, a favorite food of the conquering Leghorn, and there were fine
+runs on the hills that might be fenced off for sheep--or chickens; but
+at this point the superintendent always detected something even defiant
+in his employer's cold indifference, and told his friends that the
+Englishman was "haughty in spots."
+
+It was all very satisfactory, but in order to bring him a really
+considerable increase of income he must dismiss his superintendent--who
+now drew a salary of a hundred and fifty dollars a month, and who did
+not inspire him with unbounded trust--and become his own manager, an
+office which would not only make heavy demands upon his time, turning
+him virtually into a farmer, with little leisure for the reading and
+practice of law, but no doubt involve the sacrifice of money as well; he
+did not flatter himself that he could learn to "run" a ranch of nineteen
+thousand varied acres in a season. His superintendent was a half-breed
+Mexican, the son of his cook, quick, voluble, and experienced in the
+ways of the ranch, upon which he had worked since boyhood. Gwynne had
+called on Mr. Colton at the bank two days after his arrival, and the old
+gentleman, who had an eye like a gimlet and a mouth like a steel trap,
+had consigned all "greasers" to subterranean fires, and emphasized the
+fact that he had hired Carlos Smith by the month only. A better man
+would demand a year's contract. There were infinite possibilities for
+"the greaser" to pocket a goodly share of the profits, and "cover up his
+tracks." And it might be a year or two before a superintendent could be
+found capable in every way of managing so complicated a ranch.
+
+While he was still revolving the problem he met Mr. Leslie and Tom
+Colton, who advised him to sell at least half the ranch to small
+farmers. Properties of four and five acres were in increasing demand in
+this fertile county, and equally difficult to obtain. He had but the one
+interview with them, as they were starting the same day to attend to
+some business in the north, but after revolving the matter in all its
+bearings for another ten days he made up his mind to accept their
+advice, consoled his crestfallen superintendent with the promise of
+constant work, and set forth one afternoon to place his advertisements.
+
+He had visited the town but twice since his arrival, and then in the
+morning. To-day he saw it characteristically for the first time. The
+hills that formed a cove of the great valley were bright with their
+houses and gardens, but very quiet. The long sloping block of Main
+Street was crowded with wagons, buggies, and horses, that from a
+distance looked to be a solid mass; and even when he rode into their
+midst he found some difficulty in forcing his way. Where the dusty
+vehicles were not moving they were tied to every post, the horses with
+their front feet on the sidewalk observing the familiar throng with
+friendly patient eyes. The shops were doing a rushing business, and so,
+Gwynne inferred, were the banks. As for the saloons, their doors swung
+with mechanical precision. Most of the farmers wore linen dusters and
+broad straw hats, but their women had put on all their finery. The girls
+of the town could be readily distinguished by their crisp muslins and
+white hats and absence of dust. There were groups of Rosewater girls
+holding rendezvous with their country cousins everywhere, although for
+the most part in the drug stores, which, with their tiled floors and
+ample space, looked like public reception-rooms. There were many knots
+of men under the broad roof over the pavement, but in spite of the
+ubiquitous saloon no drunkenness. Nor was there a policeman in sight.
+Nor a shop for fire-arms. Gone were the old days when a man drank till
+his brain was fire and his pistol went off by itself. The sting had been
+extracted from California and she had settled down to practical
+consideration of her vast resources; and in the comfortable assurance
+that there was enough for all. Gwynne had not seen a beggar nor a pauper
+since his arrival.
+
+He placed his advertisements with both the local newspapers, to avoid
+the ill-will of either, posted others to the San Francisco press, and
+was riding down Main Street in order to have a closer look at the long
+hitching-rail lined on either side with another solid mass of horses and
+vehicles, when he caught sight of Isabel driving a buggy and evidently
+searching for an empty post. He laid aside his grievance and made his
+way to her side. She quite beamed with welcome, and they disentangled
+themselves into a side street, where there were empty posts.
+
+"I only got home at half-past eleven last night," she informed him. "The
+boat was three hours late in starting, and when I finally made up my
+mind to come by train the last had gone. So I overslept this morning or
+I should have gone out to see you. But I meant to telephone you from
+here and ask you to come out for the first duck-shooting--"
+
+"Duck-shooting!" Gwynne forgot the grievance.
+
+"The season opens to-day--the fifteenth of October. I had meant really
+to ask you for the first thing this morning. Never mind, we have plenty
+of time, and you will not have to go home for anything. Just wait here
+until I do my errands."
+
+He tied his horse next to hers and sat down in the shade on a chair
+provided by a friendly store-keeper. In less than half an hour she
+returned, and they started for Old Inn. Isabel had never seemed so
+charming to him as they rode slowly out of the town and along the dusty
+road. Smiling and sparkling, she asked him rapid eager questions about
+his ranch, his plans, his comforts, whom he had met, how he had passed
+his days and evenings. The truth was she had practically forgotten him,
+and her conscience smote her. Her week in San Francisco had waxed to a
+fortnight, for she had enjoyed herself far more than was usual in the
+company of her relatives. Lyster Stone was one of the most agreeable of
+men when debts were not more than usually pressing, and as he had just
+painted a drop curtain and sold a picture for a considerable sum, he had
+replenished his own elaborate wardrobe, given his wife a new frock,
+silenced the loudest of his creditors, and thought it worth while to
+"blow the rest in" on a sister-in-law who seemed to have no taste for
+matrimony. Moreover, he really liked and admired her, and he liked still
+more to spend money. When his pockets were full of actual coin he
+abandoned himself to sheer happiness. Debt had bred philosophy;
+moreover, his wife relieved him of too depressing a contact with duns,
+and there were times when his respite was longer than he deserved. If
+his Paula had a little way of cajoling the amount out of her sister's
+pocket, why not? He had never refused a friend in need, and, in truth,
+could see no use for money except to spend it. If all the world did not
+wag his way, so much the worse for cold-blooded mercenary superfluous
+beings. So, the two weeks had been a round of dinners at the gay
+Bohemian restaurants, chafing-dish suppers at his own and other studios,
+the theatre and opera, and long walks about the brilliant streets at
+night. It was all the more interesting to Isabel from its odd wild
+likeness to foreign life. She had heard much of this American
+"continental" flavor of San Francisco life, only to be tasted by
+artificial light, and she had given herself up to it with an abandon of
+which she possessed a sufficient reserve. But one cloud had risen on the
+blue, and as it emptied itself in a torrent, it was a matter for
+congratulation that it had tarried the fortnight.
+
+A woman of growing wealth, who affected artists' society, had continued
+to live in her pretty odd little house, but had recently done it up like
+a stuffed and scented jeweller's box. The tiny salon was her pride. It
+was all cherry satin and white lace, the furniture lilliputian, to match
+the proportions of the room and the lady. She was large-eyed,
+dark-haired, pretty, and the room set her off admirably. It was here
+that she invariably received her artist friends, and felt herself at
+last set in a definite niche, in the city of individualities. One day,
+in a spasm of generosity, she bade Stone, calling in a mood of unusual
+depression, to paint it, and sell for his own benefit what, at least,
+should be a glowing bit of still life. Stone began his work next day,
+meaning, when the seductive interior was finished, to induce his patron
+to sit on the doll-like sofa for a portrait, irresistible alike to her
+vanity and pocket. But she capriciously went off to New York for
+clothes, and he exhibited the picture in the shop of a dealer where
+buyers were not infrequent. Thence, indeed, in the course of a few days
+went a wealthy broker whose sign was three balls. He liked the picture,
+but bargained that himself should sit on the sofa. His offer was
+generous. Stone, to do him justice, demurred, for all Bohemia, at least,
+knew the room. But Mrs. Paula wept at the thought of the lost hundreds,
+and he succumbed. The result, at the owner's insistence, was exhibited.
+The lady returned as unexpectedly as she had flown, and was asked at
+every step if she had "seen her room." Scenting mystery, she went
+to the gallery; and stood petrified before the faithful presentment
+of her cherry-colored satin boudoir, the very edge of the sofa
+accommodating a large gentleman with an eminent nose, a bulging
+shirt-front--diamond-studded--and knees long severed. He looked like a
+Hebraic Gulliver in Lilliput, and the unities were in tatters. She
+stared, stuttered, wept. And then she descended upon Stone.
+
+Gwynne laughed heartily as Isabel related the episode, but they fell
+into silence after they crossed the bridge and were able to accelerate
+their pace. He made no effort to break it, although Isabel had never
+found him more polite. She also thought him vastly improved with his
+thick coat of tan, and almost picturesque in his khaki riding-clothes
+and high boots. There were more subtle changes in him which it was too
+warm and dusty to speculate upon at the moment.
+
+Gwynne had restrained his spontaneous delight in seeing Isabel again.
+Not only did he have a genuine grievance in her neglect of him, but he
+had no intention that she should fancy he had need of anything she could
+give him, beyond superficial companionship and advice. More than once
+during the past weeks he had caught himself longing so miserably for her
+sympathy and the support of her strong independent character that it had
+alarmed him. He realized for the first time what a prop and resource the
+deep maturity and scornful strength of his mother had been. He must
+brace and reinforce his character at all points if he persisted in his
+determination to achieve the colossal task he had set for himself.
+Woman's sympathy was all very well for some men, or for him in more
+toward circumstances, but he had looked deeply into himself and been
+terrified at unsuspected weaknesses. He had set his teeth and determined
+to fight his fight alone. If he failed, at least he would have the
+consolation of never having cried out to a woman: "Give me your help! I
+need you!"
+
+He did not betray the least of this, but his first remark as they rested
+the horses on the slight hill leading to Isabel's ranch was less
+irrelevant than it may have seemed to himself.
+
+"I suppose you met all sorts of interesting Johnnies in that beloved San
+Francisco of yours," he said, abruptly.
+
+"Of course. It will be quite cool in an hour and we can go out.
+Fortunately I never gave away Uncle Hiram's shooting-togs, and he was
+quite your height and figure. We'll take tea and sandwiches with us so
+that we need not hurry home for supper."
+
+She suddenly forgot the ducks and pointed with her whip at the low hills
+behind her house. The runs were covered with several thousand
+snow-white, red-combed chickens, and all their little white houses shone
+in the sun. The effect was by no means inartistic, but Gwynne elevated
+his nose. He hated the sight of chickens.
+
+"Did you ever see anything more beautiful than that?" asked Isabel,
+proudly. "They all know me, and I love every one of them."
+
+"I don't doubt there is money in them," said Gwynne, dryly. "But as a
+pet I should prefer even a cat."
+
+"Oh, I only pet them when they are ill. There is an old feather-bed in
+the house, and I put them in that when they need nursing at night. That
+is a device of my own, and much better than going out at twelve o'clock
+on a cold dark night. By-the-way, I think your idea of selling half or
+more of Lumalitas admirable. Great tracts of land in this part of the
+State are out of date, and more bother than they are worth, anywhere.
+You can invest the money to great advantage in San Francisco; but I
+think you should devote the rest of the ranch to chickens--"
+
+"No, madam!" Gwynne turned upon her the glittering eye of an animal at
+bay. Then he laughed. "I have heard that proposition from every man I
+have met and daily from my superintendent until I managed to suppress
+him. I won't have a chicken on the ranch. The sight of them not only
+fills me with ennui, but I have no intention of presenting your comic
+papers with material. I could write their jokes myself--'_Gwynne before
+and after_': Westminster in the background and a hayseed figure in front
+addressing a constituency of chickens. Stumping the country with eggs in
+my pockets for the children. Dining the eminent members of my
+constituency on horse-meat, under the delusion that what is good for
+chickens is good for votes. 'Leghorn Gwynne.' 'The Member from
+Chickenville.' No thanks. No weapons that I can withhold."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+"This is all on my ranch," said Isabel; "so there is no danger of being
+peppered. The rest of the marsh is owned by clubs, and as there was no
+shooting here last year the ducks should be thicker than anywhere else.
+We should get our fifty apiece in no time."
+
+They were entering a narrow slough, hardly wider than the boat. It cut
+its zigzag way through the marsh for many miles, and they could follow
+its course with the eye but a few feet at a time. Gwynne shipped the
+oars and began to scull, his gun across his knee. Isabel, in front and
+with her back to him, sat with her own gun ready for a shot. On one side
+of them was a large piece of marsh-land, on the left, smaller patches,
+and little islands caught in the long grasping fingers of the tide.
+Gwynne had attired himself with an ill grace in a pair of his cousin
+Hiram's rubber boots that completely covered his body below the waist,
+and an old shooting-coat with capacious pockets. Isabel wore a similar
+costume, and but for her hair might have been mistaken for a lad. She
+possessed no interest for Gwynne whatever at the moment. Nor did
+anything else but the prospect of a new and exciting sport. The October
+evening was mellow and full of color, the entire reach of the marsh
+steeped in a golden haze shed from the glory in the west. Even the
+forests and the lower ridges rising to Tamalpais had something aqueous
+in their vague outlines, swayed gently in the golden tide. Only the tide
+lands were green; the very water was yellow. Here and there, but far
+away, a mast or sail rose above the level surface of the marsh. From the
+distance came the sound of constant shooting.
+
+Gwynne sculled silently, but with some impatience. They had left the
+open creek far behind and had not seen a duck. Suddenly Isabel's gun
+leaped to her shoulder. They rounded a sharp point and the whole surface
+of the narrow slough between them and the next bend was black with
+sleeping ducks. Gwynne's knee moved automatically to the seat in front
+of him, and as the startled birds rose he and Isabel fired to right and
+left. The scattering shot played havoc, and the second charge brought
+down at least half as many on the higher wing. Isabel reloaded the guns
+while Gwynne went for the ducks that had fallen on the land. He fell
+into several holes himself, and returned covered with mud, but waving
+his birds in triumph; and once more they stole softly along their
+winding way. The shot had roused neighboring flocks; several dark clouds
+had risen simultaneously, but in a few moments they settled again.
+
+"You had better use both guns," whispered Isabel, "and I will do the
+reloading. We can't do much with these old-fashioned things at best."
+
+Gwynne accepted this act of sacrifice with a matter-of-fact nod, and it
+was but a moment later that they came upon another flock. He fired with
+an accuracy of aim that won him an admiring mutter, although to miss
+would have been almost as noteworthy. But after repeating this
+experience several times, he shrugged his shoulders and announced
+himself blasé.
+
+"I'd like something a little more difficult," he said. "Ten minutes of
+this and we can glut the market."
+
+"All men are children," said Isabel, indulgently. "Tie up the boat and
+we'll go after widgeon."
+
+They landed and stole softly over the larger reach of marsh-land, Isabel
+in the lead as she knew every hole. It was ten minutes before she raised
+her hand and pointed to a wilted but still effective screen. Under cover
+of this they crawled towards a large pond on which ducks were resting
+but by no means asleep. Before the guns were shouldered they had taken
+flight; so few were brought down on the wing that Gwynne's interest
+revived, and he followed Isabel eagerly towards another pond with a
+better blind. Here they were more wary and more fortunate, and Isabel
+took a curious pleasure in watching the manifest bliss of her companion.
+She had never seen him look really happy before. Upon his return to
+Capheaton from his triumphant battle on the hustings he had been as
+impassive as his traditions demanded. On the morning of his engagement
+he had looked rather silly to her detached eye; and immediately after,
+tragedy and trouble and infinite vexation had claimed him. But this
+evening, with his cap pushed back, his nostrils distended, his eyes
+sparkling, he looked like any other young fellow to whom the present was
+all. Isabel reflected somewhat cynically that it was the opportunity to
+kill something that had effected this momentary reconciliation with
+life. But she was too good a sportswoman not to understand his mood, and
+when he had waded into the lake and returned flushed and triumphant with
+his bag, she complimented him so warmly that he laughed aloud in sheer
+delight.
+
+"We have enough for once," she began, but he would not hear of returning
+to the boat even for the refreshment of tea, and they went on and on
+until their feet were as weary as their shoulders under the burden that
+was Isabel's part to string while her partner enjoyed himself.
+
+"But we must really go," she announced, finally. "We have a long stretch
+out in the open creek after we leave the slough, and it is not so easy
+to keep the channel after dark. I have lost track of things and don't
+remember what time the moon rises. You can come every day if you like;
+and four in the morning is the best time if you are energetic enough--"
+
+"I would get up at midnight--stay up all night. But I am quite willing
+to return now--and not for tea. I should like several of these ducks for
+supper, if your Jap is less haughty than mine."
+
+Their way lay through the middle of the marsh-land. It was not until
+they reached the slough that she uttered a loud sharp cry. The boat was
+at least three feet below them and there was nothing at either end but
+mud.
+
+Isabel stamped both feet in succession and flung her burden to the
+ground. "Why, _why_ did I take Mac's word?" she exclaimed, furiously.
+"He always makes mistakes about the tide--he hasn't an inch of memory
+left. Why didn't I look at the calendar? Or think? This comes of going
+off for three weeks instead of staying at home and attending to
+business. I had a confused idea that this was the 'good week.' Great
+heavens!"
+
+Gwynne had watched her with considerable interest and curiosity. But he
+answered, soothingly: "Well, what of it? The tide turns, doesn't it." It
+happened that he had had no experience of marsh-lands.
+
+"Yes--in six hours."
+
+"Six hours! Well, what of it? It is all in the day's work. Look at it as
+a jolly adventure." It was his first opportunity to console and he
+hastened to take advantage of it. "We have tea and sandwiches, warm
+enough clothing, and the weather is perfection. If we get stiff and
+chilly we can walk--"
+
+"Walk? In these rubber boots? I am nearly dead already." She had a wild
+impulse to drop her head on his shoulder and weep; but her pride flew to
+the front and she shrugged her shoulders and remarked, airily: "I don't
+really mind anything much except being an idiot. However, I'll make it
+up to you. I can cook ducks better than Chuma. You make the tea."
+
+Gwynne made a fire out of decayed tule weed and driftwood, then climbed
+down into the boat and brought up the provisions and utensils intended
+for an earlier interlude. The tea warmed and stimulated both, and they
+knelt by the fire and toasted the ducks at the end of the boat-hook,
+scowling with a preternatural earnestness both were too hungry to
+observe. Then they fell to, and it is doubtful if either had ever eaten
+with a keener relish. They were obliged to use their fingers, and, as
+they had no salt, to shred the ham and wrap it about the morsels of
+duck, but to such minor matters they gave not a thought, and consumed
+four teals and every scrap they had brought from home, as well as
+another pot of tea. Isabel, recalling the injured air of her father,
+uncle, and brother-in-law when their comfort was rudely disturbed,
+warmed to Gwynne, who was good-humored and amused. Even the reflection
+that he had roughed it in far worse straits than this, or that had he
+the legal right to grumble he might possibly use it, did not alter the
+pleasant impression he made as he tramped out the fire, washed his hands
+in the marsh grass, and then stretched himself full length with his
+pipe. She lit a cigarette, but had not smoked half its length when she
+sprang to her feet.
+
+"Look!" she said. "We must get into the boat. It is getting damper every
+moment, and the fog will make us feel as if we were in our graves if we
+don't sit on something dry."
+
+She had pointed northward, and Gwynne saw a phantom mountain moving
+along the level surface of the marsh with the quiet plodding motion of a
+ship under full sail in a light breeze. The curious combination of
+images fascinated him, and he watched the stealthy silent progress of
+this night visitor from the tule lands of the north, that looked as if
+it might have obliterated the world. As he jumped down into the boat he
+saw before him, on three sides of him, the sparkling night. Then as
+Isabel laid her hands on his shoulders and he lifted her down, the fog
+swept over them, and there was nothing to do but sit and watch the glow
+of pipe and cigarette; even their own outlines were barely visible.
+
+"I fancy it will go home when the moon rises," said Isabel, with a
+little shiver. "Are you cold?" she asked, solicitously.
+
+"No," replied a tart voice. "Why didn't you let me ask that? You are not
+my mother. We can make tea at intervals. How long do you suppose the
+tide has been out?"
+
+"About two hours."
+
+"I am quite comfortable and have never resented any adventure. And this
+is the appropriate time and place for a certain story. As I remarked
+before I shall not know you until I have heard it. Pasts are dead
+walls."
+
+"It is not necessary that you should know me."
+
+"I think otherwise. You are my one friend among eighty millions of
+aliens, or ought to be. I shall continue to feel a superior sort of
+acquaintance until you have taken me into your confidence."
+
+There was a movement of the fog that he inferred was a shrug. "Very
+well," she replied, without a break in her cool even voice. "I suppose I
+shall enjoy talking about myself. It is not often I have had the
+opportunity to indulge in a monologue in my family, and you certainly
+are at my mercy. If you attempt to flee you will be mired like the boat,
+and I could not pull you out."
+
+He had never felt the least curiosity about the past history or the
+inner life of a mortal before, and in normal circumstances Isabel's
+would not have appealed to him. But her instrumentality in changing the
+whole current of his life had alarmed his masculinity into a resolve to
+demonstrate his superiority if it came to a contest of wills; given
+birth to a subtle assumption of proprietorship, indifferent in material
+things, but pressing towards the guarded chambers of the spirit. Isabel,
+vaguely uneasy earlier in the day, began to appreciate the advance of an
+outer and powerful force upon her precious freedom, and resented it. And
+while she made up her mind that if it came to a silent contest of wills,
+hers at least should not be conquered, she reflected that the deeper
+intimacy, certain to ensue if she gave him her confidence, would insure
+her a firmer and subtler hold upon his destinies.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+"Of course I lived two lives before my father's death. My days were
+sufficiently filled with him, to say nothing of making both ends meet;
+for even after my uncle's death, I had only a small income until the day
+of my complete liberty came. I slept soundly enough when I was not
+following my father about the house with a candle, or about the hills
+with a lantern. But such a life preyed upon my spirits. I imagined
+myself both melancholy and bitter and grew unhealthily romantic. But
+from the conditions of my life I had two escapes--in books and in
+dreams. My father hated company more and more and I rarely left him for
+a dance or one of those church festivities where all the young people of
+my set were sure to meet. I knew that I was regarded as rather a tragic
+figure, and this enhanced my morbid egoism. I wonder if I shall ever be
+as really happy again!
+
+"During the year following my father's death I lived out here alone, but
+with my hands tied by the executors of my uncle's will. I felt myself
+quite the enchanted princess and put in most of my time dreaming about
+the prince. I suppose no girl ever had such wild and impossible notions
+of love. That is to say most girls have, but I had peculiar
+opportunities for indulgence and elaboration. At the same time I
+despised or disliked every man I knew or ever had known--with the
+possible exception of Judge Leslie. Not only had I found all the men of
+my little personal world weak, or selfish, or tyrannical, but those I
+knew almost as well were narrow, or commonplace, or uninterested in
+anything but local politics or making money, or both combined. Not but
+that Rosewater is the world in little. You never read of any old Italian
+duchy where there was more jealousy and intrigue; more silent and tense,
+or open and gnashing struggle for supremacy than is centered in these
+three banks. They have prevented the town from increasing in size and
+importance, in spite of its prosperity, through their machinations
+against one another. If a stranger comes to the town intending to invest
+his money in some one of the flourishing industries, or to introduce
+another, the banker to whom he brings a letter, or whom he happens to
+meet first, terrifies him with tales of the rapacity and dishonorable
+methods of his rivals; and the other two, who fear that the first will
+get the stranger's business, warn him that Mr. Colton, for instance,
+never gave an hour's mercy. The three have made slow, sure, dogged
+fortunes, but each has prevented the others from becoming millionaires,
+and Rosewater from taking its proper place as county seat. And they are
+all afraid of new-comers, new capital, of authority passing out of their
+hands. They are careful not to charge exorbitant rates of interest, and
+every farmer and merchant in the county borrows from them; partly from
+habit, partly because the banks are uncommonly sound. They foreclose
+without mercy, but that does not frighten their old patrons, who have
+the perennial optimism of the country. The only capital they have not
+succeeded in frightening off is that controlled by the great
+corporations. One or two have wedged their way in and others will follow
+in time. Doubtless when the younger men get the reins in their hands
+they will trim with the times, but the older seem to be Biblical if not
+Christian, and the consequence is that most of the younger have left for
+a wider field.
+
+"Finally the day came when I could turn my back on California, and I
+felt sure that I should remain away for ten years at least. I thought
+that the liberty I had longed for all my life was mine at last. In a
+conducted tour, I soon discovered, there was little liberty, to say
+nothing of privacy. Before I had been two days in the train I was made
+to feel that there was something wrong with a person that showed a
+disposition to retire into herself. She was either aristocratic, or had
+something to hide, unless she responded to the confidences natural to
+people of that class. As there were just eighteen in the party, of
+course I always had a room partner, and there was not a woman in the
+entire company that I would have known from choice. However, it was
+excellent discipline, not unenlightening, and the end came in six weeks.
+They sailed from Naples and I wandered about by myself. In a way the
+liberty was intoxicating, but of course the sum of it was lessened by
+the daily irritations of travel in Europe: the rapacity of the Italians
+and French, the wretched trains, the hordes of vulgar tourists, mostly
+of my own nation, the absurd primness, quite foreign to my nature, I was
+forced to assume when alone with a man who was neither English nor
+American, the awful fatigues, the ennuis of long rainy days in the
+second-rate hotels and pensions I had to frequent. Still, I was too
+young for any unpleasant impression to take root and discourage me, and
+there was much that was wholly delightful. I spent weeks in a city or
+even village that took my fancy. But even so it was not long before I
+realized that my liberty was as far off as ever, because my soul at
+least was possessed by the image of the prince, the more tormenting and
+insistent as his outlines were so remarkably vague. In the intervals
+when novelty ceased to appeal, when my very eyes refused to look at
+things, I pictured inexpressibly thrilling and romantic futures. Then I
+would fall into a panic at the passing of youth, for a woman never feels
+so old again as between eighteen and twenty-five--her first
+quarter-century.
+
+"And I did not lack opportunities. I met many people, some of them quite
+charming. But they left me cold.
+
+"Then I lived the student life in Paris, studying art just enough to
+give me the raison d'être. It was very gay, very irresponsible, very
+educating to a provincial miss. The restaurants with their sanded
+floors, and the cosmopolitan mixture of students, generally eccentric to
+look at, brandishing temperament until the poor thing must have been
+worn out before its harness of technique was ready--all was a perpetual
+source of delight to me, and I used to let my mind dwell on Rosewater
+for the sake of enjoying myself with the more wonder and gratitude.
+
+"But of course in such a life I had to have a companion, I could not
+long go to students' restaurants alone. I had taken a tiny flat in the
+Latin Quarter at the top of a house, and overlooking a convent where the
+nuns were always walking in the garden. A _femme de ménage_ cooked my
+breakfast and kept my rooms in order; but although I was quite
+comfortable and never lonely, I had not been established a fortnight
+before certain experiences at the restaurants and on the street, which
+you can imagine for yourself, convinced me that I could not live alone.
+So I looked hurriedly over the field, and decided that an American girl
+in my class suggested fewest complications. Moreover, she interested me.
+She had a pale tense face, rarely spoke to anybody, and worked as if her
+life depended upon every stroke, although her talent was not
+conspicuous. It was not easy to approach her, but one day, after I had
+dined alone in my flat five times in succession, I noticed that she was
+paler than usual, and that her hands were trembling. Then I felt certain
+she was in trouble, and it would have been my instinct to help her in
+any case. I joined her as we left the atelier, and asked her to walk a
+bit. It was not long before she admitted that her money was practically
+gone, and that her family would not send her any more; they had never
+approved of her coming to Paris to study art. They were not at all well
+off, and as she had a facility in trimming hats they had thought it her
+duty to contribute more immediately to the support of the family. She
+had not advanced as rapidly as she had hoped to do, and it would be
+insupportable humiliation to return.
+
+"Here was my opportunity. I exultingly invited her to share my
+apartment, told her that my income was quite enough for two, that I was
+merely studying life, and that her protection would more than compensate
+me for the little extra outlay. She declined at first, hesitated for a
+week; but in the end she came. I grew very fond of her, and she
+interested me more and more. Her real bitterness taught me what a purely
+youthful symptom mine had been, and she was rather a clever girl, often
+entertaining. She was about twenty-six, I fancy, and had received a good
+education at the academy of the Western town in which she had been born.
+Her grandparents were Italian emigrants, and she had fine black eyes
+and a beautiful mouth.
+
+"Well, before many months had passed I knew that she was in desperate
+straits, and she offered to go away, reiterating that she had only
+intended to take advantage of the temporary haven while she fed her
+courage and painted something that might sell. I knew that if she left
+me she would throw herself into the Seine, and I persuaded her to stay.
+It is not difficult to persuade a stricken woman to remain under a
+friendly roof. I was full of sympathy for the poor little thing, but I
+don't deny that I was immensely interested, and fairly palpitated with
+the thought that I was actually seeing life at first hand. Who the hero
+of her romance was I never discovered, except that he was of her own
+race, and married, a fact he had concealed until ready to leave Paris.
+She told me enough to make me hate all men so violently that the prince
+took himself off and left me in peace. But I had trouble enough in my
+household. As time went on Veronica's alternate attacks of melancholy
+and hysteria were terrible. I sat up night after night to keep her from
+throwing herself out of the window; at times she seemed to be quite off
+her head. And then she still loved the wretch, and would maunder by the
+hour. But it ended, as everything does; and the poor girl died. I have
+no desire to linger over the climax. If anything was needed to set the
+final seal upon my disgust with life at first hand it was the mean and
+sordid details that attend death and burial in Paris. The landlord
+behaved like the mercenary fiends they all are; I was obliged to call in
+the assistance of the American consul before I could get the body out of
+the house, and between all the trouble and fuss poor Veronica's story
+was published from the house-tops.
+
+"As soon as it was over I left Paris and started to travel slowly
+through Germany, feeling now a real sense of liberty, inasmuch as I was
+sure I could be all intellect henceforth, dependent upon nothing so
+unsatisfactory as human happiness. I never wanted another real contact
+with life. I would travel, and study, and develop my mind, possibly some
+latent talent. Many talents are manufactured anyhow, and the world is
+always hailing them as genius.
+
+"But, of course, in time, and with constant change of scene, to say
+nothing of youth, the impression faded; the painful experience hovered
+faintly in the background of the past; the romantic imp in my brain, a
+little pale and emaciated from its long sojourn in the cellar, resumed
+the throne. Once more I began to realize that I was human, and to cast
+about for the mate that must surely be roaming in search of me. It was
+then that I arrived in Munich.
+
+"I saw him first in the Englischergarten. You remember it, that
+wonderful imitation of a great stretch of open country, with fields
+where they make hay, and bits of wild woods, and crooked pathways, and
+bridges over a branch of the Isar, greenest and loveliest of rivers. And
+then the little beer-gardens, where the people are always sitting and
+listening to the band--and beyond the tree-tops, the spires and domes of
+the beautiful city.
+
+"I was standing by the lake watching the swans when he rode by, and I am
+bound to say that he made no great impression. I hardly should have
+noticed him had it not been for his excessively English appearance, and
+a certain piercing quality in the glance with which he favored me. I
+should never have given him another thought, but a week later I met him
+formally. It came about oddly enough.
+
+"That evening in looking through my trunk for a business paper I came
+upon a letter of introduction given me by a friend I had made in Italy.
+It was to a Baroness L., of Munich. I had quite forgotten it, and the
+sight of it inspired me with no desire for the social curiosities. I was
+infatuated with Munich, and its exteriors satisfied me. It has a large
+courteous grandly-hospitable air, as if it were the private property of
+a king, to which, however, all strangers are royally welcome. It is the
+ideal king's city: life but no bustle; neither business, as we
+understand the word, nor poverty; a city of infinite leisure and
+infinite interest, a superb living picture-book, where one is ever
+amused, interested, both stimulated and soothed. I had been in it three
+weeks and had almost made up my mind to live there, and dream away the
+rest of my life. Knote and Moréna, Feinhals and Bender were singing at
+the Hof Theatre. Mottl was conducting. Lili Marberg's Salome was
+something to be seen again and again. You forgot the play itself. And
+Bardou-Müller's Mrs. Alving! I did not sleep for two nights.
+
+"Well, I left the letter on my table, instead of returning it to the
+portfolio of my trunk, and it exercised a certain insistence. What are
+letters of introduction for? And should I not see the social life of
+Europe when the opportunity offered? So I left a card on the baroness.
+She returned it in the course of a day or two, then wrote, asking me to
+drink tea with her. I went. There were perhaps fifty people there. I
+have not the faintest idea who they were or what they looked like.
+Prestage--that was only one of his names, but it will do--asked
+immediately to be introduced to me, and we talked in a corner for an
+hour. Before we had talked for ten minutes I knew that the great gates
+were swinging open. It is not possible for a woman to define one man's
+fascination to another, and I hardly know myself why this man so
+completely turned my head. He was not exactly good-looking, but he had
+remarkable eyes and a singular tensity of manner, which made me almost
+breathless at times. He was, moreover, brilliantly educated and
+accomplished, and the most finished specimen of the man of the world I
+had met. He was an American of inherited fortune who had spent the
+greater part of his life in Europe, alternating between Paris and
+London, although he knew the society of other cities well enough. His
+contempt for the vulgarity of the huge modern fortunes, and his
+admiration for Munich, were the first subjects to discover to us the
+similarity of our tastes.
+
+"We soon discovered others. I think he fell as deeply in love with me as
+he was capable of doing. He was forty-one and had fairly exhausted his
+capacity, for he had lived the life of pleasure only; but no doubt I was
+something new in his experience, and penetrated the ashes like a strong
+western breeze. I have seen him turn quite white when I suddenly
+appeared at one of our trysts.
+
+"Of course I lived in a pension. I had no private sitting-room, and he
+positively refused to sit in the salon a second time. So we used to take
+interminable walks about Munich, lingering in all the quaint old Gothic
+corners, along the magnificent stretches of Renaissance; lunching on the
+terraces of the restaurants under the shade of the green trees, or in
+quaint little back gardens set in the angle of buildings as mediæval as
+Rothenburg; the people looking down at us from the narrow windows or the
+little balconies. We spent hours in the Englischergarten, sitting on the
+banks of the Isar; often took the train to the beautiful Isarthal and
+spent the day in the woods; or sailed on one of the lakes with the
+tumbled glittering peaks of the Alps always in sight. We visited
+Ludwig's castles together, attended peasants' festivals in the
+mountains, lunching in some dilapidated old garden of a Gasthaus. And of
+course we went constantly to the opera. It was positive heaven for a
+time, and as romantic as the heart of any romantic idiot could wish. I
+was so happy I could not even think, even when I was alone. I simply sat
+like one in a trance and gazed into space, vague rose-colored dreams
+turning the slow wheel of my brain. No one paid any attention to us.
+Everybody in the pension was studying something; we avoided the American
+church and consulate and even the Baroness L. We were determined to have
+our blissful dream unvulgarized by gossip.
+
+"There is no doubt that for a time my young enthusiasm gave him back a
+flicker of the romance of his own youth, but of course it couldn't last.
+I hardly know when it was I began to realize that the whole base of his
+nature was honeycombed with ennui, and that any structure reared upon it
+might topple at a moment's notice. I had been steeped to the eyes in the
+present. I had no wish to marry. Marriage was prosaic. Life was a fairy
+tale, why materialize it? I soon discovered that man's capacity for
+living on air is limited, and I had almost yielded to his entreaties to
+cross to England where we could marry without tiresome formalities, when
+one day--this was perhaps a month after we had met--he was late at a
+tryst. I lived a lifetime in five minutes. When he arrived he was so
+apologetic and so charming that if I had been an older woman I should
+have known that something was wrong. The next day, as it happened, I had
+to go to bed with influenza, and wrote him that I might not get out for
+a week. He wrote twice a day and sent me flowers. On the fourth morning
+I felt so much better that I sent him a note by a _dinstmann_ telling
+him that I should lunch on the terrace of the Neue Bürse restaurant. He
+was not awaiting me; nor did he come at all. Later I saw him driving
+with an astonishingly handsome woman; who looked as if she had been born
+without crudities or illusions.
+
+"There are no words to express the tortures of jealousy and disgust that
+I endured that afternoon. But at five came a note stating that he had
+been out of town on a lonely voyage of discovery, and begging me to come
+for a cup of chocolate at the Café Luitpold--where we had gone so often
+to watch the motley crowd. I went, wrath and horror struggling in my
+heart with the sanguineness of woman. He had never been so charming and
+so plausible. I let him go on, exulting in the discovery that he was a
+liar, for I knew that it pushed me a step towards recovery. When he had
+finished I told him that I had seen him in the Hofgarten. I never shall
+forget how white he turned. But if he had been an adventurer his mind
+could not have been more nimble. He recovered himself instantly,
+admitted the impeachment, insisted that he had just returned when I saw
+him, had accepted a seat in the lady's carriage as he was entering his
+hotel--before he had time to go to his room and find my note. I knew
+that he was lying, but when he changed the subject to impassioned
+pleading that I would cross to England at once, I was forced to believe
+that he loved me.
+
+"But I was miserably undecided. Moreover, I could not leave Munich. My
+quarterly remittance was unaccountably delayed. I told him this. He knew
+that I would not move without my own money, but he sent off several
+cables. The reply came that the drafts had gone and must have been lost
+in the mails. Duplicates would be sent. There was nothing to do but
+wait.
+
+"I suppose that money enters into all things. It certainly ruled my
+destiny. The fortnight that ensued I never think of if I can help it. He
+was desperately bored with Munich, but too polite to leave me alone. I
+saw him with the woman three or four times. She was an Austrian who did
+not visit the Baroness L., and she was staying at his hotel. There was
+no doubt that he still wished to marry me, but I was in even less doubt
+that his ruined nature would yield more and more to this sort of
+fascination when my novelty had worn thin. Before my money arrived my
+mind was made up. I dared not trust myself to the seduction of his
+manner and voice--he was a past-master in the art of making love. I
+wrote him that I would not marry a man I could not trust, and fled to
+Vienna, telling my Munich bankers to keep my letters until I sent for
+them. For two weeks I travelled madly through Austria and Hungary. Never
+for a moment was I free of torments. Never before had I actually
+comprehended what love meant. I hardly ate or slept. I arrived at a
+place only to leave it. The hotel-keepers thought I was the American
+tourist overtaken by that final madness they had always anticipated.
+When the fortnight finished I looked back upon an eternity in purgatory.
+I surrendered; at least he loved me in his way. He had never ceased to
+urge our marriage. Who could say that I might not be fascinating enough
+to hold him? It was worth the trial, and I despised myself for laying
+down my arms without a struggle.
+
+"I took the Oriental express from Budapest, but during the journey,
+swift as it was, I underwent certain reactions. I knew that he must have
+left Munich, that all I could do was to take a letter to his bank and
+ask that it be forwarded. I wrote the letter as soon as I arrived, but
+decided to post it; my pride revolted at facing the sharp eye of the
+person that handled the letters of credit. I had gone to the bank with
+Prestage more than once.
+
+"As soon as the letter was posted I experienced a certain measure of
+peace, having done all I could. Nevertheless, to sit still was
+impossible, and I set out for a walk. It was one of those brilliant
+clear crisp days with which that high plateau can put even California to
+the blush. I saw that all the tram-cars were crowded, and that carriage
+loads of people had flower pieces. I asked if it were a Feiertag and was
+reminded that it was the 1st of November, All Saints' Day; Munich was on
+its way to the several cemeteries to decorate the graves. I had seen All
+Saints' Day in Venice and felt a mild curiosity to compare the Bavarian
+festival with the Italian. So I walked out to the great Alt Sud Friedhof
+where so many celebrities are buried, and where I fancied the scene
+would be most complete. When I arrived at the entrance the frames that
+had been set up in the outer court were almost denuded of the flower
+pieces the countrywomen had brought in to sell, but I bought a wreath at
+the solicitation of a peasant in a picturesque head-dress, and followed
+the crowd. The cemetery is on three sides of the entrance and enclosed
+by a high brick wall. I stood a moment at the inner official entrance,
+hardly knowing which way to turn; but seeing a number of staring people
+in a corridor on my right that faced one great division of the cemetery,
+I was turning into it mechanically when a policeman waved me back with
+the information that the entrance was at the other end. But not until I
+had seen, stared, and gasped. In an alcove was a figure, almost upright,
+that, in the first dazed seconds I took to be a wax-work, but
+immediately knew to be a dead woman. As I almost ran out I recalled that
+in Bavaria the dead are taken from the house within six hours, and are
+kept in a public mortuary for three days, or until all danger of
+premature interment is over.
+
+"I do not think I should mind, particularly, seeing a ghost; I am sure
+my mental curiosity would get the better of my unwilling flesh; but I
+have a real horror of the corpse. I tried to forget the grotesque
+exhibition I had stumbled upon, in the novel and interesting scene about
+me. The long aisles of the cemetery were filled with well-dressed
+people, some strolling, others decorating, all apparently enjoying
+themselves. Almost all of the graves and monuments were bedecked, and
+presented a most Elysian appearance with the masses of bright flowers,
+the streamers of wide ribbon, the lighted lanterns, many of them antique
+and beautiful, above all the tall flambeaux, whose flames looked white
+and unearthly against the bright atmosphere. Above was a deep-blue sky
+with those thick low masses of snow-white clouds one sees only in
+Bavaria.
+
+"But that grotesque little figure with its shrunken yellow face under
+the pitiless sun glare, its bony old hands, attached I knew, to the
+string of a distant bell, did not leave my mind for an instant. I walked
+down every path, I examined every interesting monument, I even went into
+the other divisions where there are so many statues in the alcove tombs;
+but all in vain. I felt that I should see that old woman to the end of
+my days. I could recall the very pattern of the cheap black lace of her
+cap. There was but one way to rid my mind of the obsession, and that
+was to return to the corridor, stand in front of every earthen figure,
+remain there until my mind was satiated, in consequence delivered.
+
+"I set my teeth and went back to the Leichenhalle. Of course there were
+many to keep me company. I looked long and unflinchingly at two
+gentlemen in evening clothes, an old maid dressed for once on earth as a
+bride, a young woman and her infant. The coffins lay on an inclined
+plane and the edges were so concealed by a mass of flowers and greenery
+that the ghastly company looked as if half rising to hold a reception.
+
+"And then I stood for I do not know how long before the alcove next to
+the old woman beside the exit, not knowing whether I were turned to
+stone or sitting by the Rosewater marsh indulging in some wild morbid
+flight of imagination.
+
+"For there he was. For a second I did not fully recognize him, he was so
+yellow, his lower jaw had so hideously retreated, completely altering
+the slightly cynical expression of the mouth. The bright gay sunlight
+searched out every line carved by too much living, the little wrinkles
+about the eyes, the weakness of the handsome polished hands. He looked
+unspeakably aged and hideous. I had never dreamed that a brilliant mind
+could leave so miserable a shell behind it, that the body was such a
+mean poverty-stricken thing, a thing to be thrust out of sight as soon
+as it had fulfilled its work of balking and ruining the soul. I had
+never looked at Veronica after her death, and only once at my father,
+who had not horrified me, for here the undertaker has arts unknown,
+apparently, in Bavaria.
+
+"My love died without a gasp. I shrank and curdled with horror that I
+had loved that hideous clay. What he had aroused in me was merely the
+response of youth to the masculine magnet, a trifle more specialized
+than I had heretofore encountered; the inevitable fever when infection
+appears. All personal feeling vanished out of me so completely that even
+while I stood there I felt the same pity for him that I had for the
+others, the helpless dead so mercilessly exposed to the vulgar
+indifferent crowd. If I could have hurried him into the privacy of the
+grave I would have exerted every effort, but before the laws of the
+country I was powerless. As I was leaving the cemetery I discovered that
+I still carried the wreath. I went back and added it to the bank of
+greenery which his valet no doubt had provided.
+
+"When I returned to my pension I sent for the man and learned that he
+and the Consul-General of the United States had done all that the
+authorities had left in their hands. The body was to be shipped to New
+York within the month. He had died of Bright's disease. It had declared
+itself a day or two after I left. After ten days of intermittent
+suffering, during which the valet had felt no apprehension, he had died
+suddenly.
+
+"I left Munich the same day. If I have failed to give you any adequate
+impression of my agonies, it will be next to impossible to describe my
+subsequent states of mind. Indeed I have little remembrance of my mental
+condition during the weeks of travel in Switzerland and Italy that
+followed. I was deliberately living up on the surface of my nature,
+indifferent to what was awaiting recognition below, although I knew it
+to be nothing unwelcome. Then, finally, I felt the time had come when I
+could draw aside the black curtain which I had hung for decency's sake
+between my consciousness and my depths, and tell the new guest to come
+forth. The guest was the liberty I had waited for all my life. I felt
+indescribably free, light, strong. The tyranny of love, even while it
+was but the love idea, that had shackled me for so many years, narrowing
+my interests, warping my imagination, clouding the future, was
+dissipated at last. I had paid the tribute to my youth and sex. I felt
+really alive for the first time, existing in the actual not in the dream
+world. There are women and women; and quite enough of the fine old
+domestic order to keep the world going; but there is a vast and
+increasing number that are never really alive and worth anything to
+themselves or life until they have worked through that necessary
+madness, buried it, and settled down to those infinite interests upon
+which matrimony, happy or otherwise, bolts a thousand doors. Some day I
+will tell you my theory of what such women are really born for, but you
+have had enough for one night and the story is finished."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Gwynne, between the fog and the story, felt congealed to the marrow. He
+leaned his elbows on his knees and stared at the bottom of the boat. It
+was the second time that the dark and carefully guarded recesses of the
+human soul had been opened to him, but Zeal's at least were a man's, and
+he had listened to him with a certain passive acceptance cut with
+lightning-like visions of his own ruined future. He had never been
+invited into a woman's crypts before, and he hardly knew whether he were
+gratified or repelled. She had been as brutally truthful as he would
+have expected her to be if she spoke at all, but he doubted if he
+understood her as well as he had expected. He had been assured that she
+had once at least possessed the capacity for intense feeling, but what
+was the result? And were the depths frozen solid? Or merely buried
+alive?
+
+He remarked after a moment: "I cannot think of anything appropriate to
+say, so perhaps it is as well to say nothing. I certainly do not feel
+that you are in any need of my sympathies, for you are quite terribly
+strong. When did all this happen?"
+
+"About eight months before I went to England."
+
+"What did you do with yourself in the interval?"
+
+"I climbed in the Alps a bit, then went to Rome and studied the
+Campagna, then travelled somewhat in Spain. By that time the desire for
+California had grown insistent. The novelty of Europe had worn thin. I
+was tired of playing at doing things, and only at home could I really
+accomplish anything. I suddenly made up my mind to pay the long-delayed
+visit to England, stopping in Paris by the way for frocks. I doubt if I
+ever enjoyed anything more than those three weeks in Paris, where I
+completely forgot every unpleasant association. It was my first fine
+wardrobe, my first opportunity to experience to the full the delight of
+clothes. I have felt quite happy here. California is so far from every
+other place that it is almost like living on a detached planet. You
+forget the rest of the world for months at a time. For days after I
+returned I wandered about out-of-doors in a gay irresponsible mood, and
+carolled all over the house. Of course it was nothing but the
+electricity of the climate and that I was in my own State once more and
+took an insane pride in it. You do not even need to be born here for
+that; it comes with the inevitable sense of isolation. You will feel it
+in time. If I had not known that so certainly I should never have dared
+to urge you to come."
+
+Gwynne smiled with a pardonable cynicism; but while he was not unwilling
+the conversation should turn upon himself, his curiosity was not
+satisfied. The fog had gone and the moon had risen. He could see Isabel
+quite plainly. She had turned her head and was gazing out over the great
+expanse desolated by the moonlight, and he studied her profile for the
+first time, often as he had observed it. To-night with the moonlight on
+it and against the dark hills it was almost repellently unmodern in its
+sharply cut regularity, the classic modelling of the eye-socket and
+chin, the nose with its slight arch. Her hair had fallen from its pins
+and hung in a braid, its length concealed by her position, and making
+the effect of a queue. She had long since taken off her hat and wrapped
+its veil about her head. The veil had slipped and might easily have been
+mistaken for a ribbon confining the queue at the base of the head. For
+an instant Gwynne's senses swam. He recalled the portraits of their
+Revolutionary ancestors in the house on Russian Hill. It might have been
+a medallion suspended before him. He drew in his breath; then his eye
+fell to the short thin sensitive upper lip, rarely quiet for all her
+extraordinary repose; to the full enticing under lip, and the little
+black moles. Then his gaze wandered down to the rough shooting-jacket,
+to the rubber boots reaching to her waist, and he only restrained
+himself from laughing aloud because he feared to rush down the curtain
+before that secretive nature.
+
+"Then you have no faith in love as the best thing in the world?" he
+asked.
+
+She turned upon him her clear dreaming eyes. "I have faith enough in
+love, as I have faith in death, or any other of the uncontrovertible
+facts, as well as in its mission. But not as the best thing in life; not
+for my sort at least. Not for even the domestic, for that matter, unless
+they are utterly brainless. I believe that from the beginning of time
+the misery of the world has been caused by the superstition that love
+was all. It must continue to be the fate of the child-bearing woman, I
+suppose--for a while at least; but others have blundered upon the fact
+that it is a mere incident, and are far happier in consequence. To women
+like Anabel freedom means an indulgent husband and plenty of money. To
+others it means something of which the Anabels know the bare
+nomenclature: an absolute freedom of the soul, of which the outer
+independence is but the symbol. As I said, we only find it when we have
+finished with the bogie of love. It is a modern enough discovery. Think
+of the poor old maids of the generations behind us, who, failing to
+marry, collapsed into insignificance instead of revelling in their
+deliverance. And what humiliation to know that in your youth you are
+really wooed for the sake of the race alone, no matter what the
+delusions. If any one doubts it let him compare the matrimonial
+opportunities of the ugly maternal girl and the ugly clever girl. When
+clever women realize that they are a sex apart and wait until their
+first youth at least is over before selecting a companion of the sex
+that I am quite willing to concede must always interest us more than our
+own, and no doubt is necessary to our completion, then will the world
+have taken its first step towards real happiness."
+
+Gwynne repressed his gorge and answered practically: "Not a bad idea if
+two were really suited, for no doubt companionship is _one_ of the best
+things in life, and a woman is more useful in many ways to a man than a
+partner of his own sex. It is even apparent that she does equally well
+in certain varieties of sport. I suppose the more experience a man has
+had of life the more he hesitates to define what love really is. One has
+attacks of such a severity and one recovers so completely! Doubtless
+Schopenhauer was right: it is merely the furious determination of the
+race to persist. Spencer tells us that it is 'absolutely antecedent to
+all relative experience whatever.' Companionship--yes--perhaps----"
+
+"It is necessary to a man; but by no means to all women----"
+
+"Not for yourself, you mean. You are still blunted and somewhat
+disgusted--"
+
+"I have dismissed the question. You cannot imagine how happy I feel
+every morning when I wake up, and every night when I go, always rather
+tired, into my comfortable little bed, knowing that I shall sleep like
+an infant. I love work. I love out-door life. I love the long evenings
+with my books and my thoughts, and my plans for the future--all my own.
+I revel in the thought that I can never be unhappy again, because now I
+love no one. I loved my poor father, and suffered with him in his fits
+of repentance and shame. I loved, of course, that man. I have absolutely
+nothing in common with Paula, and my mother is merely a pretty memory. I
+am fond of Anabel and perhaps several other friends--Mr. and Mrs.
+Leslie; but that sort of affection does not go very deep. Love is
+synonymous with selfishness and slavery--slavery because you no longer
+own yourself. My brother-in-law adores my sister, makes a great point of
+his fidelity, because before his marriage he was always flaunting some
+painted female, without which possession, a few years ago, a San
+Franciscan felt that he would lose the respect of his fellow-citizens.
+But Lyster's reform makes him as exacting as a Turk. If my poor silly
+little sister smiles at some fugitive thought he demands to know what it
+is, and if she cannot remember he sulks for a day. He would possess her
+very thoughts. She dares not have a man friend, talk to a man for half
+an hour at a time. He won't let her belong to a club--clubs are all very
+well for other women, but his wife is not as other women. On the other
+hand, he has long since let her persuade him that he is the most
+marvellous of men, and, in consequence, permits her to make every sort
+of mean little sacrifice while he spends his money on himself. Her eyes
+are in a measure open now, but it is too late, and she rebels in the
+usual futile feminine way. There are millions like them. You will meet
+Anne Montgomery. She is thirty-five now, quite plain, and makes a living
+as a sort of itinerant housekeeper and caterer. She was a most lovely
+girl, with a wild-rose complexion and starlike eyes, and full of life
+and buoyant hope. Her great talent was for the violin, and she dreamed
+of conquering the world. Teachers told her that with the proper study
+she could at least become a professional of the first rank, although she
+lacked the genius of creation. Her parents and an older sister--one of
+the plain, domestic, unselfish kind, whose pleasure is in living for
+others--were horrified at the bare suggestion. Not only because they
+were old-fashioned--some of the most old-fashioned people on earth are
+in San Francisco--but because it would mean separation from their idol.
+They surrounded her like a flaming belt, not even a man could get at
+her. They worshipped her as if she was a being of another world,
+devoured her; all the treasures of life were centred in her. That there
+might be the less temptation, they never took her to Europe; and
+gradually induced her to lay aside the instrument altogether. She was
+very sweet and gentle, and she loved them and submitted (I would have
+throttled them all). But she faded rapidly, lost her lovely coloring and
+animation, and she had no other beauty. Then her father speculated and
+failed. While they were undergoing real privations the influenza swooped
+down upon them and carried off the three older members of the family in
+a week. Anne Montgomery is the most conspicuous victim of what are
+generally supposed to be the higher affections that I know. They were
+just commonplace animals--those three--nothing more."
+
+"Real happiness may lie in forgetting that love is selfish, and in
+overlooking the bitter in the sweet."
+
+Isabel shrugged her shoulders. "If one can be happy without love why run
+the risks?"
+
+They felt that they had exhausted the subject for the present and there
+was a long silence. Gwynne's eyes wandered over the inexpressibly
+desolate and sinister landscape. The intense brilliancy of the moon
+seemed to press darkness down upon the earth. It was true that every
+object was as sharp of outline as if cut against crystal, but they were
+a hard dark brown: the hills that jutted out into the windings of the
+marsh, the marsh itself, the more distant mountains. It looked like a
+landscape upon which the sun had set for ever, smitten with death--or
+not yet born into the solar system; some terrible formless menacing
+globe on the edge of the Universe. As he had approached San Francisco on
+the afternoon of his arrival, standing on the forward deck of the boat
+in a high wind, he had thought it the most stranded lonely city he had
+ever seen. He recalled the impression now, and in a flash he appreciated
+the Californian's attitude to the rest of the world, the effect of such
+isolation upon the character of a people that had created a great and
+important city out of the wilderness, and in half a century. In spite of
+the obstinate aloofness of his ego he felt an involuntary thrill of
+pride in his connection with such a people; and hoped it might be
+premonitory. But again the eerie landscape claimed him and he became
+aware of the weird night sounds that broke out with violent abruptness
+after intervals of throbbing quiet: the loud honk-honk of geese, the
+shriek of loons, the noisy capricious serenade of the frogs. He
+experienced a feeling of such utter isolation that he almost started
+when Isabel spoke.
+
+"These waste places in California are almost terrifying by moonlight,"
+said she. "They always look as if they were brooding, crouching,
+concentrating their energies for a convulsion. No earthquake country can
+be quite normal in any of its aspects, nor quite beautiful. Here comes
+the tide. How Mac will grumble at us! But he is sure to have kept the
+fire going, and you shall have a cup of hot coffee before you start for
+home."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Gwynne, on the following day, was making a late toilet, and in anything
+but a good-humor, for he had grown accustomed to early rising, when he
+received a note from Isabel.
+
+It ran:
+
+     DEAR PARTNER,--Anabel has just told me over the telephone that Tom
+     and Mr. Leslie and two other representative citizens are going out
+     to see you this afternoon. I have the ghost of an idea that a
+     friendly call is not their only object. _Do_ be plastic--it is
+     better in the beginning--until you know your ground. Above all,
+     don't be too English. You are vastly improved, but you have lapses.
+
+     I send you your share of the ducks. Mariana's roasting will explain
+     our pride in one of the two most native of our products--the next
+     time we go to San Francisco I'll take you to the market and we will
+     sit in a grimy little balcony restaurant and you will be introduced
+     to fried California oysters.
+
+     Please consider the marsh your own; and whenever you come, remember
+     that you are to have breakfast or supper with me. Are you quite
+     comfortable? If anything is wrong I will go over and interview
+     Mariana and the Jap. Of course the latter will appropriate your
+     cigarettes and books; he is probably a prince, and far from
+     condescending to steal, he will take them as his right; and his
+     hauteur may match your own at times. Moreover, he may decamp any
+     morning without giving notice--Lafcadio Hearn dwells upon the
+     _impermanency_ of the Japanese, and we can all bear him out. But on
+     the other hand the Jap will keep your house cleaner than any other
+     sort of servant, and he can be both amiable and alert when he
+     chooses. I merely warn you, for I know nothing of your present
+     _homme de chambre_ beyond the recommendation of my Chuma, who is
+     amiable to the verge of imbecility. If he disappears, let me know
+     at once, for I really want to make you comfortable and contented in
+     what I know must seem to you little more than a beautiful
+     wilderness peopled by ambitious barbarians. But wait till you know
+     San Francisco!
+
+     ISABEL.
+
+Gwynne smiled at the form of address and the expressions of concern in
+his welfare; but he scowled twice over the admonition to be plastic and
+American.
+
+"I'll be what I damn please," he announced, aloud, much to the surprise
+of Imura Kisaburo Hinomoto who entered at the moment with his shaving
+water.
+
+Nevertheless, when his visitors arrived, late in the afternoon, his
+natural courtesy, and the reflection that he had not come to America to
+fail, induced him to receive the four with something like warmth, and to
+place his cigars and whiskey--he already knew better than to offer them
+tea--at their immediate disposal. They sat on the porch facing the
+mountain, and for a few moments the conversation was confined to the
+weather and the scenery, giving Gwynne an opportunity to observe his
+guests with some minuteness. Judge Leslie and young Colton he had
+already met, and he liked the former, a pleasant shrewd tactful man, who
+was one of the chief ornaments of the northern bar, and universally
+admitted to be "dead straight." So "straight," indeed, was he that his
+term of judgeship had been brief. He had been carried to the bench on an
+independent ticket, but the reform movement subsiding, he could obtain
+re-election only by bargaining with political bosses, and this he
+refused to do; but after the fashion of the country he retained his
+title. He had a loose hairy benignant face with a humorous but
+penetrating eye and the usual domelike brow. His body had grown unwieldy
+from years and lack of exercise, and his clothes were old-fashioned and,
+generally, dusty. He voted the Republican ticket and was not too well
+pleased with his son-in-law who was a red Democrat and rising daily in
+the good graces of the party bosses.
+
+This young man who was sipping his plain soda and commenting on neither
+the scenery nor the weather, had inspired Gwynne with a certain interest
+and curiosity. He was thirty but looked little over twenty, and his
+large limpid blue eyes were as guileless as a child's. He had a long
+pale face with an indifferent complexion and the common American lantern
+jaw. His hair and brows and lashes were paler than straw, and his long
+lank figure was without either distinction or muscularity. Nevertheless,
+there was a curious suggestion of cynical power in his impassive face
+and lolling inches, and Gwynne had made up his mind that he would be
+useful as a study in politics.
+
+Mr. Wheaton, one of the present "City Fathers," a position he had
+occupied with brief intermittences for many years, had hard china-blue
+eyes and a straight mouth, in a large square smoothly-shaven face. He
+had crossed the plains in the Fifties from the inhospitable State of
+Maine, sought fortune in the gold diggings with moderate success,
+avoided San Francisco with a farmer's dread of "sharpers," and drifting
+to the hamlet at the head of Rosewater Creek had opened a small store
+for general merchandise. Frugality and a shrewd knowledge of what men
+wanted and women thought they wanted had increased his capital so
+rapidly that in five years he had converted a wing of the store into a
+bank. To-day he was a power. His wife was the leader of Rosewater
+society and attended first nights in San Francisco.
+
+Mr. Larkin T. Boutts was new to Gwynne, although his status was easily
+to be inferred from the constant references in the local press. He was a
+fat little man who sat habitually with a hand on either knee, which he
+clawed absently both in conversation and thought. Otherwise his attitude
+was one of extreme repose, even watchfulness. He was excessively neat,
+almost fashionable in his dress, which--Gwynne was to observe in the
+course of time--was invariably brown. He had a small pointed beard and a
+sharp direct dishonest eye. He was the leading hardware merchant of
+Rosewater and owned the hotel and the opera-house. His business methods
+had never been above criticism, and his politics drove the San Francisco
+correspondent, during legislative sittings, into a display of caustic
+virtue which gave the newspaper he represented just the necessary smack
+of reform and did not hurt its inspiration in the least. For Mr. Boutts
+was too sharp for the law, and all his sins were forgiven him on account
+of his genuine devotion to Rosewater. Far from battening on her, after
+the fashion of the San Francisco cormorant, he had never taken a dollar
+out of her that he had not returned a hundred-fold, and he was the
+author of much of her wealth.
+
+This gentleman was the first to indicate that they had not driven out
+to Lumalitas to discuss the weather and the scenery.
+
+"Best come to business," he said, abruptly. "Judge, will you do the
+talking?"
+
+But Judge Leslie, who was a modest man, waved his hand deprecatingly.
+"The idea is yours, sir, and yours is the right to state the case."
+
+The host hastily poured whiskey-and-soda lest he should look haughtily
+expectant.
+
+"It's just this, Mr. Gwynne," began Boutts, in his suave even tones. "We
+have seen your ads. We know that you contemplate selling off a good part
+of your ranch--Well, there was a buzz round town when those ads were
+read, and I was not long passing the word that there would be a
+mass-meeting that night in Armory Hall. That's where we thresh things
+out, and in this case there was no time to lose. We had a pretty full
+meeting. Judge Leslie took the chair, and I opened with some of the most
+pointed remarks I ever made. I was followed with more unanimity than
+usually falls to my lot. The upshot was that resolutions were passed
+before nine o'clock, and a committee of four was appointed to wait upon
+you to-day--and endeavor to win you to our point of view," he continued,
+suddenly lame, for by this time Gwynne, forgetting Isabel and his good
+resolutions, was staring at the common little man with all the arrogance
+of his nature in arms, and the color rising in his cheeks. Mr. Boutts's
+hands gripped his knees as if for anchorage, and he proceeded, firmly:
+"No offence, sir, I assure you. This is a free country. The man who
+tells another man what he'd orter do should be called down good and
+hard. Nothing could be further from our intention. The meeting was
+called only in the cause of what you might call both self-defence and
+patriotic local sentiment, although it's a sentiment that's local to
+about two-thirds of California--only we do more acting and less talking
+than most. It's now some weeks since we adopted resolutions in a still
+bigger mass-meeting and got the best part of the county to subscribe to
+them; on the ground that an ounce of prevention and so forth. So we just
+hoped that as you have come to live among us you could be brought to see
+things from our point of view."
+
+He scraped his chair forward and dropped his voice confidentially, at
+the same time darting a sharp glance through the open window beside him.
+"It's this Japanese business. The Chinese, back in the Seventies, was
+not a patch on it, because the Chinee never aspired to be anything but
+house servants, fruit pickers, vegetable raisers and vendors on a small
+scale, and the like. The agitation against them which led to the
+exclusion bill was wholly Irish; that is to say it was entirely a
+working-class political agitation, because the Chinee was doing better
+work for less money than the white man. The better class liked the
+Chinee and have always regretted the loss of them; and to-day those who
+are left, particularly cooks and workers on those big reclaimed islands
+of the San Joaquin River, where they raise the best asparagus in the
+world--yes, in the world, sir--get higher wages than any white man or
+woman in the State.
+
+"But these Japs are a different proposition. They're slack servants,
+unless they happen to be a better sort than the majority, and that
+unreliable you never know where you are with them. And being servants is
+about the last ambition they've come for to this great and glorious
+country. They're buyin' farms all up and down the rivers, the most
+fertile land in the State, to say nothing of some of the interior
+valleys. You see, there were big grants like Lumalitas at first over a
+good part of California. Then the ranches of thousands of acres were cut
+up and sold into farms of three or four hundred acres that paid like the
+mischief so long as the old man stuck to business himself. This he
+generally did; but times have changed, and now all the young men want to
+go to town; and most of the big farms have been cut up into little ones
+and sold off to immigrants and the like. Well, that's the Japs' lay.
+They like things on a small scale and know how to wring a dollar out of
+every five-cent piece. No one's denying they're smart. They slid in and
+got a good grip before we thought them worth looking at. Now we're
+saddled with about thirty thousand of them, and more coming on every
+steamer from Honolulu and Japan. Some years ago when they began to find
+themselves as a nation, and to rebel at the foreigners that were ruling
+things through the open ports, they let it be pretty well known that it
+was going to be Japan for the Japanese. Well, now the sooner they know
+that it's California for the Californians the better it will be for all
+hands. We don't go round lookin' for trouble, but if it comes our way we
+don't mind it one little bit. We'll tolerate the Japs just in so far as
+we find them useful, and useful they are as servants; for if they don't
+hold a candle to the old Chinee, they're a long sight better than our
+lazy high-toned hired girls, who are good for just exactly nothing; and
+we need a certain amount of them for hire in other fields; but as
+citizens, not much. We've put a stop to that right here, in this county
+at least; and so, Mr. Gwynne, that's the milk in the cocoanut, and we
+hope that you'll see things our way, and not sell any of your land to
+the Japs."
+
+"You see," interposed Judge Leslie, that Gwynne might not feel himself
+rushed to a decision. "These little men, while possessing so many
+admirable traits that I am quite willing to take off my hat to them, are
+not desirable citizens in a white man's country. Not only is their whole
+view of life and religion, every antecedent and tradition, exactly
+opposed to the Occidental, so that we never could assimilate them, never
+even contemplate their taking a part in our legislation nor marrying our
+daughters, but--and for the majority of the people this is the crux of
+the whole matter--commercially and industrially they are a menace. With
+their excessive frugality they can undersell the most thrifty white man,
+both as farmers and merchants; and the contempt they excite,
+particularly in this state of extravagant traditions, is as detrimental
+in its effects as their business methods; the more a man exercises his
+faculty for contempt the more must his general standards sink toward
+pessimism, and pessimism is neither more nor less than a confession of
+failure in the struggle with life. I never was much of a fighter, so I
+believe in eliminating the foe whenever it is possible. At all events we
+have made up our minds to eliminate the Jap, what with one motive and
+another, and I think we will. It may come to war in time--when the
+United States are ready--but we Californians have a way of taking
+matters into our own hands, and as war is a remote possibility, and we
+have little prospects of legislation--what with the treaty and the
+unpreparedness of the country for war--we just do what we can to freeze
+the Japs out. If we must have small farmers and our own young men have
+other ambitions, there are plenty of good European immigrants, and it
+is our business to encourage them. We assimilate anything white so
+quickly it is a wonder an immigrant remembers the native way of
+pronouncing his own name. But the Oriental we can't assimilate, for all
+our ostrich-like digestion, and what we can't assimilate we won't have.
+It is also true that we don't like the Jap. He antagonizes us with his
+ill-concealed impertinence under a thin veneer of servility; and
+superior as he is, still he has a colored skin. Now, right or wrong,
+Christian or merely natural, we despise and dislike colored blood, every
+decent man of us in this United States of America. Your sentimentalists
+can come over and wonder and write about us, reproach us and do their
+honest ingenuous best to convert us, it never will make _one damned bit
+of difference_. We are as we are and that is the end of it. The
+antagonism, of course, only leaps to life when the colored man wants
+equal rights and recognition, something he will never get in the United
+States of America, as long as the stripes and the stars wave over it;
+and the sooner the sentimentalists quit holding out false hopes the
+better. As to the Chinese, it is quite true that there was no objection
+to them outside of politics. And the reason was, they kept their place.
+The antipathy to the Japanese extends throughout all classes. Every
+thinking man in the State is concerned with the question. California
+will be overrun with them before we know where we are; and we are hoping
+that other counties will give an ear to the wisdom and farsightedness
+Mr. Boutts has displayed, in proposing that no more land shall be
+sold--or rented--to the Japanese. They can work for us if we have need
+of them, for a while, but they cannot settle."
+
+Gwynne had been thinking rapidly as Judge Leslie drawled out his
+homily. In his new apprehension of latent weaknesses in his character he
+was indisposed to yield to pressure, but he was equally desirous not to
+let the turmoil into which his inner life had been thrown lead him to
+any ridiculous extremes; not only interfering with his prospects, but
+converting himself into chaos. He was extremely anxious to make no
+mistakes at the outset of his new career, beset with difficulties
+enough. Their words had every appearance of being a just presentment of
+a just cause. He didn't care a hang about the "Jap." For the matter of
+that, he reflected with some bitterness, he didn't care a hang about
+California. At this point in his reflections he became aware that Colton
+was turning his head with a sort of slow significance. He looked up and
+watched a pale eyelash drop over a deep gleam of intelligence. Mr.
+Leslie finished speaking, and Gwynne replied with an elaborate
+politeness, which might be his vehicle for spontaneous sympathy or utter
+indifference.
+
+"Thank you all very much for your confidence in me, and also for
+preventing me from making what no doubt would have been a serious
+mistake. I have no desire whatever for the Japanese as a neighbor. I was
+one of the few to recognize the menace of Japan to Occidental
+civilization when all the world was sympathizing with it during its war
+with Russia, and they will get no encouragement from me. So the matter
+is settled as far as I am concerned."
+
+"Shake!" said Mr. Wheaton, in a deep rumbling voice.
+
+The four shook hands solemnly with their new neighbor, then, with even a
+greater gusto, drank his health. Gwynne suddenly remembering the
+California tradition, and the ducks, invited them to remain for supper;
+but all declined except Colton, who sent his wife a message by his
+father-in-law. The other three climbed into Judge Leslie's surrey and
+departed, Colton remarking, apologetically, and somewhat wistfully:
+
+"She's dining at the judge's and won't miss me: I never leave her alone.
+I'll get back in time to take her home."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Mariana cooked the ducks with the skill of the unsung _chef_ she was,
+and enhanced them with other delicacies for which she alone had a name.
+Gwynne, faithless to Isabel's crude though honest effort, rose to gayety
+and wondered whether California was practising the insidious methods of
+the wife. Colton, absent of eye, disposed of his share of the repast as
+negatively as he did most things, and as soon as they had retired to the
+veranda produced a bag of peanuts from his pocket, without which, he
+remarked, no meal was complete. Gwynne declined the national delicacy,
+feeling that diplomacy had its limits, and lit a pipe, wondering how he
+should lead his new friend to give him some practical political
+information. He detected the guile under that bland, almost vacant
+exterior, and Colton's prattle about duck-shooting and deer-hunting,
+although apparently endless, did not divert him for a moment. But he had
+less trouble than he had anticipated. Colton's mind seldom roved far
+from politics, and it required little tact to lead him to the trough.
+
+"As I am necessarily in your confidence I will take you voluntarily into
+mine," he announced, in his clear high pipe. "I don't in my heart care a
+hang more for the Democratic party than I do for the Republican. But the
+Republicans own the State at present, and there's no chance to get your
+name up and really do things in that party. They're out for graft, every
+last one of them. The chance is on the other side. It's a big chance;
+for the laboring class, what with unions, and being rotten spoilt with
+easy living in this State, is becoming more and more dissatisfied every
+day. If they were let alone it would never occur to them they weren't
+the chosen of the Lord; but we--the Democratic party--can't afford to
+let them alone, unless we want to go out of business altogether. They
+are just about the only dough we've got to work on, and for the last few
+years we've been systematically sowing the seeds of discontent by means
+of the press, metropolitan and local, abusing the rich, the trusts,
+harping on the segregation of capital by a favored few, to the unjust
+and illegal impoverishment of the many, painting gaudy pictures of what
+the working-man's lot will be when he gets his rights, emphasizing that
+in this State, of all others, man was intended to be happy and share
+equally in her abundance. We sail pretty close to anarchy; but they are
+an ignorant foolish lot, and we keep a tight hand on the reins and will
+drive them in a straight line when the time comes. I am qualifying for
+the position of district leader hereabouts, although I'm not announcing
+it from the house-tops. But the present one is getting old, and I'm on
+the inside track. I dress in these battered old clothes, that make my
+little wife weep--she'll never have any other cause from me--just to
+impress the farmers what a good Democrat I am; not a bit like Hyliard
+Wheaton, who is a dude. All he is waiting for is his father's death so
+that he can move to San Francisco. But I drive round in a dusty old
+buggy, with candy for the children in my pocket, and chin with the
+farmers about the crops and any old thing. When this county turns
+Democratic, as it shall in the next five years--likely as not sooner, we
+have so much raw material to work on in these immigrants--I intend to go
+to Congress, hold on in the House until there is a vacancy in the
+Senate, and there I'll be for life, and the boss of this State to boot.
+I can't say I care about the Presidency. It's only a chance that there
+may be anything doing while you're in--it's largely luck--and then when
+you're out, if you survive the White House--which most Presidents
+don't--you're as good as dead. I don't care about going abroad as a
+Consul-General, or even Ambassador, for I wouldn't hold any office under
+the United States government that was dependent upon the favor of a
+small group in Washington. You're no better than a servant, and you
+never know where you are. Political enemies at home, liars abroad,
+somebody with a little more influence, or any low political business,
+and you're fired without being heard in your own defence. You've got no
+redress, and may be disgraced for life without ever knowing where you
+were hit. None of that for me, although I'd like a big position of that
+sort for my wife. But she can cut all the dash she wants as a senator's
+wife, and I'll wield the big stick. That's where the fun comes in. I
+have a natural turn for politics, and then it's the only road out of
+Rosewater. The old gentleman is dead set upon my succeeding him in the
+bank, and he'd never give me a lift, although if I made a hit at
+anything he'd be so proud it would be easy sailing after. He's not a bit
+displeased that I've turned over a few thousands an aunt left me. But
+I'm after bigger game than that. She also left me two thousand acres of
+land, that look hopeless because there's not so much as a spring on
+them, and they're in one of the droughtiest sections in the State--she
+got them as a bad debt. Now, just over the border of that ranch is a big
+lake, and the owner of it won't sell or rent me water rights, thinking
+I'll sell out for a song. But he don't know Tom Colton. I'm a member of
+the present legislature--and that isn't the least of the reasons why. A
+few hundreds in a few hungry pockets, and we run a snake through the
+legislature declaring that lake state property. Then I ditch from the
+lake, and I am the proud owner of a large tract of valuable irrigated
+land. I sell off in small farms, and clean up a hundred thousand
+dollars. That I'll invest in a Class A building in San Francisco. I'm
+also in this projected electric railway of Boutts's--would advise you to
+buy a block of that stock--I can let you in on the ground floor. Money
+and political power, boss of this State--that's what I'm after--and no
+idle dream either. I know the ropes, and all I have to do is to hang on.
+I'll build a house on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, and my wife
+shall have dresses four times a year from Paris." He turned to Gwynne
+with glowing eyes. "You've barely seen her--and you haven't had a sight
+of the kids. She's Isabel's great friend. I wonder you haven't been
+round. I've got the nicest little shanty you ever saw, and we'd always
+be glad to see you."
+
+Gwynne thanked him absently; then, while his guest, dismissing politics,
+indulged in domestic rhapsodies, relating several anecdotes the while he
+consumed another bag of peanuts, Gwynne's brain worked rapidly. He
+boiled with discouragement and disgust. The cynical frankness of this
+young provincial, with his serene confidence in his star, and in his
+power to handle the millions he despised, bore a primitive and
+humiliating likeness to his younger self: Americanized by the lower
+standards of his country perhaps, but painfully like in its elements.
+All he could claim, it seemed to him at the moment, was a higher
+personal sense of honesty and honor; and how long would he keep it in
+this country? While he was hesitating between taking a possible rival
+into his confidence, and an arrogant desire to announce his reason for
+coming to California, without regard to consequences, Colton dropped the
+subject of his family, scattered the mass of shells on the floor with a
+sudden sweep of his foot, and tipping his chair back against the wall,
+produced a large red apple and his pocket-knife.
+
+"I can't say that I like the seamy side of politics," he remarked,
+absently, as he performed a delicate operation without breaking the
+skin. "My wife always maintains that I'm the most honest man alive, and
+I shouldn't wonder if that was the way I really was made. Anyhow, I know
+I'd a heap sight rather do a man a good turn than an ill one; but when
+he gets in your way what are you going to do in a country where politics
+are machine-made and every cog has to be oiled with graft? I'm thankful
+I'll never be forced to accept a bribe--there's a lot of difference
+between giving and taking, and I guess I'll have to do a lot of the
+first. But it's politics or nothing with me, aside from having a natural
+genius for them. I'll never get out of Rosewater otherwise. My father is
+likely to live for twenty years yet, and I hope to God he will; but I
+want the big game while I'm young. If the country was better I'd be,
+too, and like my job. But you've got to play the game in your
+shirt-sleeves. Kid gloves, and you sit on the fence and watch somebody
+else wallow in after the prizes."
+
+"It seems to me that the best chance for fame and power lies in that
+superior strength which is allied with honesty. A man who is at the same
+time a clever manipulator of men, and whose aim is statesmanship, should
+be able to reach his goal by a clean road."
+
+Gwynne had been long enough in the United States to blush uneasily as he
+delivered these sentiments, and his color deepened as Colton gave a
+little snort.
+
+"Can't be done. Not in this State, anyhow. You've been talking to
+Isabel. She looks like the Pilgrim Fathers and has inherited all their
+antiquated notions. Honest, now--_are_ your politics so much better than
+ours?"
+
+"A long sight. And they are by no means perfect. We have our machine and
+our compromises, and all the rest of it; and even a few wholly rotten
+boroughs. Fifty years ago we were blatantly worse than you are to-day.
+As long as the game lasts, and there are two parties, there must be more
+or less chicanery, but we are snow-white compared with the mire of this
+country. And it is an anomaly I cannot understand. I have now been a
+year in the United States, have talked with hundreds of Americans,
+studied them and their institutions. Few have struck me as personally
+dishonest--as we interpret the word in England. Human nature in this
+country, indeed, has at times appeared to me almost elemental, utterly
+without the subtlety that makes for crooked dealing. There is a thousand
+times more petty trickery in Europe; and, with us, more hypocrisy,
+certainly; but politics we have at least elevated. Here, the best man in
+private life seems to become transformed the moment he enters the
+political atmosphere, and if he is not a scoundrel, he sails pretty
+close to the wind."
+
+"H--m! All you say may be true. I don't agitate my gray matter over
+problems. I know what we are, and the work cut out for me if I want to
+stay on top. I have known reformers. We have lots of spasmodic attempts
+at reform right here in this district. When the reform is directed at
+some glaring evil, something that makes us uncomfortable, then it goes
+through. When it's directed against politics in general, then the
+reformer falls so hard he never gets up--unless, to be sure, he
+scrambles up p. d. q. and trims with the wind. And that, I'm bound to
+say, he generally does. We've had our idealists--talk till your mouth
+waters. One session in Sacramento generally cures them. When it doesn't,
+we have no more idea what becomes of them than of an ant that butts in
+on a procession of other ants. Ever watch ants?"
+
+It was Gwynne's turn to snort.
+
+"I take my boy up on the hills every Sunday afternoon when it is fine,
+and we watch ants and grasshoppers and birds and all the rest of it. Why
+don't you get married? There's nothing like it. I may have some hard
+hoeing ahead of me, but I always have that cosy pretty home at the end
+of the day, and the sweetest wife in the world--who doesn't know the
+Republican party from the Democrat, and never opens a newspaper. Isabel
+is too high and mighty. She's a wonderful girl all right, but the last
+woman I'd want for a wife. I know a girl that would just suit you--Dolly
+Boutts. She's as pretty as a peach, and as domestic as Anabel. I'll have
+you both in to supper, as soon as we get a new cook. We've had four this
+month, and my wife warned me I was not to ask you to anything until she
+was perfectly satisfied. She's the best housekeeper you ever saw."
+
+Gwynne maintained an infuriated silence. It was some moments before he
+could trust himself to articulate. Colton, munching his apple, and
+twirling the long spiral of skin he had peeled off without a break,
+detected nothing unusual in the atmosphere. It was characteristic of him
+that he took no interest in his new friend's future. Isabel had told him
+that Gwynne had not sufficient income to maintain his rank in England,
+and had resolved not only to drop his titles, but the name by which he
+had so long been known; being averse from notoriety. Colton, who had
+barely recalled the name of Elton Gwynne--he usually skipped the
+telegrams unless a war with picturesque details monopolized the foreign
+columns--had been somewhat amused at the precaution, but respected it;
+he would never have thought of betraying a confidence reposed in the
+bank. He assumed that Gwynne intended to become a rancher, like so many
+other Englishmen, and that he purposed reading law merely as a secondary
+occupation. He could have thought of several more interesting methods of
+putting in time; but every one to his taste.
+
+Gwynne spoke finally, and when he did, Colton, whose chair was still
+tipped against the wall, sat forward with a square planting of his feet.
+
+"I came to California with one intention only," said Gwynne: "to have
+the political career that my elevation to the peerage deprived me of in
+England. I had intended to work with the Democratic party, but I am free
+to state that your account of it has turned my stomach. My reasons for
+selecting it were, partly, that in principle at least it more nearly
+approached the Liberal party in England; partly because of its weakness
+in strong men. But if it is as rotten as you say I am afraid it would be
+a waste of time to qualify for it; I certainly could not work in
+harmony with it. However, there is an abundance of time for close
+observation. I cannot vote for four years, and if I finally decide in
+favor of the Republican party, at least we shall not be rivals."
+
+"_Jiminy!_" exclaimed young Colton, ingenuously; but Gwynne could see
+the glitter of his eye. "Well, I'm glad to hear it. Not much you don't
+go over to the Republicans! There isn't five cents' worth of choice
+between the two parties when it comes to a square deal on any measure
+ever put up, and this slow wave of reform that's trying to crawl over
+the country--against trusts, graft, and the like--is just strong enough
+to swamp the Republicans and give us our chance. Rivals! Not a bit of
+it. There's room for all, and you're just the man we want. Isabel told
+me you were a wonderful speaker--I'd forgotten. That's _just_ what we
+want. I can't speak for a cent. There's no one in the district that can
+carry a crowd. The boss was wailing over it the other day. You can do a
+lot in the next four years. You'll go to all the conventions and county
+meetings with me and make my speeches. I'll introduce you to everybody
+that can put you _on_. You've fallen into clover with the judge, because
+his only son, who was practising with him, has had to go to southern
+California to live--nerves all broken up. He'll push you all right, and
+as soon as you have swallowed the California codes you can practise in
+the courts by courtesy. Then I'll take you to Sacramento with me next
+year--I'm a senator this term--as my private secretary, and you'll learn
+a lot. Your hair will stand up straight, but never mind. All that will
+pave the way for whatever office you want to begin with when your papers
+are ripe. I'll see that it's a good conspicuous town or county office,
+and the legislature will follow as a matter of course. That will fill in
+while you are waiting a chance for Congress--you must be seven years in
+the country for that--nine for the Senate. Only, you must swallow us
+whole. You can't make us over. We Democrats are determined to get on top
+again and have our chance at the pickings. We'll talk reform, of course.
+That's where your eloquence will come in, and the more you believe in it
+while you're holding forth about the Republican party robbing the widow
+and orphan--more particularly the farmer and the laborer--the better.
+We'll promise the working-man a sort of sugar-coated socialism, but we
+won't inspire him with any higher ideals than pecuniary profits, _if you
+please_. That would mean content, and the end of the Democratic party.
+Well, think it over. I must go. My little old woman doesn't like to sit
+up late. Mind you drop in and see her the next time you are in town."
+
+Gwynne rang for his guest's buggy, thanked him for his advice; then
+ordered his horse and rode about the ranch half the night.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+A fortnight later Isabel announced to Gwynne that she intended to give a
+party and introduce him to the young people of Rosewater.
+
+"All the girls want to know you, Anabel tells me, and as it is a relief
+to hear that they are interested in something besides cards, and as
+nobody else seems disposed to take the initiative, I have concluded to
+play the _grande dame_ for a night. In a way it is my duty to introduce
+you formally, although it would be more so if they had done anything for
+me since my return. However--I will ask them for next Saturday evening
+if you have nothing better to do."
+
+"One day is quite the same as another to me," said Gwynne, dryly. "What
+do you fancy are my evening engagements? I have not even begun to read
+law with Mr. Leslie; he has gone off to southern California to see his
+son. He says he is always restless in the autumn, as young people are in
+the spring, but has promised me his attention before the middle of this
+month."
+
+They were rowing down the channel of the wider portion of the creek
+towards Isabel's landing, their boat filled with spoil. The little
+steamboat was winding proudly through the marsh, there were a dozen
+sails in sight; from the south came an incessant sound of firing. The
+distant mountains looked as hard as metal and there was a new crispness
+in the air. Little rain had fallen, but it was no longer summer. Gwynne
+had exchanged his khaki riding-clothes for corduroy; and Isabel's habit,
+although still dust-colored, was made of cloth instead of pongee. To-day
+they wore light covert coats over their canvas and rubber.
+
+With the passing of the heat and the advent of the daily electric
+breezes sweeping up the valleys from the sea, Gwynne felt a slow lifting
+of the dead weight on his spirits, although he was only happy when he
+had his gun in his hand. California seemed less like a voluptuous
+leviathan blowing poppy-dust that blunted the memory of all things
+beyond her borders. At first he had been vaguely uneasy at the insidious
+suggestion that he had transferred himself to another planet, but he was
+beginning to suspect that California, true to her sex, might have
+surprises in store that would quicken his blood at least. He still
+disliked her at night: the high unfriendly arch of her sky, the sinister
+atmosphere that brooded over her spaces, suggesting illimitable reaches
+where no man dwelt, or would long be tolerated. But her days seemed full
+of promise, and they certainly were full of beauty.
+
+He still fought with a longing to confide in Isabel: his apprehensions
+and doubts, his haunting interrogation of inherent greatness. But he
+turned from the temptation in a panic of spirit, sure that he would fail
+unless he fought his battle alone. He had pondered more and more upon
+his possible debt to his mother; and the doubt that she might have been
+the foundation of his courage and self-confidence was as bitter as that
+he might have owed the extraordinary rapidity of his career to the
+influence of his family and name. And Isabel's very strength alarmed
+him, the more so as he felt her subtle fingers among the leaves of his
+new destiny. So he merely smiled into her eyes and made a gallant
+remark, a purely masculine method of emphasizing that woman is charming
+in her proper place.
+
+"I shall be delighted to dance again; particularly--it seems odd--as I
+have never danced with you. And it is a year since I have seen you in an
+evening gown. I have a vivid remembrance of how you looked that night at
+Arcot, when you turned so many heads."
+
+Isabel colored, and whether with pleasure or resentment, she had not the
+least idea. But she answered, hastily:
+
+"I feel that I have been very selfish to do nothing before. But really,
+it seemed hopeless until Anabel told me yesterday that there was a vast
+amount of interest in the young English rancher. I am afraid the girls
+here will not interest you; only you should have the opportunity of
+deciding that question for yourself. But what will be really delightful
+will be to show you San Francisco. I have not been able to leave the
+ranch for a day since that three weeks' outing I had no business to
+take. But I have had half a dozen resentful letters from Paula, who has
+persuaded herself that you are her cousin too, and asserts her right to
+know you. But neither she nor Lyster has the remotest suspicion of your
+identity. Elton Gwynne might have a dozen brothers; nor is it likely
+they ever heard the name. If you were an artist or actor or littérateur
+or composer you might be as well known in San Francisco as in London.
+There is no city in the United States one-half so artistic--nor so given
+to fads. But in European politics, the young people, at least, take as
+much interest as they do in the canals of the moon. So you are quite
+safe, and Lyster is the man of all others to show you Bohemian San
+Francisco and give you a thoroughly good time. We might go down a few
+days after the party."
+
+"That will be very jolly. I will confess that although San Francisco did
+not inspire me with enthusiasm, it has occurred to me that it might be
+an improvement on Rosewater.... Oh, by-the-way, I had a letter from my
+mother not long ago, in which she said she had met some San Franciscans
+at Homburg--Hofer, I believe the name was--and had promised I should
+call on them, mentioning me, of course, as John Gwynne. I have wondered
+if the risk would be worth while. The amusement to be derived from
+provincial society is very doubtful."
+
+"Provincial! What arrogance! Do please call on the Hofers. They have the
+old Polk house, whose history I have told you, and entertain like
+princes. Besides, Mr. Hofer is one of that small millionaire group that
+is trying to clean up San Francisco municipally. He is quite worth
+knowing. And I want you to know San Francisco. It is my ambition to be a
+great figure in San Francisco--and I have seen other cities, and might
+be enjoying myself in England this moment."
+
+"Yes, I know," said Gwynne, smiling, and admiring her pink cheeks and
+flashing eyes. "And of course I don't forget that you have spurned a
+great position for the sake of your beloved city. That is really at the
+root of my desire to know the place. If it has a fascination I should
+like to feel it. Fascination is a strong word and means a considerable
+amount of enjoyment, up to a certain point. But I am glad to have heard
+the declaration of your ambition. Is it the final one?"
+
+"It is the pedestal," said Isabel, enigmatically. "Sometime, when you
+give me your confidence, I will give you mine."
+
+"I have no confidences to make--none, at least, that can compare with
+the rich experiences of your past. I told you all about Mrs. Kaye before
+I left England, and, so far, America has left me--well, unfascinated.
+By-the-way, Colton informs me that he and his wife have picked out some
+one to cheer my loneliness and--"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"I do not remember her name. Doubtless she will be at the party. I am
+curious to see all your friends together. I have seen an astonishing
+number of pretty girls in the street, and I am wondering how they will
+stand the test of lighting up; the great test to my mind. I don't know
+which I like least, the manufactured animation of the European woman of
+the world, or the too natural animation which makes the American girl's
+features dance all over her face. You, if you don't mind my saying so,
+are one of the very few Americans I have met that has something of the
+Englishwoman's faculty of looking, at the same time, statuesque and
+glowingly alive."
+
+"You excite my suspicion: I see no indication that you are out of
+practice. It is quite true that American women's faces, like their
+voices, lack cultivation. Well, you will see a good many pretty girls on
+Saturday night, and with no particular advantage of dress. Money has
+nothing to do with social position in these country towns. Perhaps
+twenty families besides the bankers and Mr. Boutts, and the Leslies, are
+well off. But many girls who are in the best society earn their living:
+typewriters, clerks, book-keepers, and the like. One has carried on her
+father's drug-store since his death. Most of the young men that could
+get away have gone, and there are not half a dozen left with any money
+behind them. The majority of beaux are either clerks, or in some small
+business, although there are always the doctors and clergymen--very few
+young lawyers. Snobbery barely exists. There are lines, but purely
+theological. All social groups centre about the churches. The first here
+has always been the Episcopalian."
+
+"It had occurred to me that society of any sort had ceased. Of the
+famous California hospitality I have seen nothing. A number of men have
+driven out and called upon me, and I have returned their calls, and
+found their houses very well appointed--although some member of the
+family usually answered the bell; and one morning I saw Miss Wheaton
+sweeping off the porch, her head tied up in a towel. All I meet appear
+to be very cordial and friendly, but I have not been asked to take so
+much as a cup of tea in a house in the county, and I have now been here
+something like five weeks."
+
+"California hospitality is a mere legend except in San Francisco. In the
+small communities it has never existed in my time, although they used to
+dance a good deal before cards turned their heads. You will find just as
+much haggling over a five-cent piece here as in any small New England
+town. These rich men have made their money by hoarding and wary
+investments, rarely speculating; and that tells immensely on the
+character. I doubt if the State itself has ever known the meaning of
+hospitality since the old ranch days, when, of course, it was prodigal.
+It is the San Franciscans that have kept the tradition alive; they are
+as reckless, as extravagant, as royally indifferent to mere money as in
+the famous Fifties. If you happen to call too close to a meal-time in
+one of these towns, the meal will be postponed until you leave. In San
+Francisco they would give you two-thirds of their last crust. At the old
+Rosewater dances we never had anything but cake and lemonade--ice-cream
+in very hot weather. I think it would be a good idea to give them a
+shock and have a supper from town."
+
+"I believe you are socially ambitious," said Gwynne, smiling. "No doubt
+it is your intention to make a fortune and lead San Francisco society."
+
+"Perhaps, but not in the way you mean."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+The long-closed bar-room of Old Inn was aired for a week, denuded of
+cobwebs, delivered of mice, canvassed by the invaluable Chuma. The
+Rosewater Hotel promised to contribute its Sunday band of four pieces,
+manipulated with no mean skill by worthy but unprosperous young
+citizens. Not one of Isabel's invitations was refused. The girls
+suddenly discovered that they were still young, and were as much excited
+at the prospect of a night's dancing as at meeting the English rancher.
+The men accepted as a matter of course, thankful to be asked to
+anything. The older people, surprised at an invitation to a dance,
+assured one another that Isabel Otis, being absurdly extravagant, and
+living two miles out in the country, was almost certain to regale her
+guests with fried oysters and ice-cream. One or two of her mother's old
+friends wrote and offered to contribute a chocolate cake, but were
+relieved when she refused to "trouble them." Gwynne and Isabel hung the
+walls of the big room with palm leaves, and branches covered thick with
+small yellow oranges, the first of the year. When they rested from their
+labors Isabel declared that it looked like an exhibit at a county fair,
+but Gwynne, never having attended a county fair, was proud of his
+handiwork and thought the effect an improvement upon the average
+ballroom. The day before the party Tom Colton and Hyliard Wheaton rode
+out to Lumalitas and demanded of Gwynne if he intended to wear a
+"claw-hammer." Colton was averse on principle from being too "swagger";
+and they finally compromised on what the Americans called their
+"Tuxedos," and Gwynne his "smoker." Anabel Colton, Dolly Boutts, and
+Serena Wheaton, after half a day's telephoning, decided to "wear their
+necks," and their hostess agreed to keep them in countenance. Every team
+in Rosewater was bespoken for the distinguished occasion, and the
+reports of the weather bureau were consulted daily. But the rains held
+off and the night of the party was brilliant with starlight, and not too
+cold.
+
+Gwynne, who had no intention of receiving with Isabel, and learning from
+Colton that everybody would have arrived before nine o'clock, did not
+make his appearance until ten. He found the big room full of young and
+elderly people, even the latter chattering with an extraordinary
+animation, induced no doubt by the surprises that had greeted them; they
+had forgotten the existence of the old bar-room. From the dancers Gwynne
+received a general impression of pink cheeks, fluffy hair, delicate
+features, gay simple gowns, the usual lack of background; a curious
+transientness, as if they had been born for the night like summer moths.
+The men for the most part made a good appearance, the more favored
+looking college-bred and irreproachable. Hyliard Wheaton, who was really
+handsome, with his broad shoulders and cool smooth well-cut face, wore
+an orchid in his button-hole and was devoting himself to Isabel.
+
+The hostess wore a gown of black chiffon trimmed with pale blue that
+looked simple and was not. Her neck and arms were bare, and Gwynne
+noticed at once that she had another little black mole where the bodice
+slipped from her shoulder. She reproached the guest of honor for being
+late.
+
+"You will dance this waltz with me," she commanded, royally; "and then I
+will introduce you to the prettiest of the girls."
+
+For the first time in his life Gwynne felt self-conscious in putting his
+arm about a woman's waist for the waltz. He had seen Isabel in full
+evening dress many a time in England, in rubber boots to her hips, in
+divided skirt astride her horse, in overalls among her chickens, and in
+pretty little house-gowns when he had remained for supper; nevertheless,
+in surrendering her slim waist she seemed to descend, significantly,
+from her pedestal and become warm flesh and blood. He held her
+awkwardly, barely touching her, wondering there should be physical
+shrinking from such a beautiful creature, one, moreover, that had shown
+him more kindness and disinterested friendship than any he had ever
+known. He reproached himself, but even while he admired the luminous
+whiteness of her skin he found himself scowling at the tiny black moles
+that gave her an oddly artificial provocative look, as black patches may
+have deliberately enhanced the charms of their coquettish grandmothers.
+
+"Humph!" said Mrs. Wheaton, raising her lorgnette, as became a leader of
+society. "He is not so fond of her, for all this friendship we have been
+hearing so much about. Well, it is natural enough. Isabel is far too
+independent to be really attractive to men, for all her good looks.
+These advanced women will have to step aside into a class by themselves,
+and as the men won't follow them, that will mean they will die off
+naturally, and the world wag its own old way once more."
+
+She was a tall stout woman, with a pale heavy face, and a curious
+elevation of nose, as if sniffing an unpleasant odor; but which was
+really meant to express pride of carriage. She wore a somewhat
+old-fashioned but handsome gown of lavender satin trimmed with point
+lace about the bodice, and a pair of diamond ear-rings. On one side of
+her sat the elder Mrs. Colton, in black silk with a point-lace collar; a
+sweet-faced frankly elderly woman. The third member of the group was a
+woman who might have been any age between thirty-five and fifty, very
+thin and dark, with the curiously virginal look peculiar to childless
+women tainted by a suggestion of morbid sensuality, very difficult to
+locate. Sometimes it seemed to twist across her thin restless mouth, at
+others to gleam from her deep-set black eyes with a fleeting wildness.
+Ordinarily she was smiling with an affected cynicism, and it was plain
+to be seen that she respected her intellect. She was abominably dressed
+in a frock of purple merino trimmed with black velvet ribbon; but she
+wore a gold comb in her hair and a diamond brooch.
+
+As the leader finished her remarks Mrs. Haight brought her teeth
+together with a snap and shot through them a little hiss. Mrs. Wheaton
+turned upon her with the gleam of the bird of prey in her little gray
+cold eyes. All the gossip of Rosewater was very old, scandal rare. "What
+is it, Minerva?" she asked, eagerly. "Are they engaged? And do you know
+just why he has come out here?"
+
+"I only know what everybody says about his coming here--that his health
+ain't good, and he wants to make the ranch pay by running it himself;
+but that other--" She paused and lifted her thin shoulders
+significantly. "Well, all I can say is, that if they ain't engaged they
+ought to be."
+
+Mrs. Wheaton leaned forward eagerly, but Mrs. Colton said, severely:
+"That is just your evil mind, Minerva. You are always imagining things;
+comes of having nothing to think about but cards and novels--six
+children were what you needed."
+
+"I guess I have as much as anybody to think about, what with having no
+help half the time, and a husband who wants his meals on time whether or
+no. And I guess I worked as hard in the City Improvement Club as anybody
+until we got all those concrete sidewalks for the town, let alone the
+parks. What if I do read novels and play cards for recreation? Too much
+thinking ain't good for anybody."
+
+"Oh, never mind," interrupted Mrs. Wheaton, hastily. "But what did you
+mean, anyhow?"
+
+"Well, as you know, I don't sleep very well, and I often get up and sit
+at the window, watching for the boat 'bus, and just imagining where the
+people who are out late, or up early, are going to and what they are
+thinking about. Well, I've seen him"--jerking her shoulder at Gwynne,
+who was now dancing with Miss Boutts--"I've seen him riding home from
+here as late as ten or half-past, many a night. He may have been
+duck-shooting and stayed to supper. That's all right, but he could go
+home just after. I for one don't think it's decent--a girl living all
+alone like she does. If he wants to shoot ducks, anyhow, why don't he
+join a club? If he does all his shooting here it's to be with her, and
+no mistake. I've said from the very first, it's downright indecent for a
+girl to live alone on a farm--no chaperon, not even a woman servant. I,
+for one, think that Isabel Otis has done just as she pleased long
+enough, and ought to be called down."
+
+"It is only natural that she should do as she pleases now that she has
+the chance, poor soul," said Mrs. Colton. "She never had anything but
+trouble and sorrow in her life until James Otis died. I wish he could
+have died when she was little and I could have brought her up. That
+life, and then her sudden liberty, have made her independent and
+advanced, but I can't say that I like it myself. I wish she were more
+like Anabel. It's odd they're not more alike, being such friends."
+
+"I quite agree with Minerva!" announced the leader. "Isabel ought to
+have a chaperon. I don't doubt she's all she should be or _I_ shouldn't
+be here to-night, friend of her mother's or not; but I suggested to her
+only yesterday--I had a little talk with her on Main Street--that she
+get some respectable old maid or widow to live with her."
+
+"What did she say?" asked Mrs. Colton, with a smile.
+
+"Say? The insolent young minx! She just looked at me, through me--Me--as
+if I had not spoken. Her mother always put on airs. That's where she
+gets it from. I had half a mind not to come to-night. But I wanted to
+see things for myself. If she does anything really imprudent, _I'll make
+her suffer_."
+
+This last phrase was famous in Rosewater. Mrs. Wheaton employed it
+seldom, but when she did her friends understood that she was not far
+from the war-path. Her color had risen with the memory of yesterday's
+grievance, pushed aside by curiosity for some twenty-eight hours.
+
+Mrs. Haight regarded the radiant young hostess with a malignant stare,
+prudently veiled by drooping lids. She envied Isabel with her whole
+small soul; she had never known the sensation of liberty in her life,
+and she stopped short of the courage that might snatch it. Mr. Haight,
+the leading druggist of Rosewater and an eminent and useful citizen, was
+a large stolid elderly man--he was at present in the little dining-room
+with other gentlemen of his standing and a punch-bowl--as regular as a
+clock in his habits, and devoted conscientiously to his wife, whom he
+took for a buggy ride every Sunday in fine weather. They had been
+married for twenty-two years, and for at least fifteen she had yearned
+to be the heroine of an illicit romance; nor ever yet had found the
+courage to indulge in a mild flirtation. She really loved her husband,
+and in many respects made him an excellent wife, but her depths were
+choked with the slime of a morbid eroticism which her husband was the
+last man to exorcise. The earlier fever in her blood had gradually
+dropped to the greensickness of middle-age, so that she was vaguely
+repellent to men, particularly the young. This she had the wit to
+detect, as well as the incontrovertible fact that her youth and her
+chances were gone. As a natural consequence her repressed but still
+rebellious passions diffused their poison throughout her nature. There
+were times when she was seized with a frantic desire to inflict injury
+upon some other woman, and at all times she found relief in sharp
+criticism, in flinging mud at mantles spotless to the casual eye. She
+passed for being very piquante and clever in a town where so little
+happened except the turning over of money, and where the conversation
+alternated between chickens and cards. She was sure that she scented a
+scandal here, and her very nostrils quivered with anticipation; the
+while she hated Isabel more bitterly for taking a lover instead of an
+eternal husband.
+
+"Looks as if she didn't mean to introduce him to us," she remarked, with
+an attempt at frigid criticism. "He don't dance so well but what the
+girls could get on without him. Isabel might give him a chance to
+exhibit his conversational powers--My! if he ain't going to dance again
+with Dolly Boutts! I'd like to know how Isabel fancies that!"
+
+Gwynne, who liked any sort of exercise, and had been reading the United
+States Statutes the greater part of the day, danced with the girls to
+whom Isabel introduced him, returning no less than three times to the
+exuberant Miss Boutts, whose step suited his, and whom he thought one of
+the prettiest girls he had seen in America. Mr. Boutts's mother had been
+the daughter of an Italian restaurant keeper in San Francisco, and his
+heiress inherited a fine flashing pair of black eyes, a mass of black
+hair, and a voluptuous but buoyant figure. She had inherited nothing of
+the languor and fire of the Italian race, but chattered as incessantly
+as any American girl, and had the mind and character of sixteen, in
+spite of her almost full-blown beauty. Having an instinct for dress in
+addition to a liberal allowance from her father, she was always a
+notable figure in Main Street; and when in San Francisco was pleasantly
+aware that she was by no means unnoticed in the fashionable throngs of
+the hotels and Kearny Street. To-night she wore a gown of black net
+revealing her superb shoulders and arms, and bunches of red carnations
+that emphasized the red of her full pouting lips. She danced with a
+graceful energy and looked unutterable things out of her great black
+eyes while talking of the weather. Gwynne thought her a creature of
+infinite possibilities, beside whom Isabel was a statue in ivory.
+
+Just before supper he was introduced to the older women, and offered his
+arm to Mrs. Wheaton when two waiters, unmistakably from a San Francisco
+caterer, threw open the doors upon a hall that separated the ballroom
+from the old hotel dining-room. The startled guests filed hastily across
+to find a dainty but sumptuous repast served at little tables. Even the
+ice-cream was frozen in graceful shapes instead of being ladled out of a
+freezer in full view of the company, and there was such an abundance of
+all things, served with despatch by the professional waiters, that Mrs.
+Haight was permitted to consume three plates of oysters _à la poulette_.
+
+"This must have cost a pretty penny!" she muttered to Mrs.
+Wheaton--Gwynne was dancing attendance on Miss Boutts once more. "Much
+money she'll save! One would think this was San Francisco, and some
+swell house on Nob Hill. I don't believe a thing was cooked in her own
+kitchen."
+
+"I should think not! This supper is from the St. Francis, or The Palace,
+or The Poodle Dog--" Mrs. Wheaton ran off the names of all the famous
+San Francisco restaurants, to the ill-concealed spite of Mrs. Haight who
+did not dine in San Francisco once a year. "But as you suggest, I cannot
+imagine how she expects to make a fortune in chickens if she throws
+about money like this. No wonder Mr. Gwynne isn't good enough for
+her--but perhaps that's the reason he's selling off so much of his
+ranch. Mr. Wheaton says he thinks of putting up an office building on
+some land he has south of Market Street."
+
+"To my way of thinking, Isabel Otis and matrimony don't gee. She's
+altogether too advanced. Just you wait."
+
+The young people, meanwhile, were very gay, and there was little doubt
+in Isabel's mind that if she lived in Rosewater and chose to revive and
+lead the old social life she could drive cards to the wall in the first
+engagement. She had been much elated with her success, but, of a sudden,
+as her eyes roved benignantly over her chattering delighted guests,
+ennui descended upon her: those ancestral mutterings in the soul that
+stir dim memories of great moments of a greater time, inviting a vague
+contempt and distaste for the petty incidents and achievements that make
+up the sum of life. Isabel had experienced this faint sensation of
+futility and disgust many times before, and although she was wise enough
+not to let it paralyze her will, and to turn it to account in holding
+her to her higher ideals, still she often envied the Dolly Bouttses,
+with good red plebeian blood in their veins, and no voices in the
+subconscious brain but those that bade them eat and drink and feed the
+race. No, she decided, Rosewater could work out of its present inertia
+by itself, and she began to wish her guests would go home; she was tired
+of their inanities. Her disappointment in Hyliard Wheaton, whom she had
+admired from a distance ever since her return, but who had never
+succumbed to her charm until to-night, had much to do with her sense of
+futility. He had read nothing, seen nothing, experienced nothing. He had
+no ambition beyond living in San Francisco and enjoying life there. His
+fine well-bred face with its high brow and smiling, slightly superior,
+gaze, had suggested--the more particularly, perhaps, as his figure was
+superb--possibilities both intellectual and romantic. Isabel told him
+politely never to ride out without using the telephone first, and had
+her excuses already coined. At least ten men be sides Gwynne were
+hovering about Dolly Boutts, like humming-birds about the nectar of a
+full-blown rose. They were blind to the fact that her voluptuous
+suggestion was but a caprice of nature. Although, no doubt, she would
+make the best of wives and mothers, she was as incapable of any depth of
+passion as the frail fluffy creatures about her, and quite indifferent
+to anything in man beyond his admiration. Up to the present she had
+found cards far more interesting, particularly as she had known all the
+Rosewater men since childhood; more particularly, perhaps, as this was
+her first large party. She chattered, partly by instinct, partly in
+deference to the traditional animation of the American girl; and it was
+quite likely that the ultimate man would lead her to the altar under the
+delusion that she was a brilliant woman with a genuine temperament.
+Isabel wondered somewhat contemptuously at Gwynne's evident enthusiasm;
+she would have given him credit for more experience and perspicacity;
+but concluded that at a party a man could only judge a girl by her
+exterior charms; and certainly Dolly had all her goods in the front
+window.
+
+After supper they danced the old Virginia reel with great zest, and even
+a few stray waltzes, then all left together at two o'clock; the older
+women assuring Isabel formally that they had had a very pleasant
+evening; but the girls and young men exclaimed that they had had a keen
+time, a dandy time, and that their new hostess was too fine and dandy
+for words.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Judge Leslie returned on the following day, and, sending for Gwynne at
+once, announced that he was ready to settle down for the winter. A
+partner attended to the business of the office, and the judge shut
+himself up with Gwynne in the large light room containing his fine law
+library, and examined his promising pupil. Gwynne was well read in the
+English Common Law, and in Comparative Jurisprudence, particularly in
+the history of treaties and the comity of nations. So much he had
+regarded as necessary to the education of a future cabinet minister.
+
+Judge Leslie sketched out a course of study which embraced Cooley and
+Kent on Constitutional Law, compilations of Leading Cases, Story on
+Contracts, the California Codes, Civil, Penal, and Political, and
+Corporation Law. "The money is in the last," he remarked, dryly, "but
+even if you never succumb to these monstrous corporations, more aptly
+named cormorants, the more you know about their methods and needs the
+better, should you ever be called upon to fight them; and I have an idea
+that that is just where you will show your strength. All the great
+statesmen of this country have been great lawyers, and the great
+statesman of the future is going to be the lawyer that checks the power
+of unscrupulous capital, without at the same time delivering the country
+over to the mercies of that equally unscrupulous tyranny the
+labor-union. There is a solution somewhere and some man is going to find
+it. I don't see why you should not be the man. I have followed your
+career very carefully--you have always interested me. You come here with
+a magnificent political training, a mind uncorrupted by a lifetime of
+contact with the contemptible methods of machine politics, and a really
+great ambition. Your eyes are wide open. I don't see why you should make
+any mistakes, particularly as you have four good years in which to
+ponder the great question before committing yourself. Four years are a
+long span. No man can tell what may happen in that time, what new party
+may evolve. All you can do is to watch events and be ready for the
+forelock when time shakes it at you. If it so happens that you can
+insidiously mould a new party meanwhile, so much the better. The wisest
+and most suggestive writer on our national life is a Briton. I see no
+reason why England should not send us a statesman--in the old sense. God
+knows, all that we have now are a bitter disappointment to those of us
+with any of the old ideals left. Should the Presidency be your ambition,
+the fact of your having actually been born on American soil may be the
+cause of a legal battle in the Supreme Court of the United States that
+will pass into history. Meanwhile, as all apprenticeships must be
+humble, you will be a sort of unofficial junior of this firm, sharing
+the office business for the first year with Cresswell, and the second
+year helping me with court practice in St. Peter. You can read in the
+intervals and at home, and once or twice a week I should advise you to
+attend lectures at the State University. I can see that your memory and
+powers of assimilation are very vigorous, and the more quickly you
+imbibe, and the more varied the quality, the better. All the odd types
+of human nature you meet in this office won't do you any harm, either.
+Study the American character above all things. Get in sympathy with it.
+It is as opposite from the English as pole from pole, but you won't find
+it a bad sort--the country's politics are the worst part of it, because
+circumstances have forced them into the hands of a class of men that
+make their living out of them, and whose natural destiny was
+pocket-picking and the Rogues' Gallery--and if the best of us combine
+one day to do you honor, we can carry you to places as distinguished as
+any in your own country. Great and disinterested men have succeeded
+against tremendous odds in times as parlous as these, and others have
+the same opportunity here and now."
+
+The judge wound up his homily with a little peroration on Abraham
+Lincoln and then left Gwynne to the California codes. The large new
+stone office building of which Judge Leslie was the chief tenant stood
+at the corner of a street a block above Main; Gwynne glancing over the
+top of his tome could see a procession of teams, men lounging in the
+doorway of a grocery store, and the spars of fishing-boats waiting for
+the tide. His mind played him a curious trick. Piccadilly was before him
+with its great hotels, its splendid old stone houses upon which the fogs
+and the grime of London had demonstrated their poetical mission, the
+classic entrance to the Park, the crowds of smart men and women;
+Piccadilly at eight on a summer's evening choked with broughams and
+hansoms, in which the light mantles barely concealed the shoulders and
+jewels of the women. He had loved the outside life of London, returning
+to it from afar with an ever fresh and boyish pleasure, the keener
+perhaps because he knew that all doors were open to him and that he was
+one of the great lions, not of those for whom the stranger must search
+"Who's Who" upon his return from a function where half the guests had
+made their little mark. He saw the lofty towers with their delicate
+tracery, cutting the smoke on the banks of the Thames, the little room
+below where he had made men, old and bored and suspicious, listen to
+him; the more confident in his power to command their attention because
+he knew that they had read and discussed, agreed with and denounced, his
+sound contributions to colonial literature. The scene dissolved into a
+wave of homesickness that made him choke and spring to his feet. Then he
+swore at himself and returned to his codes.
+
+When Judge Leslie learned that Hiram Otis's law library had been moved
+out to Lumalitas he suggested that Gwynne should read at home until he
+had mastered the laws governing the State of California, and the student
+was far better satisfied out there in the quiet and the fresh air of his
+veranda. When a point needed expounding, a horseback ride into Rosewater
+was not an unwelcome diversion. His will had triumphed in its first bout
+with memory, so subtly liberated by the written word, and before three
+days of close study had passed he had the sensation of having found a
+new and individual patch upon which squarely to plant his feet. The
+future seemed more definite, more assured; moreover, his avid brain, its
+energies too long in abeyance, settled upon the new and absorbing
+study--it was eight years since he had opened a law-book, although he
+had forgotten little he had read at that plastic time--like a swarm of
+locusts. He recalled that a clever woman had once said in his hearing
+that whenever she felt blasée she took up a new language, and at once
+felt young and eager again. The remark had passed him by at the time,
+but he recalled it as he devoured and stored away the statutes that in
+many ways differentiated California from the other States of the Union.
+The mere fact that his was not the order of brain that took kindly to
+monotonous application, but inspired him with the more ardent desire to
+conquer; the sense of being on any sort of a battle-field again gave a
+color to life. He realized that in six months more of inaction he should
+have fallen into a constant and morbid habit of self-analysis, and
+although his soul-sickness could not be healed in a moment, the sense of
+danger gave an added zest to the impersonal nature of his studies. He
+subscribed for all the San Francisco newspapers and for those of his own
+and the adjoining counties. He was not conscious of any mounting love
+for California, but here his lines were cast, and California was as good
+a stepping-stone as another. If her politics were hideous he had not
+made them, and his reviving faith in his star suggested that he may have
+been born to redeem them. With the polishing up of the rustier parts of
+his mind even his eyes grew brighter, he moved more quickly, he began to
+feel all intellect once more, propelled by a body that was daily gaining
+in red and vigorous blood. Judge Leslie was so delighted with his rapid
+progress and his exceptionally retentive and classifying memory that he
+assured everybody he met in Rosewater and St. Peter that he was training
+a second Alexander Hamilton for the bar of the United States.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+It was four days after the party that Isabel, walking over the low hills
+among her chickens, in deep converse with her Abraham, was informed by
+Chuma that Mrs. Thomas Colton had driven out to call upon her. She found
+Anabel not in the house but seated before the front door in a smart new
+basket trap, and as smart herself in coat and hat and gloves uniformly
+dust-colored. She made a wry face at Isabel's overalls, but kissed her
+affectionately.
+
+"This is my birthday," she announced, "and this is a surprise from
+Tom--horse, harness, and all. I only had to give him three broad hints.
+I wanted to show it to you first, and besides there is something I must
+talk to you about--very important!"
+
+She assumed a matronly and mysterious air and dropped her voice. "I
+suppose Mr. Gwynne does not call so early?"
+
+"Rarely. Won't you get out and stay to lunch?"
+
+"Tom would never forgive me. He is sure to bring me another surprise at
+noon--it will arrive on the 11.30--a long chain made of every variety of
+tourmalines set in silver. But I couldn't wait any longer to have a talk
+with you about Mr. Gwynne. Until I saw you two together the other night
+I had all sorts of romantic plans in my head. It seemed just the right
+thing--_you_ are so different from everybody else; and then having met
+him in England among all those old castles, and everything! I was sure
+he would have enough of California in a year and then I should visit you
+in England, and after a while you would marry Frances to a duke. But I
+see that was all nonsense. You don't care a bit about each other and are
+not in the least suited. I couldn't get up any sentiment for him myself;
+he is much too cold-blooded and, well--_English_. They never can be like
+us, no matter how hard they try. But in a way I like him, and Tom says
+he is worth any ten men he ever met. I feel awfully sorry for him, out
+there all alone--and it's a magnificent ranch--to say nothing of the
+fact that he must be worth a lot of money besides. It would be perfectly
+shameful if some San Francisco girl snapped him up--_and you know what
+they are_. He belongs by right to us, and I for one shall see to it that
+none of those man-eaters in San Francisco gets him. Did you notice how
+attentive he was to Dolly the other night? Well, he actually called the
+next day--she was out--and sent her flowers. Mrs. Haight saw him. She
+says he looked dreadfully disappointed as he rode off. I take that with
+a grain of salt, knowing Mrs. Haight; besides, he wouldn't break his
+heart if a girl was out for good. But the fact remains that he did call,
+and he hasn't called on another girl in Rosewater, much less sent her
+flowers. Serena Wheaton and one or two others were at my house
+yesterday. We are immensely excited over it. I am sure that if we
+managed them both properly there would be a wedding in the spring. It
+would be too delightful, for there hasn't been a bang-up wedding in
+Rosewater since mine. And think of Dolly's trousseau! Every stitch would
+come from New York. The San Francisco papers would be full of that
+wedding, and St. Peter would be green with envy. And she would make him
+such a good wife; such a beauty she is and such a dear good girl--just
+the kind that wouldn't mind a man being haughty and overbearing. You two
+would murder each other--but Dolly! The more I think of it the more
+enthusiastic I am. We formed a plot last night, but as in a way he
+belongs to you, I maintained that you should be consulted. But tell me
+first--what do you think of it?"
+
+"Of the match? I cannot imagine a better. What is your plan?"
+
+"Last night Mrs. Colton had a bridge party, and I went over just as they
+were finishing hissing at one another over a spoon that cost
+seventy-five cents. After some of them had gone, the rest began to talk
+about Dolly and Mr. Gwynne--I don't think the town has talked about
+anything else since your party--except those everlasting cards, of
+course. Well, the upshot was that I suggested we should revive the old
+weekly dancing club. Otherwise they might not meet again for months, now
+that Mr. Gwynne has settled down to his studies and hasn't been near
+Rosewater since Monday. They agreed, but of course no one would offer
+her house; they are all too mean, and mine is too small. But we can hire
+the old hall, and all the men will be glad to subscribe--a few of us can
+make up the deficit. Dolly always looks her best at night--she has the
+loveliest neck!--and she would be glad of an excuse to get more party
+dresses. Well--you see! You can always sleep at my house."
+
+"What fun it will be to have a weekly dance! I am going out to Lumalitas
+this afternoon, and I will demand Mr. Gwynne's subscription."
+
+"Isabel! You are a jewel! Mrs. Haight was nasty, but I told her she did
+not know you the least little bit, that you were no dog in the manger.
+But, dear Isabel, do you think you ought to go out there alone? I don't
+mind; you know that I never bother my head about other people's affairs,
+but Mrs. Haight is such a gossip, and she never did like you, and all
+small places are so gossipy. She has been telling everybody that Mr.
+Gwynne rides past her house quite late at night from duck-shooting, and
+of course she assumes that you shoot with him."
+
+"I generally do. You may tell Mrs. Haight, with my compliments, to go to
+the devil! Still, dear Anabel, if you think it improper for me to call
+alone on a bachelor cousin, I will pick up somebody on my way out."
+
+"Do, that's a dear. And I shall tell Mrs. Haight that old Mac always
+goes shooting with you. I am sure that he does. Good-bye. I'll see about
+the hall this afternoon."
+
+She drove off with lifted reins and a little flourish of her whip, and
+Isabel went into the house and telephoned first to Gwynne, who had
+installed a private wire between his house and hers, and then to Miss
+Boutts. At two o'clock she drew rein before a large brown shingle house
+on the highest point of Rosewater. Mr. Boutts had begun life in one of
+the little old peaked cottages down by the central square; later he had
+built an "artistic" cottage, and then a "residence"; symbolizing his
+increase not only by the more pretentious structures but by mounting the
+hill; the second cottage had been half-way up, the residence was on its
+apex, and could be seen by the envious traveller on boat and train.
+There was nothing left before him now but San Francisco or a balloon;
+heaven being out of the question.
+
+Miss Boutts awaited the buggy, in the tiny porch, and had obeyed
+Isabel's behest to look her prettiest. She wore a large red hat covered
+with feathers shading into pink, and a claret-colored frock that fitted
+her superb figure in a fashion that caused Isabel to draw her brows
+together and suggest a dust-coat.
+
+"It is too sweet of you," said Miss Boutts, as she sprang into the
+buggy. "I feel so flattered when you take any notice of insignificant
+little me. Do tell me where we are going and why you told me to look my
+prettiest!"
+
+"I must go out to Lumalitas to consult certain farmer's books in my
+cousin's library, and I thought it only fair to provide him with
+entertainment while I am busy. It seems the gossips do not approve of my
+going out there alone, and as I was obliged to go I did not think it
+worth while to make a martyr of Mr. Gwynne."
+
+Miss Boutts blushed and tossed her head. "He called on me and sent me
+flowers," she said, in innocent triumph. "I was so sorry to miss him.
+All the girls are fearfully jealous."
+
+"Do you like him?" asked Isabel, absently.
+
+"Well--a little. He is new, and English, and different. There's not much
+to choose from here, and I don't know any of the swells in San
+Francisco. I can't say he is my ideal--that has always been an immensely
+tall man with big blue eyes and a tawny moustache; and Mr. Gwynne is
+just a sort of blond, no color in his hair at all, and I never did care
+much for gray eyes. He's tall enough, and the girls think him
+'distinguished,' but nobody could call him big. Besides, he doesn't know
+how to say sweet things one little bit. I went out on the veranda with
+him at your party, and it was a heavenly night, and all he asked me was
+if I wasn't afraid of catching cold, and then he wandered on about
+American girls exposing themselves foolishly and wearing too thin shoes
+and eating too many sweets. Fancy a man talking like that to a girl at
+night on a veranda! I never felt so flat."
+
+Isabel glanced curiously at the beautiful empty creature. Her black eyes
+looked like wells of sentiment, and her body a mould for a new race of
+men.
+
+"Tell me," she exclaimed, impulsively. "What do you expect a man to do
+under such circumstances--to--a--kiss you?" She brought out the last
+with some effort, her old-fashioned training suddenly suggesting that
+she could better understand the downfall of the girl she had befriended
+in Paris than the vulgarities of the shallow.
+
+Miss Boutts laughed amusedly. "Well, most men would have tried it. I
+never was one to make myself common, but once in a while--well! I
+haven't much opinion of a man who wouldn't snatch a kiss from a girl he
+admired to death, when he got a chance." She turned upon Isabel, curious
+in her turn. "Of course you are lots older than I am--twenty-five or
+six, aren't you? And I am only just eighteen. But I always used to watch
+and wonder about you before you went away. I knew you were not the least
+bit like the other girls. I wonder what it is like to be different from
+other people. I always feel just like everybody else."
+
+"So do I," said Isabel, encouragingly. "It was only circumstances that
+made me appear different."
+
+"But you know so much!" sighed Miss Boutts. "You speak a lot of
+languages, and you took all the honors at the High School--and then all
+those years in Europe! I wonder Mr. Gwynne will even look at any of
+us."
+
+"Men like your sort much better," said Isabel, dryly. "Do be nice to him
+to-day, and entertain him in your own style while I dig through those
+tiresome books. I sha'n't be long."
+
+Gwynne looked more than hospitable as he ran down the veranda steps to
+assist his guests out of the high buggy. When they had taken off their
+dust-cloaks and stood side by side he reflected that he had seldom seen
+two such handsome girls together. Isabel was far more simply dressed
+than Miss Boutts, but her little black jacket fitted perfectly, and
+there was a touch of pale blue at the neck, and in the lining of her
+large black hat, that deepened the blue of her eyes under their heavy
+black brows and lashes. Gwynne had never seen her look so girlish and
+ingenuous. She kept her profile from him and he saw only her smiling
+eyes and red half-opened mouth.
+
+"I had to telephone to make sure you would be at home," she said. "They
+say I mustn't come out here alone, and I didn't want Miss Boutts to be
+bored while I was at work. I'll leave you two here on the porch. That
+will be quite proper."
+
+As she nodded and went into the living-room she saw Gwynne turn to the
+lovely glowing girl left on his hands, with more intensity than she had
+seen him display since Mrs. Kaye took her black eyes and fine bust out
+of his life. As she made herself comfortable in his deepest chair she
+heard the girlish shallow voice launch out into a eulogy of the scenery.
+Gwynne responded with some enthusiasm; for a time there was a broken
+duet, and then the feminine voice settled down to a steady monologue.
+Miss Boutts knew that it was an American girl's business to be animated,
+entertaining, amusing, especially with Englishmen, who hated effort.
+Occasionally there was a masculine rumble, with a growing accent of
+desperation, and the indulgent little bursts of laughter diminished in
+frequence and spontaneity. Isabel lifted down volume after volume of the
+books on farming her uncle had collected, letting one fall, rattling
+leaves when leaves would rattle. An hour passed. She appropriated
+Gwynne's writing materials and took what appeared to be copious notes.
+The host suddenly excused himself and came within.
+
+"Won't you have tea?" he demanded. "It is rather early, but after that
+drive--"
+
+"Much too early," said Isabel, absently. Her chin was on her hand, her
+eyes were on a spotted page. "Mariana is sure to be asleep. Do go back
+to Dolly. She is one of those girls that can't bear to be left alone. I
+didn't bring her out here to be bored."
+
+"Didn't you? What on earth do you want of all those notes? Are you going
+to write a treatise?"
+
+"Of course not. Do go back."
+
+Gwynne returned to the veranda. For more than another hour that sweet
+nasal monotonous voice trilled on. Then it began to flag. Then a silence
+ensued, broken at first by sporadic and staccato remarks, then becoming
+as dense as the silences of the night. Again Gwynne invaded his
+living-room.
+
+"Isabel!" he said, in a low tense tone.
+
+Isabel looked up dreamily and encountered a haggard face and a pair of
+blazing eyes. "I'll never forgive you!" he whispered.
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For what! Do you want to drive me mad? Take her home!"
+
+"Do you mean to say that you have not been enjoying yourself?"
+
+"Enjoying myself! I have been on the rack."
+
+"You are the rudest--most unsatisfactory--I thought I knew your taste."
+
+"Oh, _please_!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+They confronted each other, Gwynne flushed and angry, Isabel coldly
+interrogative. Gwynne, who had been on the verge of an explosion, felt
+suddenly helpless. It was assuming a great deal to tell a woman that he
+saw through her plot to disenchant him with a rival. He could hear the
+descending whip of Isabel's scorn. Besides, it would mean a quarrel, and
+much as he resented her interference in his destinies, especially this
+last and most notable success, he had no desire to break up the even
+surface of their relation. So he merely shrugged his shoulders and said,
+with what calmness he could muster:
+
+"Be kind enough to take her home. I will return the entire library if
+you need it."
+
+"Oh, I have finished. I am sorry you have been bored." And she carefully
+gathered up her papers and went to the rescue of the weary Miss Boutts,
+while Gwynne ordered the buggy. During the drive towards the paternal
+roof Miss Boutts remarked casually that she didn't care about
+Englishmen, but otherwise had little to say.
+
+So ended the social regeneration of Rosewater.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Gwynne awoke one morning with an irresistible desire for The Town in
+every fibre of his being. Barring London he would have liked three
+crowded days in New York, but as nothing better was available he felt
+that he was open to the attractions of San Francisco. He had not visited
+it since his departure on that brilliant Sunday after his arrival; he
+had promised to wait for Isabel, and his interest in it was
+intermittent. This morning he found his indifference culpable, inasmuch
+as he had had three letters from his mother imploring him to increase
+her income, and Mr. Colton had not only strongly advised him to tear
+down the block of old structures south of Market Street, and put up a
+great office building, but had offered to raise the money--selling half
+the land and mortgaging the rest. And if Gwynne had not revisited San
+Francisco he had a very accurate idea of its present conditions. It was
+uncommonly rich, and its citizens, always sanguine of its future, had
+been seized with a very fever of faith; they were selling out their
+interests everywhere else and buying and building, tearing down and
+rebuilding, until San Francisco threatened to lose its oddly patched and
+wholly individual appearance and become the Western city of
+sky-scrapers.
+
+As Gwynne dressed he recalled his first impression of the city as he
+crossed the bay: its singularly desolate appearance, in spite of what
+at first looked to be a compact mass of buildings covering some thirty
+thousand acres on hill and plain, and later as if a comet had rained
+down pickings from every architectural quarter of the universe. He had
+walked once to the back of the boat and looked at the line of little
+towns and cities lying at the base of the eastern hills. They did
+nothing to dispel the impression of loneliness. Whatever their
+individual names they were mere annexes of the great-little city
+opposite. When he returned to the forward deck the dust was blowing its
+brown volumes through every street that converged to the water-front.
+Those dust wracks, broken and narrowed by the buildings, lifted from the
+outlying sand-dunes, and following a law that had driven them eastward
+since California had risen from the deeps, had a curiously baffled,
+stolidly persistent expression, as if the old sand-dunes knew their
+rights and were determined to assert themselves so long as man left a
+yard of them free.
+
+Gwynne, in his solitary moments, when even his law-books were closed,
+had recalled the stories of San Francisco, past and present, told him by
+Isabel, and they had given rise to many whimsies. California, he still
+all but disliked, but he wondered at the haunting memory of the city he
+had seen so briefly, and the odd almost pathetic appeal it had made to
+his sympathies. He had concluded that it was the pioneer taint in his
+English blood, and had blinked in sudden wonder before the fact of his
+close kinship, not only to that old romantic Spanish element, but to the
+brilliant adventurous lawless race of men that had made the city great
+and famous, then passed on into the kingdom of darkness leaving their
+moral rottenness in its foundations, and, pulsing above, all their old
+brave indomitable and progressive spirit. Although he had found it no
+rival to his studies and his ranch, still he had given it more thought
+than he was aware, and not only to its picturesque psychology, but as
+the seat of a possible business adventure. To raise a large sum of money
+on the San Francisco real estate--the common property of his mother and
+himself--and erect a great office building of steel and reinforced
+concrete, would add enormously to his own and his mother's incomes, but
+on the other hand it would stand in the midst of acres of wooden
+buildings and shanties, and the risk of a great fire--whose momentum
+would sweep through any fireproof building--was one forgotten neither by
+the insurance agents nor the chief of the fire department, who was said
+to keep thousands of tons of dynamite in the city with which to
+segregate the always expected conflagration. It was possible that no
+insurance company would take the risk on an expensive building in such a
+quarter. On the other hand it was as certain as the present wealth of
+the city, that such a building would have hundreds of companions in the
+next ten years, and the undesirable, immoral, and generally drunken
+element, so largely responsible for the continual fires of the district,
+would be gradually pressed to the outskirts of the city. He felt
+inclined to take the risk, even a sense of exhilaration in it, as if
+indeed the dead and gone Otises had invaded his soul and demanded one
+more bout on earth.
+
+There was another matter that claimed his thoughts when the law was at
+rest. He was suspicious and resentful of Isabel's desire to manage him;
+and that she had succeeded more than once, through her superior feminine
+subtlety, made him aware that two strong natures were slowly bracing
+themselves against each other, and that on some future battle-ground
+there might be a heavy and final encounter. This morning, as he ordered
+his portmanteau to be packed and placed in the buggy, his impulse was to
+take the tram, and cavalierly announce, upon their next meeting, that he
+had "been to town." After he had had his coffee, however, he decided not
+to be an ass, and unpardonably rude as well. She had talked of this
+visit every time they had met, although one thing and another had
+detained her, and he could hardly explain to her an impetuous and
+solitary flight. He colored as he invoked her assumption that he feared
+and was running away from her, asserting his independence like any
+school-boy. Besides there was the launch. The idea of three hours on the
+water instead of one and a half on a slow and dirty train so exhilarated
+him that he forgot his self-communings and ordered the buggy at once. It
+was but half-past five. They would catch the tide; nor did the train
+leave until half-past eight. He presented Imura Kisaburo Hinamoto with a
+box of cigarettes, gave him the run of the library, and drove off
+whistling.
+
+He found Isabel among the chickens. She had just opened the doors of all
+the little colony houses, and the hills were white with excited
+scratching Leghorns. She wore overalls and high boots, and the night
+braid of her hair was twisted several times round her throat. Gwynne
+smiled as he recalled the heroines of poesy that had fed so many doves
+and garden birds. No heroine could look picturesque in bloomers, and
+feeding chickens, but as Isabel came towards him waving her hand
+hospitably, her white clear-cut face resting on its black _goita_ of
+hair might have suggested Stuck's Sünde, in the Neue Pinakothek of
+Munich, had there been an evil glint in her light cool blue eyes. The
+fleeting query crossed his mind as to what she might have been if born
+in one of the generations before the pioneers of her sex had opened so
+many gates for the irruption of overburdened femininity. But he merely
+remarked:
+
+"I am suddenly inspired With a desire to see San Francisco. Are you too
+busy? Are we too late for the tide?"
+
+"Just in time," said Isabel, promptly; "and I shall be ready as soon as
+the launch is. Do you know that it is Saturday? You could not have
+chosen a better day."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As they pushed off, all the marsh and its creek was covered with a low
+white mist that gave it the appearance of a great lake, a ghost lake
+through which the little steamer just leaving Rosewater two miles above
+coiled its way like a monstrous white bird feeling uneasily for a
+foothold. Overhead the sky was covered with the pink fleece of dawn. The
+mass of mountains in Marin County looked black and formless, but above
+them rose the granite crest of Tamalpais, like an angular lifted
+shoulder.
+
+"That mountain has marched north five feet in the last forty years,"
+said Isabel, as she carefully steered through the mist. "Either that, or
+the earthquake of 1868 moved her off her base."
+
+"For heaven's sake don't tell me any more weird tales about this
+country; it gives me the horrors often enough as it is. This morning the
+hills and mountain on the other side of the valley looked like
+antediluvian monsters just ready to turn over."
+
+"Well, they have turned over a few times, and may again. One reason we
+all love California is because we never know what she will do next, and
+because she is still primeval under this thin coat of civilization that
+is too tight for her. I admire England, but I could not live in it. It
+is too peaceful, too done. It is impossible to imagine any further
+change, for civilization can go no further. But out here--the whole
+country may stand on its head any day; and we may yet have cities as
+great as Babylon and Nineveh."
+
+"Well, we'll not be here to see. This fog is just high enough to filter
+into one's very marrow--even your picturesque pioneer days are over; I
+will confess they might have made me feel that life on the edge of the
+world was worth while. I should have liked to lay the foundations of a
+great isolated city like San Francisco; but I don't see any sign of
+another big city. Los Angeles is a little Chicago and may live to be a
+big one, but nothing would induce me to live in the south. However, no
+man is ever conscious of the fact that he is in at the birth of a great
+city; our pioneer forefathers were just a parcel of adventurers crazed
+with the lust of gold, and with no sense of any future beyond the
+present."
+
+Isabel leaned forward eagerly. "You have been thinking about San
+Francisco!" she exclaimed, triumphantly. "The old Otis blood is
+beginning to wake up! Hooray!"
+
+Gwynne laughed outright, and for the first time without resentment; he
+was tired of having California "rammed down his throat." Isabel's eyes
+were dancing with so purely youthful and feminine a triumph that he
+could not but feel indulgent.
+
+"I am growing reconciled to my lot. Here I am and here I remain."
+
+"Yes, you are much happier," said Isabel, softly. She half closed her
+eyes and looked a trifle older. "It worried me dreadfully at first to
+know that you were unhappy, and that it was my fault."
+
+"Unhappy!" exclaimed Gwynne, reddening haughtily. "I have not been
+mooning about like a homesick ass--"
+
+"Oh, your outside was as tranquil as your pride demanded--and it was
+splendid! But I couldn't help knowing--feeling. A thousand little things
+appeal so directly to a woman's intuitions."
+
+"Indeed! I am delighted to learn that you possess the common intuitions
+of a woman."
+
+"Am I unwomanly? Masculine?" asked Isabel, anxiously.
+
+"Not in the ordinary sense; but you are much too strong. No woman should
+be as strong--as, well--as psychically independent as you are. It is as
+flagrant a usurpation of prerogative as a pretty complexion on a man."
+
+"I only say one prayer: 'Give me strength. Give me strength.'"
+
+"For what, in heaven's name? What use have you for so much strength? You
+have forsworn matrimony. You disclaim the intention of going forth and
+entering the great battle of the intellects--having, as you say, no
+talents. You have isolated yourself from love, so you need no uncommon
+supply of strength to meet suffering. You will always have money enough,
+and you appear to have been born with the gift of making it. Even if you
+elect to be the leader of fashion in San Francisco, your equipment need
+not be of unadulterated steel. But I cannot fancy why you entertain any
+such ambition."
+
+"That is the least of my ambition--although I intend to become the most
+notable woman in San Francisco, not only because I must gratify a
+healthy natural ambition in some way, and because I want my life to have
+a sufficiency of incident in it, but because it is a part of my general
+scheme."
+
+"What is this precious scheme?"
+
+"You would not understand if I should tell you. Men have no time for
+subjectivities--except poets, psychological fictionists, and the like,
+who do not seem to me men at all. Now, one reason I have liked you from
+the first, in spite of many things that made my American blood boil, is
+that you are a man, a real masculine arrogant dense man, with no
+feminine morbid tendency to analyze your ego, in spite of your Celtic
+blood. I met too many of that sort in Europe."
+
+Gwynne, with his elbows on his knees, regarded the bottom of the boat
+and colored guiltily, while congratulating himself that for all her
+insight and cleverness she had barely penetrated his outer envelope. She
+had thought him merely homesick, when his ego had been tottering, his
+soul racked with doubt and terror; when he had spent long hours in
+self-analysis; until the law had come to his rescue and reinvigorated
+his brain. At the same time a wave of sadness swept over him. How little
+human beings knew one another, no matter how intimate. As he raised his
+eyes he seemed to see Isabel across a chasm as vast as the Atlantic; and
+he was reminded that he knew her as little as she him. She had confessed
+to the throes of what she believed to have been a great passion, but
+when he had rehearsed the story away from the influence of her curious
+cold magnetism and the sinister setting of its recital, he had
+recognized it for what it was, the first violent embrace of an ardent
+unshackled imagination with positive experience, in which the ego had
+played an insignificant part. Her immediate recovery upon beholding the
+disintegrating clay, without one regret for the vanished soul, or even
+for the magnetic warmth of the living shell, suggested to his groping
+masculine intelligence, totally unaccustomed to analysis of woman, that
+her attack had been little more personal than if the man had infected
+her with the microbe of influenza. Surely a woman that had loved a man
+well enough to kiss him must have been stabbed with pity for the ardent
+vigorous life thrust out into the dark. Then he felt a quick resentment
+that anything so stainlessly statuesque as this girl--for all her trim
+tailoring and large black hat--should have been even superficially
+possessed by any man.
+
+"Did that Johnny ever kiss you?" he asked, abruptly.
+
+"Of course," replied Isabel. "Did I not have to, being engaged to him?
+Not that there was much chance, for I never saw him alone between four
+walls. Perhaps that was one reason that side of love seemed to me much
+overrated. I was happiest when sitting alone in a sort of trance and
+thinking about him."
+
+"Humph!" said Gwynne.
+
+The mist was gone. The east was a vast alcove of gold in which the hills
+were set like hard dark jewels. The creek was narrowing. On either side,
+and far on all sides, stretched the marsh. The guileless duck disported
+himself on the ponds, but Gwynne, for once, was insensible to its
+subversive charms, felt no regret that he had forgotten his gun. He came
+and sat closer to Isabel, wondering if she felt as young as he did in
+the wonderful freshness and beauty of the dawn. She certainly looked
+very young and fresh and girlish, not in the least fateful, as when she
+turned her profile against a hard background and forgot his presence.
+
+"I think I could quite understand anything you cared to tell me," he
+said, smiling into her eyes. "Please give me your reasons for
+cultivating the character of a Toledo blade. Is it your intention
+to marshal all the clans of all the advanced women and lead them
+against the more occupied and disunited sex? I am told that it is
+a standing grievance in Rosewater that you will not join that
+Literary--Political--Improvement--and all the rest of it Club. I should
+think with your ambitions and--well--masterful disposition, you would
+assume its leadership as a sort of preliminary course."
+
+"I intend to be a whole club in myself."
+
+"Appalling! But what _do_ you mean by that cryptic assertion? I told you
+that I could understand anything you chose to explain, but, as they say
+out here, I am not good at guessing."
+
+"I am working out a theory of my own. It has been demonstrated that
+labor, capital, all the known forces, are far stronger when concentrated
+and organized. I believe in concentrating all the faculties about a will
+strong enough not only to conquer life but all the inherited weaknesses
+that beset one daily within. That is a minor matter, however. I believe
+that our higher faculties were given to us for no purpose but to create
+within ourselves an individual strength that will add to the sum of
+strength in the world. It is not necessary to proclaim this strength
+from the house-tops, nor to search for windmills--a positive enemy it
+would leap at automatically--nor even to seek to improve the world by
+all the tried and generally futile devices. It is enough to be. I alone
+may not add greatly to this subjective strength of the world; but think
+what life would be did each individual succeed in making himself but one
+degree less strong than God himself! It may be my destiny to make
+propaganda without noise; but if not, the achievement of absolute
+strength in myself will move the world forward to its millennium
+one-millionth part of a degree at least. For that will be the real
+millennium--when there shall be no despicable weakness in the world, no
+moral rottenness, when each individual shall rely upon himself alone,
+independent of the environment from which the majority to-day draw
+everything good and bad, their happiness or misery. Nothing will ever
+purge human nature but the triumph of the higher faculties, a triumph
+accomplished by an unswervingly cultivated and jealously maintained
+strength."
+
+"I don't deny that your millennium has its points, but would that not be
+rather a hard world? What of love, the interdependence of the sexes, and
+all the other human relations?"
+
+"It is love and interdependence that cause all the misery of the world;
+they would be the very first things I should relegate among the minor
+influences, did I wield the sceptre for an hour. To women, at least, all
+unhappiness comes from the superstition that love--any sort--is all. Of
+course there would be marriage, but of deliberate choice, and after a
+long and purely platonic friendship, in which all the horrid little
+failings that do most to dissever could be recognized and weighed. Free
+love and experimental matrimony are mere excuses for the sort of
+sensuality that is shallow and inconstant."
+
+"Ah! Then you would permit love to your married pair after they had
+probed each other's minds and mannerisms for a year or two? That is a
+concession I hardly expected."
+
+Isabel shrugged her shoulders. "I am neither an idiot nor blind. Heaven
+knows I have seen enough of reckless passion and its consequences. The
+equipment of the mortal proves him to be the slave of the race, but at
+least he need not remain the blind and ridiculous slave he is at
+present. If I had married that man no doubt I should have loved him more
+frantically than ever for a time. But that would have passed, left me
+resentful of bondage, of the surrender of self. There, above all, is the
+reason I shall never marry. Impersonally, I believe in marriage, or
+rather accept it, but I purpose to stand apart as a complete individual,
+and subtly to teach others to drag strength out of the great body of
+force in which we move, until they realize that in time mankind may feed
+those creative fires, becoming, who knows, stronger than the great first
+cause itself."
+
+"And I have been called an egoist," murmured Gwynne. "I feel a
+mere--well--Leghorn--beside this sublime determination to sit upon the
+throne of God and administer to both kingdoms. All the same, my fair
+cousin, I believe that it takes a man and a woman to complete the ego. I
+incline to the picturesque belief that they were originally united, and
+halved in some--well, say when Earth and its atmosphere became two
+distinct parts. No doubt it was a judgment for having accomplished too
+much evil in that formidable combination. Who knows but that may be the
+secret of the fall of man; the uneven progress of human nature may be
+towards the resumption of that state, only to be attained when we have
+conquered the worst in ourselves and become pure spirit."
+
+"That fits my own theory, for I believe that the two parts of what
+should have been a perfect whole were cut in two for their sins, and
+that reunion will come only when each has absolutely mastered the human
+evil in him and freed the spiritual, but this he can only accomplish
+alone--"
+
+"Don't quote Tolstoi to me! He waited until he was old and cold to hurl
+anathema against the human passions. Theories upon love by a man long
+past his prime are as valueless as those of a girl."
+
+"It was a theory I had no intention of advancing. I think for myself and
+pay no more attention to the excessive virtue bred by the years than to
+that equally illogical repentance or awakening of a woman's moral nature
+when the man has ceased to charm or has disappeared. That is a mere
+process, and no augury of future behavior. But you are always at your
+best when you go off at half-cock like that! What I meant was that woman
+has degenerated, not through passion but through ages of the exercise of
+her pettier and meaner qualities. In some, these qualities lead to
+malignancy, in the majority, no doubt, to frivolity--still worse, to my
+puritanical inheritance--and they are utterly commonplace of outlook.
+Matrimony keeps these qualities in constant exercise, because the ego
+loses its independent life, its habit of meditation, and is pin-pricked
+twenty times a day. It is by these qualities that woman chains man to
+the earth, not by her human passions. I am quite willing to concede that
+passion is magnificent."
+
+Gwynne ground his teeth. He had never encountered anything so
+incongruous as this beautiful vital superbly fashioned girl talking of
+passion in precisely the same tone as she would have talked of chickens.
+He felt the primitive man's impulse to beat her black and blue and then
+make her his creature. As Isabel turned her eyes she was astonished at
+what she saw in his. Gwynne's eyes were blazing. There was a dark color
+in his face, and even his mouth, somewhat heavy, and generally set, was
+half open. She fancied that so he looked when on a platform facing the
+enemy, and thoroughly awake.
+
+"What are you angry about?" she asked, calmly. "That I devote myself to
+my sex instead of to yours? They need me more than any leader they have
+evolved so far. There are millions of women of your sort. I want nothing
+that your sex has left to offer. I will find a happiness unimaginable to
+you, in living absolutely within myself and independent of all that
+life, so far, has to give."
+
+Then Gwynne exploded, and forgot himself. He flung himself forward, and
+catching her upper arms in the grip of a vise shook her until her teeth
+clacked together. "Damn you! Damn you!" he stammered. "What you want is
+to be the squaw of one of your own Indians!"
+
+"Let me go!" gasped Isabel, furious, and in sharp physical pain. "Do you
+want to turn the boat over? Have you gone mad? I'll _kick_ you!"
+
+"Good!" said Gwynne, releasing her, and sitting back. "That is the only
+feminine speech you have made since I have known you. I make no apology.
+You need never speak to me again. Set me ashore over there. I can take
+the train when it comes along."
+
+"You pinched me! You hurt me!" cried, Isabel in wrath and dismay. "I
+hate you!"
+
+"And your sentiments are cordially returned. Will you put me on shore?"
+
+"I don't care what you do. You hurt me! You hurt me!" And Isabel dropped
+her head into her arms and burst into a wild tempest of tears, like a
+child that has had its first whipping.
+
+Gwynne laughed aloud. "We are running into a mud bank," he said, "and
+the tide is going out."
+
+Isabel made a wild clutch at the tiller ropes, and brought the boat back
+into the channel. But she could scarcely see, and Gwynne with a
+contrition he had no intention of displaying offered to control the
+launch. She vouchsafed him no reply, and as she did not steer for the
+land, he retired to the extreme end of the boat and studied the scenery.
+He was determined not to go through even the form of an apology, but he
+was equally determined upon a reconciliation. In his first attempt to
+match his wits with a woman's his face became so stony and intense that
+Isabel recovered in a bound the serenity she had been struggling for,
+and laughed with a gayety that would have deceived any man.
+
+"We are a couple of naughty children," she said, sweetly. "Or maybe
+people are not quite civilized so early in the morning. You may smoke,
+if you like, and then I shouldn't mind if you came here and let me teach
+you to run this launch--it is probably more old-fashioned than any you
+have undertaken. But as we no doubt shall make many journeys it is only
+fair that you should do half the work."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+When they docked at the foot of Russian Hill, Isabel suggested that
+Gwynne should leave his portmanteau with Mr. Clatt, the wharfinger that
+lived at the edge of the sea-wall and looked after such launches and
+yachts as came his way.
+
+"I want you to stay with me if Lyster and Paula will come too," she
+said, hospitably. "They like that sort of thing when they happen to have
+a nurse. If they cannot come you will have to go to one of the hotels.
+In either case you can send here for your suit-case. You had better take
+the Jones Street car--"
+
+"The track is bust," said Mr. Clatt, who was a laconic person.
+
+"Walk along the docks to Polk Street and then south until you find a
+car--I think it turns in at Pacific Avenue. The conductor will tell you
+where to transfer--"
+
+"Are there no cabs?"
+
+"There are hacks and coupés at the livery-stables, if you care to expend
+ten or fifteen dollars for being less comfortable than in the cars.
+Remember our hills are little off the perpendicular."
+
+She did not see fit to inform him that his business would not take him
+into the hilly district, and watched him wend his way along the noisy,
+dirty, evil-smelling docks with some satisfaction. Then she climbed the
+steep hill to her house, over the crest. There were many cottages on
+this side of Russian Hill and one or two fine residences, but beyond one
+cable-car line little or nothing had been done to make life easy for the
+inhabitants. It was a bit of pioneer San Francisco. One day, no doubt,
+there would be a boulevard at its foot, the rough inhospitable cliff
+would be terraced, and set with the country-like villas of people that
+appreciated the beauties of the bay and Tamalpais, but at present a
+carriage could not mount it, and it made no appeal to the luxurious.
+
+An elderly couple lived in the "Belmont House" and did all that was
+necessary in the present stage of Isabel's fortunes. She found the woman
+house-cleaning and the old man weeding among the abundant crysanthemums
+and asters in the half acre which still surrounded the old mansion. She
+gave her orders and started for the home of her sister. A belated
+trade-wind was screaming through the city driving the dust before it.
+Isabel looked down at the towers and the domes, the steeples and walls
+of the great modern buildings, the low city built in the days when San
+Franciscans still feared earthquakes, all looming through the torn brown
+veil like the mirage of a city infinitely distant. But San Francisco was
+rarely more beautiful than in a dust-storm, which recombined her
+outlines and the patchwork of her crowded generations into something
+like harmony. She looked dreaming, proud, detached, an houri veiled to
+allure, to inspire a new race of poets. Gwynne holding his hat on his
+head with both hands, in the valley, cursed the climate, but Isabel
+picking her way down the crazy old staircase, although in anything but a
+poetical mood, paused a moment with that sudden outrush and uplift that
+was the only passion she had ever known. Such moments were not frequent
+and brought with them a sense of impersonality, as if she were but the
+vehicle of aspiring passionate souls long gone from their own clay, that
+rushed back through familiar conduits like volcanic fires, eager for the
+arch of the visible world.
+
+But ancestral rights had short shrift this morning. Isabel's spirit was
+a very caldron. She not only still raged at the fact that for a few
+seconds she had been as helpless in the grip of mere brute strength as
+any peasant woman, but she was keenly disappointed that Gwynne had not
+understood her. That he might have understood her too well, his whole
+sex precipitating itself upon the new enemy, she would not admit for a
+moment; women, with a sort of dishonest mental confusion, invariably
+substituting the word misunderstood for failure to accept their own
+point of view. Above all, was she furious with herself. Instead of
+annihilating him with the dignity of which she possessed an uncommon
+share, she had been surprised into behaving as if she were the crudest
+of mere human creatures.
+
+Moreover, her arms still pained, and she knew that they were black and
+blue.
+
+At the foot of the bluff she ran into a basement doorway to pin on her
+veil more securely, and dismissed psychology as incompatible with
+trade-winds and dust. A block or two farther on she took a cable car
+which slipped rapidly down the western slope, across the narrow valley,
+then up another and steeper hill, all blooming with flowers in the
+narrow gardens. She alighted at a corner half-way to the summit, and
+walked back to one of those curious San Francisco "Flat Houses" with
+three doors in a row. It was perched high above the sidewalk, for the
+street but a few years since was a gully, and the grading had deepened
+it. It was reached by some sixty winding but solid steps, and the little
+terrace, off at a right angle, was full of color.
+
+As she had expected, Mrs. Paula was sitting in the bow-window of her
+bedroom, gazing at the passers-by with a sort of idle eagerness. But so
+were a hundred others in sight, there being no idler creature than the
+American woman of small means, who neither belongs to clubs nor does her
+own work. The shallow philosophers harp upon the boredom of the idle
+rich whose every wish is gratified; but as a matter of fact the rich are
+seldom idle, and in highly organized societies are models of system and
+energy; whether misdirected or not, is beyond the question. It is the
+idle woman in a flat whose imagination riots along the highways of the
+great world, who keeps an avid eye for change of any sort, and finds a
+fictitious existence in the sentimental, the immoral, and the society
+novel.
+
+Paula, who lived in the top flat, ran down the two flights of stairs and
+opened the door for Isabel.
+
+"Well! you are a stranger!" she exclaimed. "I was wondering if your
+chickens had tuberculosis. Lots have in California. I read it in a
+Sunday newspaper."
+
+"My chickens are quite healthy. How are the children?"
+
+"As well as can be expected in this dusty windy city where they have to
+stay in the house half the day." Mrs. Stone's children were notoriously
+healthy, but she was of the stuff of which the modern martyr is made.
+
+Isabel followed her up the stairs and into the large sunny front
+bedroom. The children being invisible and also inarticulate, were
+doubtless in the back yard. The room was vaguely untidy without being
+dirty. A basket of socks and stockings in various stages of repair stood
+on a table by the window, but pushed aside to accommodate the Saturday
+society papers and a novel from the circulating library. An opera-cloak
+lay across a chair, flung there, no doubt, the night before, and on the
+floor close by was a pair of pink worn slippers very narrow at the toes
+but bulging backward like a toy boat. On the sofa was a freshly
+laundried pile of shirts with detached collars and cuffs, which Mrs.
+Stone immediately began ostentatiously to snip along the frayed edges.
+The room itself was full of sunshine, which gave it a cheerful air in
+spite of the faded Brussels carpet and the old-fashioned walnut
+furniture, a contribution from the house on Russian Hill. Mrs. Paula
+wore a vastly becoming wrapper of red nun's veiling trimmed with a
+yellowish lace that by no means looked as cheap as it was. She was
+pretty to excess, one of those little brown women that men admire and
+often trust. Had she been thin she would have been bird-like with her
+bright darting brown glance, but her cheeks, like her tightly laced
+little figure, were very round, and so crimson that they excited less
+suspicion than the more delicate and favorite pink. And the brilliant
+color suited her peasant style of prettiness, her full red lips, her
+bright crisp bronze hair. She had a fashion of absently sweeping the
+loose sleeves of her wrapper and "artistic" house-gowns up to her
+shoulder and revealing a plump and charming arm; and the pointed toe of
+shoe or slipper was always visible. Her arts were lost on Isabel, who
+understood and despised her, but who regarded her as a sacred legacy
+from her mother; Mrs. Belmont had been devoted to the pretty child she
+had adopted just after burying three of her own, and who had waited on
+her hand and foot to the day of her death. Isabel was always conscious
+of putting on a curb the moment she entered her sister's presence, but
+thought it good discipline, and only spoke her mind when goaded beyond
+endurance.
+
+"I tried to telephone," she began, but was interrupted by a deep sigh.
+
+"The telephone is cut off--we owe for three months. Hateful
+things!--they know we always pay some time or other."
+
+"If you are so badly off would it not be more economical to make the
+children's clothes--"
+
+"Isabel! Much you know about children! One can buy ready-made things for
+just half."
+
+Isabel subsided, for she felt herself at a disadvantage before this
+experienced young matron; although she vaguely recalled that whenever
+she had presented the children with little frocks and sailor suits she
+had expended a considerable sum. But doubtless she had gone to the wrong
+shops. Mrs. Paula was one of those women that haunted the cheap shops
+and bargain-counters, and was always in debt.
+
+"What a heavenly suit!" she exclaimed, her eyes roving covetously over
+Isabel's smart black costume. "Paris, I suppose. Fancy being able to
+walk into a store and order a new dress whenever you feel like it. I
+have never done that in all my life--"
+
+"It was for that I settled an income upon you before I left for Europe,
+but if it is not enough to buy a new frock occasionally--"
+
+"Oh, it would be enough if I could use it for that purpose, but you know
+what my life is! If Lyster would only live economically--but it is
+dining out at a restaurant five nights a week--champagne half the time,
+especially if we have a guest, and we generally have--a Californian
+thinks himself disgraced if he doesn't give invited company champagne.
+It's all very well to brag about the magnificence and generosity of this
+town--when you can afford to. But most everybody _I_ know, at least,
+can't, and when the first of the month comes, I guess the women all wish
+that San Francisco was more like New York, where they say every
+Californian in time avoids every other Californian for fear he'll want
+to borrow five dollars, and all the men let themselves go wild over Emma
+Eames because she's proper and doesn't cost anything. It's time we
+reformed instead of flinging money about like European princes--spending
+four times as much as you've got for fear of being called stingy. A San
+Franciscan would rather be called a murderer than mean. I talk and talk,
+and it's no use. A terrible thing has happened to us," she ended,
+abruptly.
+
+"What?" asked Isabel, startled; she had lent an indifferent ear to the
+familiar harangue.
+
+"Lyster has gone on a newspaper--the _Ventilator_. Fancy--Lyster a
+newspaper artist--making pictures of prize-fights, actresses, murderers,
+and society women at the opera. It was that or the street, and Lyster
+was frightened for once in his life. We owe for every mortal thing as
+well as the telephone."
+
+"That is the best thing I have ever heard of Lyster," said Isabel,
+imperturbably. "But when he gets a respectable sum of money for a
+picture, as he did a little while ago, why on earth doesn't he pay his
+bills, and make a fresh start? I thought he had when I was down."
+
+"Those two weeks cost a good deal," said Paula, softly.
+
+Isabel colored but controlled her anger as she had many times before. "I
+was under the impression that the check I gave you when I left--"
+
+"Oh yes, but then you really don't know much about the cost of things,
+in spite of the fact that you run a farm. We always had an extra man for
+you--"
+
+"I could well have dispensed with the dissipated fad-ridden specimens
+you produced for my entertainment. I did not meet a sober man during the
+entire fortnight. What is the amount of your indebtedness? I will pay
+half, but no more."
+
+She knew that it would be wiser to demand the bills and herself pay
+something on account to the desperate creditors, but she revolted from
+playing the mentor to that extent. When Paula, after a frowning bout
+with a pencil and a sheet of paper, announced the sum that would tide
+them over, Isabel was quite aware that she was facing the entire amount.
+However, she wrote a check, merely extracting a facile promise that it
+should be devoted to its legitimate purpose, and not to champagne or
+frills.
+
+"I will also send you down one or two tailor suits I have little use
+for," she added. "Things are so cheap in Europe that I was often
+betrayed into buying more than I wanted. They can easily be altered."
+
+"Thanks!" said Paula. "I am not the style for tailor-made things, but
+goodness knows I am glad enough to get anything."
+
+Isabel glanced doubtfully at the slippers. "I have so many boots. They
+are rather an extravagance with me--but I am afraid my foot is longer
+than yours."
+
+"Yes," said Paula, complacently, as she threaded a darning-needle. "My
+foot is quite _fearfully_ small."
+
+Isabel, who knew her foot to be far more slender and elegant than the
+plebeian member that never dared expose itself beyond the instep, nearly
+overflowed with feminine wrath; but she swallowed it, and remarked in a
+moment:
+
+"I had quite forgotten why I tried to telephone. Mr. Gwynne came down
+with me and I should like to show him about a bit. Of course I cannot do
+it alone; what is more, I want him to stay in my house. Nothing could
+exceed his hospitality to me in England, and I should hate the idea of
+sending him to a hotel when I have a house with eight bedrooms. Couldn't
+you and Lyster come up and stay for a couple of days? And if Lyster will
+show Mr. Gwynne the town, as indeed he has suggested more than once, it
+must be understood that the expense is mine."
+
+"Lyster would never permit it," said Paula, grandly. "You know what he
+is--he even lends more than he borrows; that is one reason why we are
+always so hard up. He is simply dying to show Mr. Gwynne about. And that
+means that he'll spend a month's salary before he gets it."
+
+"Then I will pay the month's bills. You must manage it as I wish or I
+return to-day."
+
+Isabel knew that Stone, if not generous in the higher sense, was
+delighted to play the extravagant host, and never failed to assume the
+rôle when he had money or credit. And if he was the freest and most
+debonair of borrowers at least he repaid when unusually prosperous; and
+he prided himself upon never having borrowed from a woman. Once when
+Isabel, who could not help liking him, had offered to pay his debts, he
+had promptly ascended from the depths of depression in which she had
+discovered him before his easel, and replied, gayly:
+
+"Not yet! The sort of man that borrows money from a woman is the sort of
+man that has no intention of paying it back. I am not that sort."
+
+With a wife who was or had been an adoring slave, it was little wonder
+that Stone's original selfishness had become abnormally enhanced, and
+Isabel took into account the feminine silliness of which he had been a
+victim since birth. His mother, well-born, southern, indolent, had
+indulged him in every whim during his boyhood; then when the familiar
+San Francisco crash came, he had turned to actual work with an exceeding
+ill grace. The easy ladies of the lower slopes, with whom he had tastes
+more than Bohemian in common, had admired him extravagantly, and when he
+finally met a girl that suited his tastes as exactly, and was
+respectable to boot, he became a devoted if somewhat erratic husband. He
+was now thirty-eight and all hope of graduation from perpetual
+irresponsible boyhood had been destroyed long since by a woman abjectly
+in love with him and too shrewd to antagonize him. With a strong brain
+and character a wife might have kept him on the upward artistic path and
+converted him to a measure of domesticity. But Paula had neither, was,
+moreover, quite satisfied with her mental equipment and blooming little
+person; so much so indeed that of late she was beginning to think
+herself thrown away, a matrimonial offering; to weary of being the mere
+annex of her brilliant husband. She was very clever in her fashion,
+however, and Stone still thought her his willing slave, although curtain
+lectures were less infrequent than of yore. And she had learned to
+manage him in many ways he would have thought it a waste of time to
+suspect.
+
+"It will be all right," she said to Isabel. "He always thinks I have
+more money than I have, for he never could do arithmetic at school and
+still believes that two and two make five. I shall be delighted to get
+out of this skyscraper for a few days." And then she asked,
+insinuatingly, if she could not take the children.
+
+But upon this point Isabel was obdurate, knowing that if Paula once
+planted her entire family in the Belmont House the police could not
+uproot them. Moreover, although she liked children, she detested
+Paula's. They were pert and spoiled, untidy and noisy, although handsome
+and highly bred of feature. She never saw them that she did not fall
+into a sort of panic at the thought that similar little creatures full
+of present and potential nuisance might have been her own, and then felt
+extraordinarily light of spirit in the reflection that she had escaped a
+lot she had as yet seen no reason to envy.
+
+"Have you no nurse?" she asked.
+
+"Oh yes. She has been threatening to leave--has been _fearfully_
+disagreeable--but I suppose she will stay, now that I can pay her." Mrs.
+Paula wisely gave up the point and invited her visitor to remain for
+luncheon. But Isabel rose hastily.
+
+"I must go home and see that everything is in order--the beds aired, and
+lunch prepared for Mr. Gwynne in case he should turn up. Then you will
+come about four? And we will dine out somewhere?"
+
+"I'll pack all the decent things I possess and send them up right away.
+Fortunately the dress Lyster gave me last month is quite fresh, so I
+shall not feel too small beside your magnificence, and I am sure that
+Mr. Gwynne, even if he is an Englishman, does not dress any better than
+Lyster."
+
+"Not a bit. We shall have some jolly times together. Mr. Gwynne is very
+anxious to meet you."
+
+"Well, he has not been in any particular hurry. Still, it will be
+fearfully nice, and I am so glad you have come down at last."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+It was characteristic of Mrs. Paula that she was not in the least
+jealous of Isabel's beauty. She was quite positive that no man would
+hesitate between her own exuberant prettiness and a face and form that
+looked as if it had stepped down from a dingy old canvas. It was true
+that Stone admired Isabel--with reservations to his wife--and had openly
+avowed his intention to paint her when he emerged from the tyranny of
+the pot-boiler. He had hoped that Isabel would take the graceful hint
+and order a portrait, but Isabel had succumbed to the pleadings of too
+many students of indifferent talent, and had no intention of undergoing
+the ordeal of sittings again to any but a master. To-night, as the party
+of four entered The Poodle Dog--the socially successful offspring of the
+still enterprising and disreputable parent on the dark slope
+above--Paula deliberately outstripped her companions and appropriated
+the seat, at the corner table reserved for them, that faced the room.
+Isabel was only too delighted to turn her back upon the staring people,
+for it had occurred to her to-night, for the first time, to be uneasily
+ashamed of her adopted relative. She had gone about with her several
+times since her return from Europe, and absently disapproved of a
+somewhat eccentric tendency in dress, but to all sorts of odd costuming
+she had grown accustomed during her experience of art circles abroad.
+This evening, as she stood in her living-room with Gwynne and watched
+Paula sail down the broad staircase, she had a sudden vision of the
+shanty at the northern base of Russian Hill where Mrs. Belmont had found
+her little Mexican seamstress, deserted by her American husband, wailing
+over the child she was about to leave. This story had always inspired
+Isabel with the profoundest pity, tempering her frequent impatience and
+disgust towards the family alien, but to-night she wished for a few
+moments that her mother had sent Paula to a foundling asylum. She
+glanced uneasily at Gwynne and fancied she could hear him slam the lid
+of his breeding upon a supercilious sputter. Mrs. Paula's skirt and the
+jacket on her arm were a respectable brown, but there was something in
+the screaming red blouse, the immense cheap red hat, the blazing cheeks,
+the pinched waist between swelling bust and hips, the already lifted
+skirt--Paula always wore a train that she might at the same time achieve
+longer lines and more subtle opportunities--exhibiting the pointed
+bronze slipper with a large red bow and much open work above, that
+suggested, if not the French cocotte, at least that San Francisco
+variety known in local parlance as "South of Market Street Chippy." She
+did not bear the remotest likeness to a lady. She looked common, fast.
+Isabel wondered that she had never faced the truth before. It was as if
+a wave of final criticism heaved from the brain of the man whose life
+had been passed in the best societies of the world across to hers. But
+Gwynne was imperturbable and polite, and as they rode down-town in the
+bright cars Paula thought him "fearfully nice" and was quite sure that
+he admired her.
+
+"We are fearfully late," she remarked, complacently, as she seated
+herself and looked slowly around the big room with its ornate frescoes
+and heavy chandeliers, its crowded tables and strange assortment of
+types. "But it is much nicer--to see them all at once, I mean," she
+added, untruthfully.
+
+Gwynne, whose seat also commanded a view of the room, looked about him
+with much interest. He had a vague association of impropriety with the
+name of the restaurant, but he saw only a few painted females and
+queer-looking men. The majority looked as if they belonged to the higher
+walks of Bohemia, and quite a fourth were indubitably fashionable. But
+his more vivid impression was that they all looked gay and care-free,
+and that their personalities were not wholly obscured by clothes. After
+lunching or dining at one of the great New York restaurants he had
+carried away the impression of a tremendously fashionable school in
+uniform--the women distinguished in appearance beyond those of any other
+American city, but utterly unindividual. The social bodies of the United
+States had interested him little, but to-night he glanced about with
+something of the curiosity of a Columbus discovering the land of his
+fathers. No doubt his Otis great-grandfather had been intimate with the
+great-grandfathers of more than one man present; in this remote bit of
+civilization he almost felt as if he were sitting down with a company of
+relatives, at the least to a gathering of the clans. And he had rarely
+seen so many handsome women together, nor such a variety of types.
+
+Paula, who knew every one by sight and assiduously read the society
+papers, volunteered much information while Isabel ordered the dinner;
+Stone had been detained half-way down the room by a party of friends.
+
+"That is Mrs. Masten," she whispered, with a respectful accent on the
+name and in the significant tone she always employed when addressing a
+person of social importance. "The youngish tall woman with white hair
+and distinguished profile. She is one of the old set--the one Mrs.
+Belmont belonged to--and fearfully haughty. Some people call her a
+beauty, but how can a woman be a beauty with white hair? Lots get it
+here and lose their complexions before they are twenty-five. It is the
+wind and nerves and too many good times. I wonder I have not gone off
+too, but I take a nap every day no matter what happens. Just beyond is
+Mrs. Trennahan. She never did have any beauty with that sallow skin and
+no feature except her eyes; but her husband, who was a great swell in
+New York, and often takes her there, is quite devoted to her, and they
+have a house on Nob Hill and another in Menlo Park. She is so exclusive
+that it is a wonder she ever condescends to dine in a restaurant; but
+Mr. Trennahan is a fearfully high liver, and this kitchen is famous.
+Mrs. Trennahan's mother, Mrs. Yorba, who led society in the Eighties,
+had only ninety people on her visiting list, and they say that her
+parties were the dullest ever given in San Francisco. Of course that was
+before I was born. The glory of that prehistoric crowd has departed, in
+spite of the fact that a few of them--not many--have kept their
+fortunes--and they are nothing to the new ones. The Irish and Germans
+are on top now and are just ruling things--people whose very names our
+mothers never heard, although they were making their piles without
+saying much about it. They have come forward in the last five or six
+years with a rush. All the old leaders are dead, and their children
+don't seem to care much--just stand aside and put on airs. One of the
+new leaders has a brogue. And as for Mrs. Hofer--take a good look at
+her."
+
+Paula indicated a tall superbly proportioned young woman in a simple
+Parisian black gown and an immense black hat with a cascade of white
+feathers rolling over the brim; she had a round laughing face and an air
+of indescribable buoyancy. "She was born and brought up south of Market
+Street, in the respectable part, but a dead give away in her generation:
+she's only twenty-six. I forget what her old peasant grandfather started
+life as, a peddler, probably, but afterwards he had a dry-goods store,
+or shoes or something, and he bought real estate, and his son improved
+it, so now they are rich. She was educated at the public schools, went
+to the University for a year, had two more in Europe, and came back with
+what they call presence and style, but is just cheek dressed up. She
+hadn't much show socially, but she didn't lose any time capturing
+Nicolas Hofer, the son of a German emigrant, who made money in the
+commission business which his sons have turned into millions. All the
+men like him, and as he was a great catch, of course he went everywhere;
+and when he married they had to accept his wife. She did the rest, and
+no one can deny that she is smart--in our sense and yours! She is a
+leader already, and has a perfectly wonderful house, that all the old
+aristocrats fall over themselves to get invited to. I'd like to go there
+myself, but of course I'm nobody. Hofer poses as a reformer, but I guess
+this old town's too much for him--"
+
+"Nicolas Hofer?" asked Gwynne, with interest. "I fancy that is the man
+my mother met at Homburg and asked me to call on."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Paula, with a toss of her head. "If you are going
+in for fine society you will soon have no use for us."
+
+Gwynne, being unaccustomed to crudities of this sort, applied himself to
+his oysters, while Isabel made a fierce resolution that she would find
+another chaperon or remain in the country. She was disagreeably
+conscious of craning necks, and although she knew that she was beginning
+to excite interest in San Francisco, and was looking her best in a white
+cloth frock and large white hat, she made no doubt that her
+juxtaposition to the exotic Paula was the theme of more than one
+unpleasant comment. While she liked Bohemia and was entirely indifferent
+to shabbiness, she had never grown accustomed to vulgarities, and that
+they should be embodied in her adopted sister filled her with a futile
+wrath.
+
+Stone hurried to his neglected party, waving his hand genially. He was a
+very tall loosely built man, with a sensuous laughing mouth and an eye
+that was seldom sober. He carried wine in his spirit as well as in his
+skin, and if the latter had bagged a trifle under its burden, the spirit
+was only depressed by the morning headache, and few men were more
+popular.
+
+"Know what kept me?" he demanded, as he doubled a huge Eastern
+oyster--for the others Isabel had ordered the more delicate Californian,
+but Stone's interior demanded a sterner nourishment. "Isabel, you are
+famous. At first it was the men. Now it is the women too. It was like
+you, dearie, to put Isabel opposite that mirror where everybody can see
+her, but in which she looks just one decree further removed from common
+mortals. Takes an artist's wife! No use, my sister. The Eggopolis must
+take care of itself, the chickens be left to roost alone. San Francisco
+wants you, and what she wants she gets--what is the matter, darling?"
+The corners of his little wife's mouth were down and her chin was
+trembling.
+
+"You might have paid _me one_ compliment!" she enunciated, between anger
+and tears.
+
+"Good heavens, sweetheart, you are as familiar to them as Lotta's
+fountain. You are an old story--and always beautiful," he added,
+gallantly. "But Isabel! We raise the voluptuous by the score, Gwynne,
+houris to beat the band. Climate's a regular Venus factory; but somehow
+we don't get the classic very often. Too mixed, probably. Will have to
+wait another generation or two. Eyes, complexions, figures--ye gods! But
+noses--somehow they run to snub. Still! Look over there. Ever see
+anything more fetching than those great Irish eyes in a regular little
+Dago mug? She's worth three cold millions and I pine to paint her. The
+price would be a mere detail. But to return to Isabel. She has only to
+raise her finger to become the rage, and I want her to raise it."
+
+"I wonder how much they would care for her if she hadn't been born into
+one of the sacred old families, and hadn't money to boot!" cried Mrs.
+Stone, exasperated beyond endurance by this triumph of marital
+tactlessness. "I'd like to know what chance a poor girl has to turn
+people's heads--"
+
+"Tut! tut! Brownie, you're jealous. You know there never was a town
+where people cared less about money--"
+
+"It's just like any other old town, only you have silly legends about it
+that you stick to in the face of facts. That day Isabel took me to the
+St. Francis for lunch I never saw so many stuck-up-looking girls in my
+life, and they all looked as if they had just sailed out of New York
+fashion-plates. There are only about six really fashionable women here
+to-night, and they only come because they think it's spicy to get so
+close to real vice without actually touching it. For my part I'm sick of
+the whole Bohemian game, and I'd like to dine at The St. Francis or The
+Palace every night." She turned to Gwynne, her eyes flashing
+dramatically; she was tired of being chorus to her popular husband's
+leading rôles, and was determined to hold the centre of the stage for
+Gwynne's edification at least. "They pretend to come here because the
+dinner is so good!" she exclaimed. "Good and cheap! But it isn't that a
+bit with the swells--the women, that is. They just love the idea of
+doing something almost naughty, once in a while in their virtuous
+lives--when a San Francisco woman _is_ proper she'd make you really
+tired with her superior airs and censorious tongue; but there isn't much
+she doesn't know, all the same, and she just revels in venturing this
+far."
+
+"I don't understand," said the bewildered Englishman. "Are we dining in
+a dive?"
+
+"Not quite, but almost!" cried Stone, refilling his glass from the large
+bottle in ice. "There is only one San Francisco! We have about six of
+these French restaurants--ever taste anything like these frogs in Paris?
+You scarcely ever see anybody in them at this hour with an 'all-night'
+reputation. There are plenty of other resorts, a good many of them under
+the sidewalks, where the dinner is almost as good but where a man
+doesn't take his wife. And up-stairs--here--and in a few others--well,
+if a woman is seen entering by the side door she is done for. But then
+she isn't usually seen. Lord! if these walls could speak! The
+divorce-mills would explode. The waiters all invest in real estate.
+Policemen send their daughters to Europe, and the boss politicians get
+rich so fast they spend money almost like a gentleman. In the hotels you
+are all but asked for your marriage license, but in what is
+euphemistically known as the French restaurants--well, high-toned vice
+comes high, but the town is fairly bursting with accommodations for
+every purse. No town like this!" he exclaimed, gazing into his lifted
+glass and with the accent of deep feeling. "No town on God's footstool.
+Nothing like it. Wouldn't live anywhere else if you gave me the planet.
+Of course I've reformed, but then it's the _atmosphere_--not a taint of
+American Puritanism--European and something more--the wild flavor of a
+new and unique civilization. Precious few California men that go to New
+York to live but are too glad to come back; and Eastern men, like
+Trennahan, who have had a long taste of it, couldn't be paid to live
+anywhere else."
+
+"So all the legends of San Francisco are true?" said Gwynne, who
+preferred Stone to his wife.
+
+"Couldn't exaggerate if you tried. Wait till I show it to you. No blazed
+trail nor special policeman detailed to protect our precious skulls. I
+know the ropes and am not afraid to go anywhere."
+
+"How do you like your new work?" asked Isabel, hastily, not knowing what
+he might say next. "I should fancy that newspaper life would suit you."
+
+"Does! Never hit a job I liked as well. Jolly set of fellows. Up all
+night. What more could a fellow ask? No more aristocracy of art for me.
+I'm neither a Peters nor a Keith, and I wish I'd found it out ten years
+ago. If a man can make a good living, what in--ah, what on earth more
+can he want in a town that gives him the best things in the world to
+eat, the jolliest all-night life, the finest fellows in the world, the
+prettiest women to look at, a climate that puts new life into old
+horses--life's a dead easy game out here--when you don't develop too
+much ambition. Ambition? Nothing in that. Fellows are ingrates and
+idiots that go off to a cold-blooded place like New York, with a beastly
+climate, the moment they have made a little mark here. No philosophy in
+ambition. Only one life. Why not enjoy it--when your creditors will let
+you? And the money always comes somehow--comes easy, goes easy, and if
+we can't all be great, we can be happier here than anywhere else on
+earth. Here's to San Francisco--and perdition to him that calls it
+'Frisco!"
+
+"So you have said good-bye to ambition?" asked Isabel, curiously. "I
+used to think you had a good deal."
+
+"So I had. Once I was younger and knew less. Perhaps if I had ever done
+anything cleverer than a few dashing skits for the Bohemian Club, and
+somebody had patted me hard enough on the back, I might have made an ass
+of myself and crossed the continent in the wake of so many that have
+never been heard of since."
+
+"I don't think you ever gave your creativeness a real chance. If you had
+shut yourself up in the country for a year--"
+
+"I should have stayed a week. Scenery on a drop curtain is all I want of
+nature. No, Isabel." He relapsed into sadness for a moment. "I have
+travelled the logical road and simmered down into my place. It's just
+this: San Francisco breeds all sorts. A few are born with a drop of
+iron in their souls. They resist the climate, and the enchantment of the
+easy luxurious semi-idle life you can command out here on next to
+nothing, and clear out, and work hard, and make little old California
+famous. Where they get the iron from God knows. It's all electricity
+with the rest of us. There are hundreds of my sort. You've seen them at
+the real Bohemian restaurants; young men mad with life and the sense of
+their own powers; all of them writing, painting, composing,
+editing--mostly talking. Then at other tables the old-young men who
+have shrugged their shoulders and simmered down like myself; lucky if
+they haven't taken to drink or drugs to drown regrets. Still other
+tables--the young-old men, quite happy, and generally drunk. Business
+men and some professional are the only ones that forge steadily ahead;
+with precious few exceptions. But you don't see them often in the cheap
+Bohemian restaurants, which have a glamour for the young, and are a
+financial necessity for the failures. Never was such a high percentage
+of brains in any one city. But they must get out. And if they don't go
+young they don't go at all. San Francisco is a disease. You can't shake
+it off. And you don't want to. To Hades with ambition anyhow," he cried,
+gayly. "We can admire one another--and we've learned to, instead of
+knocking the life out of everybody else as we did a few years ago. Now
+we present the unique spectacle of a city packed to the brim with
+cleverness and always ready for more. We know how to appreciate. _Vive
+la bagatelle._ New York? Why, the spirit and brains would be drained out
+of nine-tenths of us trying to keep a roof over our heads, and nobody
+knowing we were there. No, _sir_. No, _madam_! The men in this town
+realize more and more when they are well off, and here is one of them."
+And he refilled his glass.
+
+Isabel, not knowing that she had been listening to the litany of wasted
+lives, turned in disgust and cast about for an excuse to leave before
+Stone ordered another bottle of champagne. She encountered a gleam of
+amusement in Gwynne's eyes, and it seemed to transfer her to an empty
+auditorium, while mankind performed its little tricks on the stage for
+her sole benefit. It was a subtle tribute, and she blushed under it. She
+was also gratified to observe that Paula was boring him. But she glanced
+away, lest he should think she had forgiven him. At the same moment she
+saw a young man that had sat with his back to them, and opposite the
+famous Mrs. Hofer, suddenly push back his chair, rise to his feet, and
+look sharply at Gwynne. Then he came rapidly down the room, and Gwynne
+rose and met him as if lifted to his feet by the hospitality beaming
+from the large bright shrewd capable face of the Californian.
+
+"This is Mr. Gwynne! Is it really?" he exclaimed, taking the stranger's
+hand in a large warm grasp. "I am Nicolas Hofer. Your mother wrote you?
+We have only been back a short time--I had intended running up to see
+you. I knew you for a Britisher the minute you entered the room, but the
+word was only just passed about who you were. Do--please--waive
+formality and lunch with me at my house to-morrow. Then we'll motor
+about a bit and I'll show you something of the city. Glad the fine
+weather holds out. No denial. I expect you." And he skilfully took
+himself off, before Gwynne should feel obliged to introduce him to his
+party.
+
+"Now, what do you think of that for California manners, and the
+arrogance of the rich?" demanded Paula, triumphantly.
+
+"Not a bit of it," replied Stone, amiably. "Man was in a hurry. Can't
+you see his wife waiting for him? Never knew a Californian to put on
+airs in my life." By this time his optimism was complete. "Only women
+imagine such things. There are as many poor as rich in San Francisco
+society. Only some of us are too poor, and Bohemia is better anyway.
+Well, let's hit the pike. This room is too hot for my head."
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+The Poodle Dog, a high new ugly building, stood on the corner of Eddy
+and Mason Streets in the very centre of the Tenderloin, or "all night
+district." For two or three blocks on every side there was a blaze of
+light, electric signs, illuminated windows, sudden flashes from swinging
+doors. There was much movement, life, laughter, carriages in the street
+driving from restaurant to theatre. And all beyond, east and west, south
+and north, was a city as dark and quiet as the grave. The hill tops were
+picked out with a few lights, but one could barely see them from this
+region that never slept. Nor could one see Chinatown and Barbary coast,
+nor other sections more picturesque than creditable, where the cheaper
+gas blazed late, and not even a policeman was sure of his morrow if he
+ventured too far. But here was the sound of music and decorous laughter,
+the clang of street-cars and the constant rattle of carriages: the
+restaurants were beginning to empty; there would be an hour or two of
+comparative quiet, and then another crowd would fill the streets, the
+restaurants, even the saloons; a crowd that rarely saw daylight mixing
+amiably with respectable but undomestic citizens that could afford to
+sleep late.
+
+At present the scene was brilliant. "The San Franciscan loves the
+outside life as much as the Londoner," said Isabel to Gwynne, as they
+stood a moment almost blinded by the lower signs. "In many ways you
+will find them not unlike--especially as regards fads. Wait until you
+have been really initiated into intellectual Bohemia--the clever young
+newspaper men and budding authors. I already hate the names of Ibsen,
+Shaw, Wilde, Symons, Maeterlinck, and Gorky. I am only waiting for them
+to discover Max Klinger and Manet--"
+
+"Klinger?" asked Stone. "Where have I heard that name?"
+
+"He is the great unconscious humorist of modern art, also a great
+etcher," said Isabel, dryly. "Have you ever heard of the
+_Secessionists_?"
+
+"Of course," replied Stone, huffily. "You imagine that because you have
+been to Europe--"
+
+"Well, _have_ you ever heard of the _Scholles_?"
+
+Gwynne laughed aloud. "If he has not, I should champion the octopus
+proclivities of California."
+
+"They are the very best draughtsmen in the world--"
+
+But Paula had no intention that the conversation should be general. It
+had been agreed that they should visit Chinatown, and she took Gwynne's
+arm and led him up the hill; she found his cool impersonal manner almost
+fascinating after a lifetime in a nest of horned egos. They walked up
+through the semi-darkness to Clay Street and down to Portsmouth Square,
+passing through an entirely disreputable region, but quiet at this hour.
+As they crossed the Old Plaza--now Portsmouth Square--Isabel explained
+that it had been the nucleus of the San Francisco of the Fifties, and
+that people had crowded nightly against the great plate-glass windows on
+one of the corners to watch the gamblers and the hillocks of gold on
+every table; and that no doubt their common ancestor, who was a
+convivial adventurous soul, had brawled here many a night. Mrs. Paula,
+who knew absolutely nothing of the history of either California or San
+Francisco, hastened her steps, and in consequence excited the always
+smouldering jealousy of her husband. Stone had an exaggerated idea of
+her beauty and youth, and felt his own power waning, moreover had all
+the average American's Oriental instinct for exclusive possession.
+Consequently, as they entered the flaming bit of Hong-Kong on the
+opposite side of the square, Gwynne, infinitely to his satisfaction,
+found that there had been a deft exchange of partners.
+
+He had been in China, and the sudden entrance into an illusion more
+complete than even the stage could achieve almost took his breath away.
+There were the same crowds of stolid faces and dark-blue blouses,
+relieved here and there with the rich garments of the merchants and the
+women; the hundreds of tiny high balconies; the gorgeous windows filled
+with embroideries and porcelain, Satsuma and bronzes. He was glad to
+stroll with Isabel through a scene so like a picture-book, and to
+exclaim with her over the novel sensation of passing from the
+quintessence of the Western world into a bit of ancient civilization.
+She realized the psychology of every violent contrast as no companion he
+had ever known, and when she told him of the adjacent Spanish Town,
+Little Italy, Nigger Town, Sailor Town, where representatives of the
+scum of every clime were no doubt qualifying for purgatory at the
+moment, he experienced a lively regret that there were places he must
+explore without her comment.
+
+It was a gala night in Chinatown. Even the provision shops were
+festooned with sausages ornamented with bits of colored paper, and
+decorated paper or silken lanterns hung before every house. Painted
+women with stolid faces, often deeply imprinted with misery, rolled
+along, and there were many pretty children in the street, painted too,
+and dressed in the gayest and richest of garments. On the balconies of
+the upper and greater restaurants were valuable jars and vases full of
+plants and flowers. They ascended to the finest of these restaurants and
+found a merchant's party eating at round tables from dolls' plates. In a
+room opening upon a veranda, their creatures chanted what sounded to
+Occidental ears like the dirge of the lost souls of all the Flowery
+Empire, and the expression of the relaxed haunted faces confirmed the
+impression. In large alcoves well-dressed Chinamen reclined on tables of
+marble and teakwood, filling and refilling the opium pipe with an
+infinity of patience that if otherwise applied might have led to
+greatness instead of dreams.
+
+"These men are just on exhibition," said Stone, contemptuously. "Wait
+till I show you the real thing down in the slime. Lots of tall stories
+about Chinatown, but the reality is bad enough."
+
+They took a Jackson Street car and rode up through humbler Chinatown,
+then through quarters of varying respectability until they reached the
+sacred precinct of Nob Hill. Here there was an aristocratic calm, but
+much light, and faint strains of music. The season was in full swing,
+and society was either dining, or dressing for the dance.
+
+As they climbed the hill-stair Stone artfully trimmed the ragged edges
+of his wife's discontent. Subservient as she was to him, there were
+times when her temper flew straight and sharp like a blade too long
+hooped, and he had his reasons for conciliating her.
+
+Said Gwynne in a low tone as they felt their way up the dark and
+precarious flight: "Shall you think me rude if I accept Hofer's
+invitation for to-morrow? And Stone wants me to do the town a bit
+to-night. I am most curious--but I am your guest--and I can come down
+another time--"
+
+"I feel almost cross with you. This house is your hotel. If you ever go
+to another--whether I am in town or not--there will be trouble."
+
+So it was that as they reached the steps leading up to the door of the
+house, Stone dropped his wife's arm, which had lain somewhat rigidly in
+his, and catching Gwynne firmly by the elbow, beat a rapid retreat.
+
+"Good-night, darling!" he cried. "We're off to do the town." Throwing up
+first one leg then the other in black silhouette against the stars, he
+sang: "And we won't be home till morning, till morning--"
+
+The voice drifted up from the corner of Taylor and Broadway, where the
+two men waited for a car. "Till daylight doth appear."
+
+Mrs. Paula was gasping. "Well, I never--never--" she exclaimed, as
+Isabel hastily marshalled her up the stair and into the house. "I hope
+they'll be garroted! That's all! But it's just like the selfish beasts
+of men--"
+
+"What difference does it make? Didn't Lyster agree to be host? It would
+be too dismal for Gwynne to roam through the purlieus with a
+policeman--and he cannot come down often. It's bedtime, anyhow."
+
+"Bedtime?" cried Mrs. Paula. "Why, it's only ten o'clock. But I forgot
+that you go to bed and get up with chickens."
+
+"I should think you would be grateful to go to bed early, once in a
+while."
+
+"Oh, I often retire early enough, if it comes to that. It's listening
+half the night--all, is more like it--for the last car, and then for a
+hack galloping from side to side up that hill, as if the driver and the
+very horses were drunk themselves. I tell you it's a life!"
+
+"And don't you get used to it?" asked Isabel with curiosity. "You've
+been married thirteen years, and I suppose Lyster has always been what
+he calls an all-nighter."
+
+"There are some things a wife never gets used to," replied Paula with
+injured dignity, as she held out a doubting hand for the candle Isabel
+had lighted. "Haven't you gas or electricity?"
+
+"There is gas, but why take the trouble to light it? And the candle
+recalls so many delightful evenings in England. I know no prettier
+picture than a procession of long-trained women, with bare shoulders,
+and jewels in their hair, each carrying a candle up a long stair beside
+the central hall."
+
+"Ah! I have no such charming reminiscences of the English aristocracy,
+and I am only afraid of spilling candle grease on my one decent dress."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+At four o'clock Isabel was awakened by suspicious sounds at the key-hole
+of the front door. She reached out for her pistol, but withdrew her hand
+as she heard the careless laugh of her brother-in-law. A few moments
+later the two explorers, after an instant's hesitation at the head of
+the stair--which they had climbed like cats--walked past her door with a
+brisk swaggering preternaturally steady gait that invoked the memory of
+former occupants of the mansion. Then Gwynne's door opened and shut as
+if by sleight of hand. Stone's was at the end of the hall. Isabel
+inferred that he went through it, and a sound between a hiss and a
+smothered roar shot down the hall as he would seem to pick up the door
+and bang it into place.
+
+Mr. Hofer had mentioned his luncheon hour as half-past one. Isabel had
+Gwynne called an hour before. She was sitting on the veranda, as he
+emerged. He was as well groomed as usual, but he was unmistakably pale
+beneath his new coat of tan. She laughed wickedly.
+
+"Oh yes," he said, imperturbably, "I was drunk. If I had not been I
+never could have got through it, not being a seasoned San Franciscan. I
+thought I knew vice. I have seen a good many variations, and in places
+where protection was necessary. But I had not guessed at the
+combination of ancient civilization and the crudities of the mining-camp
+in the heart of a modern city. Stone is not a tank, but a camel. I
+befuddled myself successfully in those dives under the pavements--and we
+had by no means begun there: I should say we had patronized at least
+half the saloons in San Francisco before we started for the underworld.
+As we finally supported each other up the hill--we hadn't the price of a
+cab left between us--it seemed to me that I was ascending from a jungle
+of antediluvian men and women and beasts for ever and ever on the
+rampage. San Francisco is the most wonderful city in the world inasmuch
+as she not only exists but thrives on the top of such outrageous
+rottenness. And no wonder that the men like Hofer are desperate. We were
+escorted by a policeman after all, and he seemed to enjoy himself. The
+flash of knives--I saw two men stuck--made as little impression upon him
+as the awful abandonment of--well, of the females. Good God!--Well, I
+hope another variety is in store to-day. Hofer, at least, does not
+appear to be dissipated."
+
+"Oh no, it is the fashion in that set to be domestic and good citizens.
+All you'll hear of the underworld to-day will be its relation to
+politics. They have been making a desperate fight to defeat the present
+mayor's reëlection and have been overwhelmingly defeated. The mayor is
+popularly supposed to be a criminal at large, and the party that
+supports him call themselves socialists, and are labor unions more
+greedy and tyrannical than any Trust in the country. Nice town. But we
+are optimists. No doubt Mr. Hofer and his party are already planning for
+the next campaign. If I were a man, I'd go back to the tactics of the
+Fifties and lynch. The city had good government for twenty years after
+the operations of that Vigilance Committee. You might suggest it."
+
+"I cannot say that I am in a suggesting mood. Shall you be here to
+dinner?"
+
+"Probably. But you are to accept whatever offers. No doubt Mr. Hofer
+will motor you out to the Country Club or down to Burlingame, where he
+has a house."
+
+Gwynne nodded gratefully and left her. As he reached the top of the
+steps leading down the hill, Isabel saw him pause and speak to a very
+tall very smart young woman, whom she recognized in a moment as Mrs.
+Hofer. Then the young matron advanced along the board walk with a sort
+of trembling stride. It was evident from her charming blushing face that
+she was as embarrassed as any one so young and buoyant, so successful
+and so Irish, could be. Isabel ran down the steps to meet her.
+
+"Oh!" cried Mrs. Hofer, in a light, high, cultivated, but nasal voice,
+with a slightly English accent. "You _are_ sweet! I had intended to call
+in state the first time I could think of a decent excuse, for I have
+simply been mad--_mad_--to know you. But last night I told Mr. Hofer
+that my slender stock of patience had gone--flown--evaporated. I could
+hardly wait till this afternoon! Do you think I'm unconventional? I'm
+not really, except when I'm abroad--never here. Nobody is so
+conventional as the San Franciscan at home."
+
+Isabel was smiling and trying to guide her up the steps. "I am more glad
+than I can say to know you, at last," she said. "Do come into my house."
+
+"Let me rest a bit. The breath is out of me with the climb and the
+fright. Yes, fright, and it takes a good deal to phaze me. But you're
+the sensation of the town, my dear. There have been all sorts of plans
+to get hold of you. People are simply mad--_mad_! I was just bound I'd
+be the first. Not petty social ambition, not a bit of it. I wanted to
+know you. And I stayed in a country-house in England just after you,
+last year. To think that you could have married Lord Hexam. Oh, what a
+jewel of a house! I went simply mad over those white rooms in London."
+
+Isabel had firmly piloted her up the steps and into the house, and Mrs.
+Hofer sat on the edge of a chair like a bird on a bough, her merry
+shrewd sweet eyes devouring Isabel's face.
+
+"Oh, but I've wanted to know you! You don't know what this means to me!"
+
+"But why?" asked Isabel, much amused. "I am nobody."
+
+"Oh, just aren't you, though? Why, you're almost the last of the old San
+Francisco Knickerbockers, so to speak. That is, the last that has
+inherited any of the beauty one is always hearing about from the old
+beaux. And most of them have gone under anyhow--in the cheerful
+California fashion: three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt
+sleeves. Of course there are some left, but the most interesting thing
+about them is that they have been forced to open their houses to the
+likes of us--or sit down and talk to empty chairs. But the old Spanish
+blood is what interests us most. It was quite forgotten--all that old
+life--for about two generations; but now it's the fashion to remember
+it, and everything else early Californian. To think that you are a
+niece, so to speak, of the first nun in California, who had that
+romantic love affair with that Russian--I never could pronounce his
+name. That's not what interests _me_ most, though. It's _you_. To think
+what you've done! Those chickens! My man in the market has orders to
+send me Old Inn chickens and eggs, on penalty of losing my custom. All
+the _blasée_ girls--the San Francisco girls _do_ get so _blasée_, poor
+things--are threatening to go in for chickens. It would be a lot better
+for them than bridge. It is quite shocking the way they do gamble. Talk
+about early times!"
+
+"Fancy chickens becoming a fad!" Mrs. Hofer had paused for breath. "Poor
+chickens! Tell your friends that they will have to get up at all hours
+of the night, and at six o'clock in winter, and five in summer, and
+spend a large part of their time in overalls and rubber boots. I fancy
+that will cure them."
+
+"It would! No more flirtations! No more Paris gowns! No more paint! I'll
+tell them. But they admire you, all the same. And we are all dying to
+see you _en grande tenue_. I am giving a ball the night before
+Christmas. Say you will come--right here, on the spot."
+
+"I shall love to come. I had intended to reopen this house as soon as I
+could afford it, and had hardly expected to pick up my mother's old
+threads until then. But a ball! I haven't danced for a year."
+
+"It is simply fine to hear you say things just like other girls, when
+you look the concentrated essence of all our bewigged and bepowdered
+ancestors. To think that you've got that old colonial blood in you too,
+and are related to a lot of those old duffers one sees in the public
+parks. The next time I go East I'll look at them with more interest."
+
+Then she sat still farther forward, and her bright face took on an
+expression of coaxing eagerness.
+
+"If it hadn't been a man's luncheon to-day I should have asked you to
+join us. But won't you come down to The St. Francis with me? My
+automobile is at the foot of the bluff. We can motor afterward through
+the park a bit, and out on the boulevard. It is a simply heavenly day."
+
+Isabel hesitated, and lifted an ear to the floor above. There was not a
+sound, nor was it likely that Lyster would make his appearance before
+dinner. Paula had announced her intention of visiting her children in
+the course of the afternoon; she would hardly awaken for luncheon. While
+she hesitated Mrs. Hofer began to coax in her eager commanding fashion.
+
+"Oh, do come! Please come! I'm mad, _mad_ to have you all to myself for
+one day. Chloroform them--"
+
+"You wouldn't lunch with me?"
+
+"I _will_ entertain you first. Please, please, come!"
+
+"Very well," said Isabel, laughing. "I doubt if they ever know the
+difference. I won't be a minute getting ready."
+
+She ran up-stairs, and during the half-hour of her toilette Mrs. Hofer
+examined everything in the down-stairs rooms and nodded an emphatic
+approval.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+It was nearly midnight. Isabel, her head still buzzing after a
+kaleidoscopic day, which included much motoring and many words, felt no
+inclination for bed, moreover was not only curious to hear Gwynne's
+impressions, but felt a pleasant sense of anticipation in talking the
+day over with him. He had telephoned that he was going down to
+Burlingame for dinner, but should manage to return to the house in the
+neighborhood of midnight. She wondered if he had met as many people and
+received as many bewildering impressions as she had done.
+
+If she had cherished a lingering delusion that aught remained of the old
+proud reserved character of the society of her mother's time, it had
+vanished before the chatter of her hostess and the experiences of the
+day. They had not lunched at The St. Francis, after all. As they reached
+the entrance Mrs. Hofer capriciously changed her mind, and decided to
+make a dramatic descent with Isabel upon the house of a friend whom she
+knew to be entertaining informally, and where she was always sure of a
+welcome. The house was out at The Mission, a generic term in these days
+for the valley under the shadow of Twin Peaks, so sparsely populated by
+the _padres_. There were still a few large wooden houses, surrounded by
+grounds, that looked like country seats in the midst of that wilderness
+of cheap and hideous streets; built perhaps thirty or forty years
+before, when "The Mission" was a suburb, and for old affection's sake
+still inhabited in spite of a thousand drawbacks. Isabel approached this
+place in a fever of anticipation, for it was none other than the old
+estate of Juan Moraga, and through a grille in its vanished adobe wall
+Concha Argüello had held tryst with her Russian lover, Rézanov.
+
+Into this sheltered valley the trade winds and the fog came so seldom
+that, although it was a November day, the host had no hesitation in
+entertaining his guests on the lawn, with rugs under foot and a canopy
+to protect the complexions of the women. Here, Isabel found members of
+nearly every set the city had ever possessed: Mrs. Trennahan, like
+herself of the old Spanish stock, and her New York husband; Anne
+Montgomery and two or three others of the second régime; Catalina Shore,
+with her beautiful half Indian face and English husband; these few with
+a repose of manner that looked old-fashioned against the lightly poised
+figures and incessant chatter of the younger girls. And there was an
+even greater variety of garb. Several were dressed for the season in
+velvet and furs: one wore an organdie blouse and hat; another had
+hastily donned a checked travelling suit; there was no doubt that Miss
+Montgomery had bought her simple brown frock already made, and perhaps
+at a sale; her neighbor wore a black lace dress with a fur boa. The
+majority were excessively smart, whatever their vagaries, and Mrs.
+Hofer, most of all, in several shades of gray; not only becoming to her
+dark hair and bright color, but suggesting the natural plumage of a
+bird; she was one of those women that look so well in whatever they wear
+that it is difficult to imagine them in anything else. Isabel, perhaps,
+although the sharp eye of a woman would have detected the absence of the
+hand of a maid in her toilette, more nearly solved the problem of a
+spring day in mid-winter, with her frock of white serge and large black
+hat covered with feathers.
+
+She sat between the "Reform Mayor," whose guest she was, and the
+"Militant Editor," neither in the highest spirits after their recent and
+unexpected defeat; and heard much of that intimate political talk for
+which she had longed, although her mind wandered occasionally to that
+romantic past of caballero and doña not yet a century old, very
+difficult to conjure in this swarming heterogeneous valley.
+
+After luncheon Mrs. Hofer had invited Miss Montgomery into the
+automobile, and taken her and Isabel for a long ride, chattering of
+everything under the sun, but with breathing spells that enabled Isabel
+to exchange a few remarks with her old friend; and between remorse for
+her own neglect and pity for that desolated life, she was almost
+effusive, and begged Miss Montgomery to visit her in the valley where
+Anne's father too had owned a ranch in palmier days. She offered to
+furnish a room immediately, and Miss Montgomery smilingly promised to
+obtain surcease from dinner-parties, where her portion was to enter by
+the back door--in nine cases out of ten with the ancestral silver--and
+take the rest she needed. She made a good living, she assured Isabel,
+but was educating a young relative for the navy, and lived in a flat
+that was largely kitchen. All her fragile wild-rose beauty was gone long
+since, but she still remembered how to put on her clothes, and her
+position was unaffected in that devil-may-care city; she went into
+society when she chose.
+
+Mrs. Hofer, on their return from the environs, left them for a few
+moments in front of a house on Van Ness Avenue where a friend lay ill,
+and Isabel made an enthusiastic allusion to the gay out-door appearance
+of the city. The broad avenue was crowded with men, women, and children,
+promenading in the sunshine. Every street-car was filled with people on
+their way to or from the Park, Presidio, or Cliff House. They had passed
+hundreds of automobiles and fine turnouts of every description, and out
+at the three great resorts thousands of pleasure-seekers.
+
+Miss Montgomery set her well-cut mouth in a pale line. "I get somewhat
+weary of all this pagan delight in mere externals," she remarked. "It is
+all so superficial and deceptive, although sincere enough in its
+ebullitions. I can tell you, my dear idealist--you have not changed a
+particle, by the way--that there is another side you have never seen. I
+doubt if you ever would see it, even if you came to live in the town."
+The automobile stood on a corner. Miss Montgomery indicated the rise and
+fall of the hill-side, east and west of the avenue. "Look at all those
+shabby-genteel rows of houses, each exactly like the next, each with its
+awful bow window, and all needing a new coat of paint. So are the lives
+inside. And there are miles of them. There are just four sorts of people
+in this town--ignoring its underworld--that get any real enjoyment out
+of life: those that are wealthy enough to command constant variety; the
+careless clever Bohemians with their wits always on the alert and plenty
+of congenial work; the club women; the laboring class, that get the
+highest wages on earth and are as happy as beasts of the field on a
+bright warm winter's day like this. But oh, the thousands and thousands
+of mere mortals that are mired in their ruts and no longer even plan to
+climb out! There is no more chance for those people--who are in some
+little business, or are clerks, or small professional men, or fractions
+in the great corporations--to mention but a few examples--no more chance
+for them than in any of the older cities; for San Francisco has gone at
+such a pace that she has as many ruts as if centuries had plowed her,
+and those in the ruts might as well be on Lone Mountain. They--the women
+particularly--have the tedium vitæ in an acuter form than you have seen
+anywhere in Europe, for over there the centuries have mellowed and
+enriched life; there is something besides this eternal climate which can
+never take the place of art. Of course there was a day when every man
+had an equal chance, but that day has passed long since. And then in
+Europe," she went on, the minor note in her voice becoming more
+plaintive, although she was too well bred to whine, "you are always near
+some other place. You can save your money for a few months and command a
+change of scene. Here you have to travel three thousand miles to find a
+change of accent. I often have the delusion that California is on Mars.
+And the climate! Day after day, when I walk down that shabby hill with
+menus revolving in my head, or take the boat across that sparkling
+bay--I have customers all about--I long for the extremes of seasons they
+have in the East--fogs and four months of intermittent rain are only an
+irritant to one's natural love of variety. I long for the excitement of
+wading through snow drifts. I wish we would have a war. I should love
+to hear the shells hissing overhead, to see great buildings collapse,
+people rushing about in a mad state of excitement--anything,
+anything, to relieve the monotony of this isolated bit of
+semi-civilization--where, I can tell you, more women meditate suicide
+from pure ennui than in any city on earth!"
+
+Isabel was appalled by this outburst. The brilliant day seemed faded,
+the bright faces were grinning masks. Then she experienced a powerful
+rush of loyalty towards this stranded member of her own class, and
+before she realized what she was saying, she had offered to send her to
+Europe to finish the musical education begun in her promising youth.
+
+"Don't be angry," she stammered, knowing the intense pride of the
+impoverished American. "Why not? We are really related. I am quite
+alone. My little fortune has almost doubled. I make much more than I can
+spend. It would be quite shocking if I did not do something for some
+one--there is Paula of course, but it is against my principle to do too
+much for any woman with a husband. Do--please--"
+
+Miss Montgomery, who had flushed deeply and averted her head, turned
+suddenly with a smile and a light in her eyes that, with the color in
+her cheeks, made her look young for a moment.
+
+"That was just like you!" she exclaimed. "I remember in Rosewater, when
+you were a little thing, you used to give away the clothes on your back,
+and your toys never lasted a week; although you beat the children and
+pulled them about by the hair when they didn't play to suit you. I saw
+you on the street just after your return from Europe--you looked as if
+you had wrapped yourself up in the pride of your nature--had found a
+plane apart from common mortals. For that reason I did not remind you of
+my existence. But I should have remembered that you had had trouble and
+care enough to freeze any woman of your inheritances into a sort of
+animated Revolutionary statue. But you are just the same old Isabel. It
+makes me feel young again."
+
+"And you will go?" asked Isabel, eagerly.
+
+Miss Montgomery shook her head. "No," she said, sadly. "It is too late.
+I am thirty-five. If you have made no place for yourself by that time in
+America you belong by a sort of divine decree to the treadmill. And the
+limberness has gone out of my fingers as out of my mind. Sometimes I
+deluge my pillow; but I will confess to you that down deep there is a
+consciousness of bluntness, and it makes me inconsistently satisfied to
+be here in this land of climate and plenty, instead of in Boston or New
+York, where both climatic and social conditions are so terribly stern
+for the poor. After all, the word 'struggle' is a mere euphemism out
+here, and I am still asked to nearly all of the big parties; not one of
+the older set has dropped me, and I could go out constantly if I chose.
+But I have neither the energy nor the money. I could have presents of
+ball gowns, but of course I won't accept them." She laid her hand on
+Isabel's. "Don't imagine that I do not appreciate your generosity. I
+shall never forget it--nor the dear childish awkward spontaneity of its
+expression. But here I stay and rot."
+
+"I heard this same lament from Lyster the other night; only he was more
+cheerful about it--possibly because he has other surcease--"
+
+"Don't waste any sympathy on us," said Miss Montgomery, contemptuously.
+"There never was such a sieve as California--San Francisco--for
+separating the wheat from the chaff--for determining the survival of the
+fittest. If I had been worth my salt I should have conquered every
+obstacle, overcome the family will, when I was young and full of hope
+and vigor. So would Lyster Stone. San Francisco is stronger than we are.
+That is the truth in a nutshell. Those that are stronger than she have
+gone. The rest don't matter. And as so many of those that are really
+gifted enjoy themselves with only an occasional spasm of self-disgust,
+they are not greatly to be pitied. By and by they will outgrow even
+that, and congratulate themselves that they were not of those that fled
+from the good things of life."
+
+Mrs. Hofer ran down the steps and into her automobile. "I
+simply--couldn't--get--away," she cried between the agonized thumpings
+of the engine. "But perhaps you were glad to be rid of me a bit. Please
+don't say so, though. It would make me simply miserable."
+
+As the car glided off, she sat on the edge of the seat facing her
+guests, lightly, and with the same backward sweep of her body as when
+walking. She always seemed to be fairly bursting with youthful energy,
+and no bird could rival her buoyancy. She immediately assumed the burden
+of the conversation.
+
+"Dear Miss Otis! I have been meaning all day to ask you about Lady
+Victoria Gwynne, but so many things have put it out of my head. What do
+you think of her? I am simply mad to know. I never met any one who
+interested me half so much; I couldn't make her out the least little
+bit. The only time when she seemed quite alive was when she spoke of
+her Jack. In the famous Elton she didn't seem to take any interest at
+all. I fancy they've fallen out, for whenever his name was
+mentioned--and Mr. Hofer admires him immensely--she always became as
+mute as a mummy. It put me out a bit. I'm not used to that sort of
+treatment. When I want to talk about a subject, I am in the habit of
+doing so. Lady Victoria is not a bit simple like so many English great
+ladies. Perhaps it's the Spanish blood, or perhaps it's because she's so
+_blasée_. They _do_ tell stories! I never heard any received woman
+accused of having had quite so many--well, at least in this town, when a
+woman is openly larky she soon finds herself on the north side of the
+fence. There was my Lady Victoria hobnobbing with all the royalties at
+Homburg. But what interested me most was her attitude to Sir Cadge
+Vanneck--"
+
+"What?" Isabel sat erect. "Has Sir Cadge Vanneck returned from Africa? I
+thought something besides ill health was detaining her. Do you think
+they will marry? I don't know whether Mr. Gwynne would like it or not.
+He looks forward to her arrival--"
+
+"I can see Lady Victoria on a California ranch! She would yawn her head
+off. London is 'the world' in quotation marks. She couldn't, that
+seasoned lady, stay out of it six months. But about Sir Cadge--that was
+the final mystery. It actually kept me awake one night. You know the
+story, how devoted he was for about two years, and then how he ran away
+when her husband was killed, for fear he would have to marry her. Nobody
+knew exactly how she felt about it, for one thing must be said for the
+people of those effete old civilizations: their breeding carries them
+through any crisis without the turn of a hair. But the report was that
+she showed an inner convulsion in subtle outer vibrations, or people
+imagined she did, probably because she'd got to that age where she
+couldn't have many illusions left. Then, suddenly, this summer, he
+returns, and follows her to Homburg. He is all devotion. She is an
+iceberg. And she's gone off dreadfully. I saw her seven years ago at
+Covent Garden, and she was the handsomest thing I ever looked at. She's
+handsome yet, but her muscles are getting that loose look and her eyes
+are bottomless pits of ennui. Save me from being a fashionable
+demimondaine. Better go to the deuce and die in a garret. Something
+honest in that, anyhow--and more picturesque. There may be something
+behind, that we don't know anything about, but in my opinion she is not
+the happiest of women; and with such a handsome and agreeable man as Sir
+Cadge Vanneck at her feet, she is just an ingrate. We are not here,
+already? I wish I were not invited this evening, I'd simply _make_ you
+come home to dinner. And it seems so rude to leave you at the foot of
+this bluff; but there is just one thing the automobile can't do--"
+
+Isabel, her head spinning with many words, had been glad to express her
+pleasure in the day's entertainment and run up the steps to her refuge
+on the heights. She had found that Mr. Stone was still in bed and likely
+to remain there, and a haughty note from Paula announcing that she had
+returned to her children and should remain where she was wanted.
+
+She was vaguely planning to "do something" for Anne Montgomery, and
+congratulating herself that she could fly at will from people that
+talked too much, when she heard Gwynne's long stride on the plank walk,
+and called gayly to him out of the darkness "to stand and deliver."
+
+"I hope you carry a pistol," she added, anxiously, as he ran up the
+steps. "I scarcely ever pick up a newspaper without reading of a
+hold-up, and there were four on this hill last week. We change, out
+here, but we don't seem to improve much."
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+"I have had what is called a full day," said Gwynne, as he sank into a
+chair beside Isabel. "Lunch with half a dozen of the cleverest and most
+strenuous men I ever met--and not at Hofer's house, by the way, but out
+at the Cliff House, up in a tower, where we had a superb view of the
+ocean and Golden Gate; then motored about the city for three hours, then
+down to Burlingame for dinner, then back to supper at one of the
+restaurants. After over a year of social suspension I hardly knew how to
+behave, especially to all the pretty women I met at the Club House at
+Burlingame,--who seemed to expect me to pay them compliments and flirt
+desperately. I feel worn out, and on the verge of sighing for my lonely
+ranch."
+
+"But you have enjoyed yourself," said Isabel, smiling. "It has done you
+a lot of good. You must grow straight downward to your roots. Then, when
+you shoot up again you will be a real American."
+
+Gwynne made a wry face. "Not yet. Mrs. Hofer's father, Mr. Toole (who is
+now retired and spends most of his time in about the most luxurious
+library I ever saw--we alighted in it for a few moments before swooping
+down to Burlingame) quoted Byron to me and is well up in English
+politics. There were several London newspapers and reviews on the table.
+Moreover, at the luncheon, Elton Gwynne was actually discussed for a
+few moments. All of which gave me pangs of homesickness. But although
+they are all sufficiently versed in British politics, their interest is
+very casual. Even national matters don't concern them particularly. What
+absorbs them is the redemption of San Francisco; and after my
+experiences last night I can't say I am surprised. The sort of municipal
+government that permits and battens upon an unlimited variety of open
+vice must devour the entire city in time. Mr. Toole informed me, in the
+holy calm of his library, that reform is impossible; and certainly the
+professional grafters seem to be one of the few productions of this
+State whose energy is not demoralized by the climate. But that must make
+the fight more interesting. And hardly a degree less menacing is this
+gigantic octapus of labor unionism--of inexcusable socialism. Well, we
+shall see! It makes one tingle."
+
+"And do you never, in your inmost, contemplate returning to England?"
+asked Isabel, curiously.
+
+Gwynne swung about and planted his elbows on the railing, clasping his
+hands about his head. For some moments he seemed absorbed in the mass of
+lights at the foot of the black hill-side. "I don't know," he said,
+finally. "It is possible that only my will keeps me from thinking about
+it. It may be that, having made up my mind before leaving England, I
+accomplished a final wrench and adjustment. I abstain from too much
+self-analysis; but it is certain that down deep I often feel a tug at
+familiar strings. I don't pretend to know myself, for after all what is
+each one of us but the composite of the race, always at war with a spark
+of individuality. Some fine morning I may wake up, order my trunk to be
+packed, and take the first train out of California."
+
+"Oh, might you?"
+
+"Well, of course, I should stop and say good-bye to you. That is if I
+did not fall into a panic at the thought of a final encounter with that
+terrible will of yours." He turned and met a pair of eyes that were
+shining like a cat's in the dark. "You know that you have been
+manipulating the strings of my destiny!" he said, abruptly, and
+surprised at himself. "I grew fearful of self-analysis and buried myself
+in the law--jolly good antidote--but I am always conscious of a subtle
+pressure on my will--was. I have thrown it off. It was either that or
+leave."
+
+"Perhaps you have felt freer since Saturday morning," said Isabel,
+cruelly.
+
+His own eyes glittered, but if he blushed the darkness screened him.
+"Quite true," he said, dryly, "The man-brute turned. And in the final
+battle, when the feminine principle is pitted against the masculine, I
+fancy we shall know how to win the day. If we resort to primitive
+methods it will be your own fault."
+
+"I was invited for dinner to-morrow night, and had to decline because my
+arms are black-and-blue."
+
+"I don't repent," said Gwynne, doggedly.
+
+There was another silence, and then he asked: "Haven't you been trying
+to manage me?"
+
+"I have only been trying to steer you in a new country--to make things a
+little easier--"
+
+"You are not always frank. And that is not altogether what I mean. I
+hardly know myself what I do mean. Before I arrived I thought it likely
+I should ma--want to marry you. In many respects you were designed to be
+the wife of an ambitious public man. With your beauty, and brains, your
+grand manner, and your subtlety--but it is the last that has put me
+off. I have seen too many men managed by their wives. I never could
+stand it. Doubtless my Celtic blood gives me the tiniest feminine drop.
+It is only the big uncomplicated oafs that don't mind being managed by
+their women. I should want the freest and most open companionship, but
+with my will always in the ascendant--although no man would be more
+indulgent to his wife."
+
+"You will find thousands to answer all your requirements and
+limitations."
+
+"Much you know about it. True, this place is full of handsome and
+attractive women--topping! And they have a free wild grace, a stride, a
+swing--it is wonderful to watch them go up these hills. And I was vastly
+entertained at luncheon, and at one or two of the houses where I was
+afterward taken to call. But I doubt if I shall ever find anyone again
+that possesses so many remarkable qualities in combination as your own
+puzzling unsatisfactory self."
+
+"I am not in the least like Mrs. Kaye, and you thought she combined
+every quality under the sun."
+
+"I expended the last of my calf love on Mrs. Kaye. I was blinded by
+passion; but that my emotional depths were not even stirred was
+manifested by the rapidity of my convalescence. We were utterly
+unsuited. In many respects I should have been ashamed of her. Blood must
+always tell in England--although in America--if Mrs. Hofer is a
+type--well, this is the land of reversed theories. Mrs. Kaye and I would
+have been at swords' points in less than a year. The next time I choose
+a wife it will be with my judgment."
+
+"And are you no longer capable of love?"
+
+"Oh, love!" Once more Gwynne gazed down upon the sleepless city, where
+the lights seemed to powder the upper air with gold dust. "Perhaps. It
+seemed to me that day in Park Lane that all the heat died out of my
+veins. I am only just beginning to feel alive once more. But I have no
+wish as yet to experience the passion of love again--not even with you;
+although if you would cry off in some respects I don't know but that I
+should still like to marry you."
+
+"At least you could beat me if I did not behave."
+
+He laughed. "I don't doubt I should want to. No, I'll never let myself
+go like that again; but I should be sure first that my will was the
+stronger of the two."
+
+"You carefully abstain from proposing so that I cannot make the retort I
+should like to."
+
+"You may. I know you won't have me. But that does not alter the fact
+that the same ancestral lines have given us an inconceivable number of
+molecules that are subtly responsive. The great cleavage has
+accomplished as many points of divergence and contrast. Therefore is
+there, in me, at least, an insistent whisper for ancestral and long
+denied rights. You will feel it in time--"
+
+"How much you have thought about it!"
+
+"My mind is pretty well oiled: it does not take me years to work out any
+proposition. To tell you the truth, I have never put that undercurrent
+of consciousness into words until to-night. All the same, even if I
+loved you, if I finally believed you to be the stronger of the two, I
+should take the next boat for England. California wouldn't hold me. And
+I should not say good-bye."
+
+"That would be a confession of weakness."
+
+"It is one I'd be the better for making."
+
+"Well, anyhow, as I am hostess I can order you to bed. It must be one
+o'clock. I don't doubt you will find more than one affinity if you are
+awakening; that is merely the mating instinct. Good-night."
+
+Far too hospitable and high-handed to incommode a guest, she did not
+tell him that Paula had gone, and that Stone had sauntered out in search
+of a "bracer," and had not returned. Gwynne slept the sleep of the
+unburdened conscience, and returned to Rosewater by the first
+train--Isabel was remaining in town for another day--ignorant not only
+of having violated the proprieties, but of the fact that a former
+inhabitant of Rosewater lived not far from the foot of the bluff.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Two weeks later Lady Victoria was established in the house on Russian
+Hill. She had given no intimation of her coming until the day her train
+was due in Oakland, when she telegraphed, suddenly reflecting, no doubt,
+that she was descending into the wilderness and that precautions were
+wise. Gwynne barely had time to catch the train from Rosewater, and when
+the connecting boat arrived at the ferry building in San Francisco, he
+was obliged to run like a thief pursued by a policeman down to the
+Oakland ferry building, in order to catch the boat just starting to meet
+the Overland train. All this was by no means to his taste. Nor was his
+mother's cavalier arrival. It savored too much of royalty. And he had a
+masculine disapproval of being taken by surprise; moreover was far less
+ardent at the prospect of seeing his mother again than he would have
+expected. In England he had needed her; she seemed superfluous in this
+country, which she never would understand; and he wanted all his time
+for his studies--and as little reminder of England as possible. His
+mother, for all her individualities, was the concentrated essence of the
+England he knew best. Besides, she was accustomed to a great deal of
+attention. He had no taste for dancing attendance upon any one, and from
+whom else could she expect it--unless, to be sure--he recalled that his
+mother was a beautiful woman, always surrounded by a court of admirers.
+Why should Americans be impervious to the accomplished fascination and
+the beauty of a woman that had reigned in London for thirty years? He
+determined to press Isabel into service. She could try her hand on his
+mother's American destinies, and provide her with amusement and a host
+of friends.
+
+He felt all the promptings of natural affection when he was actually
+face to face with his mother once more, and forgot all his doubts in his
+intense amusement at her naïve surprise before the comfortable immensity
+of the San Francisco hotels, and the crowds and automobiles in the
+streets.
+
+The next day he took her up to the ranch. For a week she stalked about
+the country, eight hours out of the twenty-four, expressing interest in
+nothing, although her eyes always softened at her son's approach; and if
+she manifested no enthusiasm for his adopted country, at least she
+barely mentioned the one of his heart. At the end of a week she promptly
+accepted Isabel's suggestion to transfer herself and her grim disgusted
+maid to the house on Russian Hill. Isabel lost no time in piloting her
+thither. Anne Montgomery undertook to provide her with a small staff of
+servants, and to call daily and order the household until all wheels
+were on their tracks. Mrs. Hofer delightedly agreed to be the social
+sponsor of Lady Victoria Gwynne, and issued invitations at once for a
+tea and a dinner; and Gwynne, who had been half indifferent to
+rebuilding on the San Francisco property, immediately began holding long
+interviews with bankers, lawyers, architects, and contractors. The law
+required him to give but thirty days' notice to his tenants, well-to-do
+workmen; and if all went well the building might be finished in seven
+months. Lady Victoria evinced something like a renewed interest in life
+when told that by the following winter her income would be increased;
+and trebled as soon as the large revenue from the building had paid off
+the mortgage. Her son offered to place his own share at her disposal
+until her debts were paid, but to this she would not listen. He found
+her maternal affection undimmed, but other changes in her which he was
+far too masculine to understand, and after she was fairly settled and
+apparently content, he dismissed feminine idiosyncrasies from his
+overburdened mind. He had neglected his studies long enough, and it was
+time to begin his amateur practice in Judge Leslie's office, to say
+nothing of the bi-weekly lecture at the State University at Berkeley,
+which, with the journeys, consumed the day.
+
+Isabel's feminine soul took a far more abiding interest in the subtle
+changes of that complicated modern evolution whose special arrangement
+of particles was labelled Victoria Gwynne. She bore little external
+traces of her illness, and when Isabel congratulated her upon so
+complete a recovery, she looked as blank as if memory had failed her.
+Isabel had encountered this truly British attitude before, and
+experienced none of the irritation of several of the Englishwoman's new
+acquaintances when insisting upon the beneficence of the San Francisco
+climate. But it was not long before Isabel discerned that under that
+sphinx-like exterior the older woman was intensely nervous, that once or
+twice even her splendid breeding could not control an outburst of
+irritability. Her eyes, too, had a curious hard opaque look, as if the
+old voluptuous fires had burned out; and she seemed ever on her guard.
+What her future plans were no man could guess. She might have settled
+down for life on Russian Hill, so completely did she make the new
+environment fit her imperious person. She even remarked casually to
+Isabel that "of course" she should entertain in the course of the
+winter, but at one of the hotels; she would never ask people to climb
+those stairs on a possibly rainy night. But it was evident that her
+entertaining would be merely on the principle of noblesse oblige; her
+lack of interest in the doings of a civilization so different from her
+own was patent, and it was doubtful if she would have even accepted the
+attentions showered upon her had she not feared the alternative of an
+unbroken ennui. Isabel felt vaguely sorry for her, and puzzled deeply,
+but she could do no more than provide her with entertainment and the
+abundant comforts and luxuries of the city; to express any deeper and
+more womanly sympathy to that proud nature would have been a liberty
+Isabel would have been the last to take. But she retained her own rooms
+and went down with Gwynne once a week, when they both devoted themselves
+to Lady Victoria's amusement. It was at least gratifying that the French
+restaurants and many of the unique Bohemian resorts entertained her more
+than society; and she found the Stones amusing, and frankly made use of
+Paula, who did all her shopping, receiving many a careless present.
+
+Meanwhile Gwynne, when not reading, or practising, or attending
+lectures, or endeavoring to hurry forward his new enterprise in the
+city, took long buggy rides with Tom Colton about the country, and made
+acquaintance with many farmers, as well as with the guileful depths of
+the ambitious young politician. Colton, although for the present
+dependent upon only the voters of his district, by no means confined
+his attentions even to those of his county. The time would come when he
+would need a wide popularity, and with his cool far-sighted tactics he
+was already sowing its seeds. There was an immense and varied material
+to work on. Not only were his own county and the two adjoining as large
+as a State more modest than California, but, with the exception of the
+Asti vineyards, and one or two ranches like Lumalitas, were cut up into
+an infinite number of farms owned by Irish, Scotch, Danes, Norwegians,
+Swedes, Hungarians, Swiss, Germans, Italians, and a few native
+Americans. Asti alone, a great district devoted to the vine, and
+boasting the largest tank in the world, was entirely in the hands of
+Italians. The Swiss, for the most part, were cheese makers. The rest
+devoted themselves to chickens, grain, hay, wheat, and fruit. There were
+several orange orchards and one violet farm. Many of these foreigners
+were so numerous that churches had been built for their separate use,
+and service was held in their native tongue. All were willing to drop
+work for a few moments and talk politics with Colton, particularly if it
+was to abuse lawmakers and monopolists--above all, the railroads, whose
+prices were exorbitant, and whose service was inadequate. In this
+department of monopoly at least they had a real grievance, and Colton
+never let them forget it. He made no secret of the fact that the United
+States Senate was his goal, and reiterated that there alone could he
+accomplish the legislation that would free the farmer from the costly
+tyranny of the corporations and give the laboring man his rightful share
+of profit. Some were skeptical that any mortal could accomplish all he
+promised, but the foreigners for the most part were gullible, and they
+all liked the rich man's son, with his simple ways and his blatant
+democracy.
+
+Of Gwynne they took little notice, but he studied them, one and all, and
+it was not long before he understood the materials with which he must
+deal in the future. The State was Republican, although San Francisco
+presented the remarkable spectacle of a Democratic mayor with a
+Republican boss controlling the labor element, which was presumably
+democratic in essence, and devoted to the figurehead. But country
+politics were far less complicated, and it was possible that a strong
+Democrat with a sufficiency of inherent power could weld together the
+conflicting and half indifferent elements, and change the political
+current. Californians had gone thunderously Republican at the last
+Presidential election, because for the moment they were dazzled by the
+Roosevelt star and all it seemed to portend. There could be no better
+augury for a really great and sincere leader; for whether or not
+Roosevelt was all they imagined, the point to consider was that they had
+been carried away by their higher enthusiasms, not by those a mere
+trickster like Colton was trying to stimulate. They had rushed to the
+polls with all that was best in their natures in the ascendant, eager
+not only for a great servant that would reform many abuses, but for one
+that stood at the moment before the country as the embodiment of all
+that was high-minded, uncompromisingly honest, and nobly patriotic in
+American life. It was one of the greatest personal triumphs ever
+accomplished--for the leaders wished nothing more ardently than his
+downfall--and whether or not it was to be justified by history, it must
+ever remain to his credit that he had hypnotized his countrymen through
+the higher channels of their nature. The reaction might be bitter, but
+memory is short, and at least he had served to demonstrate that the
+American mind was not materialized by the lust of gain, was quite as
+susceptible to the loftier patriotic promptings as in the days of its
+revolutionary and simpler ancestors. A man like Colton might delude for
+a time, for the Democratic party was deplorably weak in leaders, and the
+Republican bosses, in California, as elsewhere, had made the State a
+byword for shameless corruption; and their iron heel ground hard even in
+that land of climate and plenty. Colton might be useful to rouse
+Californians to a sense of their wrongs and opportunities, but Gwynne
+doubted if he could hold them. He promised too much. The time would come
+when they would turn to a strong man who talked less and did more, who
+gradually imbued them with the conviction of absolute honesty,
+distinguished ability, and as much disinterestedness as it is reasonable
+to expect of any mortal striving for the great prizes of life.
+
+One day there was a mass-meeting suddenly called to express sympathy
+with the orange growers of the South, who had dumped twelve carloads of
+early oranges into the San Francisco Bay rather than submit to the
+increased rates of the transcontinental railroads. Gwynne saw his
+opportunity and summoned his powers. There was a moment of doubt, of
+hesitancy, of reflection that he was rusty, and that the subject was of
+no special interest to him; then, at the eager insistence of Colton, he
+walked rapidly to the front of the platform with all the actor's exalted
+nervous delight in a new rôle. In a few moments there was no subject on
+earth so interesting to him as the iniquities of the railroads and the
+wrongs of the orange growers; he awoke from his torpor so triumphantly
+that his amazed audience, as of old, felt the deep flattery of its
+power over him, and he made a speech which was like the rushing of risen
+waters through a broken dam. Not that he permitted himself to be carried
+away wholly; he deliberately refrained from indiscriminate phillipics,
+from rousing their ire too far, grasped the opportunity to see what
+could be done by appealing to their reason through their higher
+emotions, and begged them to meet constantly and consider the question
+of electing men that were not mere politicians, that would deliver the
+State from the medieval tyranny that oppressed it; advised his hearers
+to employ the best legal counsel they could get, and to give their
+leisure moments to the study of practical politics, instead of
+indolently submitting all great questions to the hands of men as
+unscrupulous as the State bosses and corporations. With his peculiar
+gift he made each breathless man in the auditorium feel not only that he
+was being personally addressed, but that his mental equipment had
+mysteriously been raised to the plane of the speaker's. When Gwynne
+finished amid applause as great as any he had evoked in England after
+the expounding of great issues dear to his heart, he turned to find
+Colton regarding him with sharp eyes and lowering brow. He immediately
+took his arm and led him without.
+
+"I am glad a climax has come so soon," he said. "Otherwise I should have
+begun to feel like a hypocrite. Not only are your principles and mine
+utterly antagonistic, but you must consider me as your rival. I can do
+nothing definite, of course, for nearly four years, and meanwhile you
+may reach the United States Senate. If you do I shall do my utmost to
+oust you. Nevertheless, if I can be of any service in sending you there
+I am perfectly willing to place myself at your disposal, for the
+experience and insight I shall acquire in exchange. And as you are no
+worse than the others, and some one must go, it might as well be you as
+another. But, I repeat, I shall use all my powers to oust you and take
+your place."
+
+Colton stood for a few moments, his hands in his pockets, regarding the
+ground. Then he lifted his eyes and smiled ingenuously.
+
+"You are dead straight, for a fact. And I think I have got just as good
+an opinion of myself as you have of yourself. You put me in the United
+States Senate with that tongue of yours--God, you can talk!--and I'll
+take the chances of even you getting me out. It will take more than
+eloquence to upset a great State machine, and before I get through I'll
+have the Democratic machine stronger than the Republican is to-day. You
+can't get anywhere in this country without the machine, and the man in
+control stays in control unless he falls down, and this I don't propose
+to do. I'll swap frankness and tell you right here that when I'm boss I
+may let you come to Congress as my colleague, but that you've got to do
+as I say when you get there. What do you say to that?"
+
+"I'll take all the chances. At least we understand each other. I work
+for you now, and I break the power of both you and your infernal machine
+when I am a citizen of the United States."
+
+"Shake," said Colton.
+
+And they shook.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+Isabel sat idly on the veranda of her old hotel as was her habit in the
+evening hour. There had been no heavy rains as yet to freshen the hills
+and swell the tides until the salt waters scalded the juices from the
+marsh grass, turning it from green to bronze and red; and the barometer
+was stationary. A cool wind came in from the sea with the flood, and
+Isabel enjoyed the beauty that was hers all the more luxuriously in her
+thick shawl of white wool. A great part of the valley north and south
+was within the range of her vision, and it was suffused with gold under
+a sky that looked like an inverted crucible pouring down its treasures
+in the prodigal fashion of the land. Facing her house and on the
+opposite side of the marsh, at its widest here, was a high wall of rock,
+from which the valley curved backward on either side, tapering to the
+great level in the north, but on the south halting abruptly before the
+mass of mountains following the coast line and topped by the angular
+shoulder of Tamalpais; coal black to-night against the intense gold of
+the West.
+
+She had not seen Gwynne for several days, and half expected that he
+would come to-night. These were busy days, and she saw less of him than
+formerly, although he snatched an hour for shooting whenever he could,
+and occasionally rode over for supper; and they saw much of each other
+during the weekly visit to the city. Their relations were easy and
+sexless. He refused to talk of chickens, but they had many other
+interests in common. She had by no means forgotten his outbreak in the
+launch, and had scowled at her arms for quite a week as she brushed her
+hair for bed, but that episode was now several weeks old, and she had
+ceased to harbor resentment. But she was subtly out of conceit with
+herself and life, resentful that she missed any one, after her long
+triumph in freedom from human ties; also resentful of the respect and
+interest with which Gwynne had inspired her, particularly since his
+summary expulsion of her will from the battle ground where it was
+becoming accustomed to easy triumphs. She had no love for him, and she
+was as satisfied with the life she had chosen as ever, but she was
+beginning to feel a sense of approaching confusion, where readjustment
+would once more be necessary. The future looked longer, and she was
+losing her pleasant sense of finality. She had guessed long ago that the
+only chance of escaping the terrible restlessness that pursues so many
+women, like enemies in the unseen world converted into furies, was to
+caress and hug the present, fool the ego into the belief that it wanted
+nothing beyond an imminent future, certain of realization, which should
+be as all-possessing as the present. But she had been wise enough to do
+little analysis, either of her depths or of life, and her time was full
+enough.
+
+"Are you asleep?" asked a polite voice. Gwynne swung himself over the
+low railing of the veranda.
+
+"I did not hear your horse." It would be long before he could surprise
+her into any sort of emotion again.
+
+"Good reason. I walked. I read Cooley until I had an alarming vision of
+the Constitution of the United States writ black upon the sunset, so I
+thought it was high time to walk it off. Naturally my footsteps led me
+here."
+
+"That was nice of them. Mac will drive you home, or you can have my
+horse."
+
+"It is like you to plan my departure before I have fairly arrived. May I
+sit down?"
+
+Isabel shivered. The glow had gone, there was only the intense dark
+fiery blue behind the stars--silver and crystal and green; one rarely
+sees a golden star in California. There were scattered lights in
+Rosewater and on the hillsides; and the night boat winding through the
+marsh was a mere chain of colored lights; here and there a lamp on a
+head mast looked like a fallen star.
+
+"That is the way I generally feel after the glow has disappeared," said
+Gwynne, abruptly. "Let us go in."
+
+There were blazing logs on the hearth, and a comfortable chair on either
+side. The room looked very red and warm and seductive. As they passed
+the table Isabel half lifted one of the English Reviews for which she
+subscribed. "There is an allusion to you here," she said. "I meant to
+send it to you. I fancy they want you back. It is very complimentary."
+
+But Gwynne concealed the promptings of vanity and took one of the chairs
+at the fireside, asking permission to light his pipe. She noted, as she
+settled herself opposite, that there was less of repose in his long
+figure than formerly, something of repressed activity, and his rather
+heavy eyes were colder and more alert.
+
+"It all seems a thousand years ago," he said. "I am John Gwynne. I doubt
+if I shall ever love your California, but I am interested--this mass of
+typical Europeans not yet Americanized--no common brain to work on, no
+one set of racial peculiarities. And the law has me fast. I have become
+frightfully ambitious. Talk about your Hamilton. I too walk the floor
+till the small hours, repeating pages aloud. My Jap thinks me mad, and
+no doubt is only induced to remain at his post by the excellence of my
+tobacco, and the fact that his education is unhindered by much service.
+While I am packing my own brain cells I infer that he is attending a
+night school in St. Peter, for I hear him returning at all hours; and he
+certainly shows no trace of other dissipation. We have never exchanged
+ten sentences, but perhaps we act as a mutual stimulus."
+
+"Don't you love California the least little bit?" asked Isabel,
+wistfully. "Or San Francisco?"
+
+"I have liked San Francisco too well upon several occasions--when I have
+run down to spend the night at the Hofers--or have fallen in with Stone
+on my way back from Berkeley, and been induced to stay over. Hofer and
+that set seem to be content with living well; they are too serious for
+dissipation. But Stone! Of course such men die young, but they are
+useful in exciting the mind to wonder and awe. I don't think I am in any
+danger of becoming San Franciscan to the point of feeding her insatiable
+furnaces with all the fires of my being, but there is no denying her
+fascination, and it has given me a very considerable pleasure to yield
+to it. Whether I shall practise law there--change my base--I have not
+yet had time to think it out."
+
+"A country lawyer's is certainly no career."
+
+"This is a good place to begin politically. San Francisco is too hard a
+nut to crack at present. If I could become powerful in the State, the
+Independent leader they need, then I might transfer my attentions to
+that unhappy town. Even Hofer and all the rest of the devoted band seem
+to be practically helpless since the re-election of the mayor. What
+could I do--at present?"
+
+"With a big legal reputation made in San Francisco you could travel very
+fast and far. And you would be learning every thread of every rope,
+become what is technically known as 'on'; and then when the time came--"
+
+"I hate so much waiting! The shortest cut is here in the country. I
+shall manage these men far better than Colton, who is the crudest type
+of American politician. Nothing could be simpler than his program:
+abuse, promise. Nothing simpler than his ambition: all for himself, and
+the devil take the hindmost. I have yet to hear him utter a sentiment
+that betrays any love of his country or desire to serve her, any real
+public spirit. Those are the sentiments I am trying to cultivate for
+this accidental land of my birth, for without them ambition is
+inexcusable and endeavor a hollow sham."
+
+"And can't you?" Isabel left her chair and stood by the mantel-piece. It
+was the first time he had spoken of himself with any approach to
+confidence since the day of his arrival. "Sometimes I repent the share I
+had in your coming to America--not that I flatter myself I had much to
+do with it--" she added, hastily. "But my being there may have turned
+the scale. You might have gone off to rule a South American Republic--"
+
+"I should have done nothing so asinine, and you had everything to do
+with my coming here. Not that I hold you responsible. You gave a hint,
+and I took it."
+
+"And you don't regret it?"
+
+"Why waste time in regret? I can go back any moment. Not that I have the
+least intention of doing anything of the sort."
+
+He was pleasantly tired in mind and body, and the warm homelike room
+caressed his senses. He settled himself more deeply in Hiram Otis's old
+chair and looked up at Isabel. She had laid aside the white shawl, but
+wore a red Indian scarf over her black gown. The gown was cut out in a
+square at the neck; she always dressed for her lonely supper, and she
+had put a red rose in her hair, in the fashion of her California
+grandmothers. With her face turned from the light, her eyes with their
+large pupils looked black.
+
+"I shall stay in California, like or no like," continued Gwynne. "But I
+did not walk five miles to talk politics with a woman after a day of law
+and the citizens of Rosewater. Where did you get that curious
+old-fashioned scarf?"
+
+"I found it in a trunk of my mother's. Doubtless it belonged to her
+mother. I also found this." She indicated a fine gold chain and heart of
+garnets that lay on her white neck. The humor in his eyes had quickened
+into admiration; he reflected that the various streams in her
+composition might not be so completely blended as would appear upon that
+normally placid surface. The feeling of uneasiness which he had
+peremptorily dismissed stole over him once more. She looked wholly
+Spanish, and put out the light of every brunette he knew. Dolly Boutts,
+whom he still admired at a distance, although he fled at her approach,
+was a bouncing peasant by contrast; and several well-bred and
+entertaining young women of the same warm hues that he had met during
+the past few weeks in San Francisco suddenly seemed to be the merest
+climatic accidents beside this girl who unrolled the pages of
+California's older past and afforded him a fleeting vision of those
+lovely doñas and fiery caballeros for whom life was an eternal
+playground. That they were his progenitors as well as hers he found it
+difficult to realize, he seemed to have inherited so little of them; but
+they had flown generously to Isabel's making, and to-night she gave him
+that same impression of historic background as when she turned the
+severity of her profile up on him and suggested a doughtier race.
+
+"It was about the same time," he said, abruptly.
+
+"What?"
+
+"While our Spanish ancestors were playing at this end of the continent,
+our 'American' forefathers were bracing themselves against England. It
+was in 1776 that the Presidio and Mission of San Francisco were founded,
+was it not? Curious coincidence. Perhaps that is what gives you your
+sense of destiny."
+
+"I have no sense of destiny."
+
+"Oh, but you have. Now I know that you are quite Spanish to-night. It is
+your more ordinary mood of calm unvarnished--not to say
+brutal--directness that gives you your greatest charm as a comrade--even
+while you repel as a woman."
+
+"Do I repel as a woman?" Isabel had placed one foot on the fender, one
+hand on the mantel-piece, and as she leaned slightly towards him, the
+red glow of the lamps and the mellow old scarf softening her features,
+the small square of neck dazzlingly white, and the position revealing
+the lines of her figure against the high flames of the logs, she looked
+more lovely than he had ever seen her. Like all racial beauties, bred by
+selection, she needed the arts of dress and furnishings to frame her.
+It is only your accidental or peasant beauty that can defy "clothes";
+and Isabel's looks in ordinary ranch and riding costumes made no
+impression on Gwynne whatever. But to-night her appeal was very direct,
+although he had not the least idea whether she was posing or was
+entirely natural in an unusual mood. He had no intention of being made a
+fool of, however, and answered with the responsive glow in his eyes due
+a pretty and charming woman:
+
+"Sometimes. Not to-night. If you would remain Spanish with no
+Revolutionary lapses, I make no doubt I should fall in love with you,
+and then perhaps you would fall in love with me merely because of my own
+lack of picturesqueness, and we should live happily ever after."
+
+"What a bore." Isabel sniffed, and moved her gaze to the fire. But she
+did not alter her attitude.
+
+"Are you really happy?" asked Gwynne, curiously.
+
+"Of course. So much so that it begins to worry me a little. My
+puritanical instincts dictate that I have no right to be quite happy.
+What slaves we are to the old poisons in our blood! I live by the light
+of my reason, and all is well until one of those mouldy instincts, like
+a buried disease germ, raps all round its tomb. Then I feel nothing but
+a graveyard of all my ancestors. I don't let them out, and my reason
+continues its rule, but they keep me from being--well--entirely happy,
+and I resent that."
+
+"I should say it was not the Puritans but your common womanly instincts
+that were thumping round their cells. You have no right to be happy
+except as Nature intended when she deliberately equipped you, and that
+is in making some man happy."
+
+"That is one of those superstitions I am trying to live down while I am
+still young. Your mother is unhappy, under all her pride, because she
+has outlived youth and beauty and all they meant to her--she made them
+her gods, and now they have gone, and she doesn't know which way to
+turn. Ennui devours her, and she is too old to turn her brains to
+account, too cynical for the average resource of religion, and too
+steeped, dyed, solidified, in one kind of womanism to turn at this late
+date to any other. But there are so many resources for the woman of
+to-day. The poor despised pioneers have done that for us. Of course it
+has not killed our natural instincts, and if I had not fallen in love
+when I did, no doubt I should still be looking about for an opportunity.
+It is my good-fortune that I was delivered so soon. I wish all women
+born to enjoy life in its variety could be freed of that terrible burden
+of sex as early as I was."
+
+"I suppose you would like to rid men of it too."
+
+"I do not waste any thought on men; so far as I have observed they are
+able to take care of themselves."
+
+"A woman incapable of passion is neither more nor less than a failure."
+
+"I have seen so many commonplace women capable of it! Look at Mrs.
+Haight and Paula."
+
+"I never look at Mrs. Haight, but as for Mrs. Stone I can quite conceive
+that if she had better taste she would be almost charming. She embodies
+youth properly equipped."
+
+"For reproduction, you mean. That is the reason that the silliest, the
+meanest, the most poisonous girl can always find a husband if she is
+healthy. It is no wonder that some of us want a new standard."
+
+Gwynne laughed. "Schopenhauer suits you better when you are out on the
+marsh in rubber boots and a shooting-jacket. Do you realize that if you
+persist in this determination to camp permanently in the outer--and
+frigid--zone, you will never be the centre of a life drama? That, I take
+it, is what every woman desires most. You had a sort of
+curtain-raiser--to my mind, hardly that. First love is merely the more
+picturesque successor of measles and whooping-cough. In marriage it may
+develop into something worth while, but in itself amounts to
+nothing--except as material for poets. But the real drama--that is in
+the permanent relation. This relation is the motive power of the great
+known dramas of the world. Life is packed with little unheard of dramas
+of precisely the same sort--the eternal duet of sex; nothing else keeps
+it going. Now, it is positive that a woman cannot have a drama all by
+herself--"
+
+"Not a drama in the old style. But that is what we are trying to avoid.
+Are there not other faculties? What has civilization done for the world
+if it is to be everlastingly sex-ridden? What is the meaning of this
+multitude of faculties that progress has developed? What is the meaning
+of life itself--"
+
+"Oh, are you aiming to read the riddle of life?"
+
+"I mean to pass my own life in the effort. Men have failed. It is our
+turn. But if I say any more I suppose you will pinch me again."
+
+"No," said Gwynne, smiling. "I feel much more like kissing you--ah!"
+
+He had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes blaze. His pipe was finished;
+he clasped his hands behind his head and almost lay down in his deep
+chair. "I am just tired enough to be completely happy, and if I can
+look at you I am willing to listen like a lamb all night."
+
+"And be convinced of nothing." Isabel tossed her head and returned to
+her chair. It faced him and he could still look at her. They watched
+each other from opposite sides of the hearth with something of the
+unblinking wariness of a dog and a cat, and no doubt had they possessed
+caudal appendages they would have lashed them slowly.
+
+"I don't say that," he replied, in a moment. "I believe I intimated that
+I came here to-night with a purpose. It was to tell you that I have
+thought more or less about what you said in the boat that morning, and
+that I can understand, if I cannot agree with you. No doubt the times
+have bred a certain class of women too good for mere matrimony. I have
+seen many that were miserably thrown away; although I will confess that
+the only remedy that occurred to me was a better man. But if you and
+your like--are there really any others?--if you, let us say, are groping
+towards some new solution of life, some happiness recipe that will
+benefit the few that deserve it, far be it from a mere man
+to--well--pinch you. You--you individually--have so many highly
+developed faculties that I can conceive your finding sufficient
+occupation through them, a filling up of time;--and no doubt idleness
+and the vain groping after sex happiness are the principal reasons for
+the failure of so many women. But work does not give happiness; it
+merely diminishes the capacity and opportunities for unhappiness. I take
+it that you, with all your gifts and the immense amount of thought you
+have bestowed on the subject, are striving for something higher than
+that. Besides, I had your lucid exposition of your mission. I now have
+an additional reason for remaining in California--to watch the new
+century plant flower. Like other commonplace mortals, however, my
+instincts fight for the only solution of happiness I know anything
+about. I still think that as the wife of some ambitious public man you
+would find a far better market for your gifts than to stand as a sort of
+statue of Independence on the top of Russian Hill with only San
+Francisco to admire. And if you passionately loved the man--"
+
+"Now you are spoiling everything. But it is handsome of you to admit
+that I am not a fool; and that you have thought my theories worth
+turning over in your busy mind is a compliment I duly appreciate."
+
+"Even a sneer cannot spoil your loveliness to-night, so I don't mind the
+sarcasm in the least. But it is true that in my few unoccupied
+intervals--as, for instance, when Imura Kisaburo Hinamoto is shaving me,
+and I have, by an excess of politeness, made sure that he will not cut
+my throat--I have had visions of you on that ungainly pedestal with all
+San Francisco kneeling at the base. It is quite conceivable. I am a born
+leader myself. I recognize certain attributes in you. The town is on the
+qui vive to know you. Mrs. Hofer is determined that you shall be the
+sensation of her ball, and no doubt that will be the commencement of
+your illustrious career. When you are really grown into your pedestal
+like one of Rodin's statues, you are certain to have a most illustrious
+and distinctive career--and accomplish much good. But you will be
+terribly lonely."
+
+"I should not have time. And if I am a born leader, how, pray, could I
+yoke comfortably with any man? I should despise a slave, and the same
+roof will not shelter two leaders."
+
+"I am not so sure of that, if both were working to the same end. It
+takes two halves to make a whole. If women have so far been the
+subordinate sex, no doubt it is merely the result of those physical
+disabilities which enabled man to gain the ascendency during the long
+centuries of struggle with nature. But your sex is rapidly altering all
+that. We shall see woman's suffrage in our time--and be better for it. I
+have never been opposed to it--and that is proof enough of the progress
+the idea has made, for I am arbitrary and masculine enough. Then--now,
+no doubt--women will be as much partners as wives, and I grant the
+relationship might be vastly more interesting than marriage in the old
+style. And I will even concede that it may be the only sort of marriage
+for a man of my type--with a pretty woman, of course; hanged if I could
+marry the finest woman in the world if she were ugly; and if this be
+true--if men really need women enough to make such a concession as I am
+making this moment, then I fancy that women will retain enough of their
+original generosity to meet our demands."
+
+"You do not need any woman. In England I fancied that your mother meant
+a great deal to you, but I don't believe you have missed her at all--or
+that you will mourn when she returns to England. I was more than ready
+to take her place; you actually stirred my maternal instincts when you
+arrived, you looked so forlorn. But you spurned me, and now you have
+grown too independent even to illustrate your own theories."
+
+"I did not spurn you. Some day I may tell you why I did not come to you
+in my dark hours, but not now."
+
+"Why not now?"
+
+"Because I do not choose to. And seductive as you look I am not to be
+made a fool of to gratify one of your whims--of which you are quite as
+full as the least emancipated woman I ever saw."
+
+To this Isabel deigned no reply, and a silence ensued. She transferred
+her gaze to the fire, and her mind revolved in search of new arguments,
+but it was tired and worked slowly. She concluded to change the subject
+and offer to read him the article in the Review, so complimentary to
+himself; but she turned her head to discover that he was sound asleep.
+
+She laughed, half vexed, half amused. Then she laid a rug lightly over
+his knees, and softly replenished the fire. The room was deliciously
+warm, her own chair very comfortable. She too fell asleep.
+
+She was rudely awakened. Gwynne was shaking her by the shoulder, and his
+face was white with consternation.
+
+"Good God!" he exclaimed. "Do you know what time it is? It is two
+o'clock! Why did you let me sleep? Those old tabbies--"
+
+"They must be asleep too," said Isabel, indifferently. "Come out, and I
+will hold the lantern while you saddle Kaiser."
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Mrs. Haight was hastily putting her parlor in order for the "Ten o'Clock
+Five Hundred Club." She was without a servant, having had four hired
+girls and three Japs in the past month; during the last three days she
+had cooked for herself and Mr. Haight, "done all the work," and attended
+seven card parties. Mr. Haight, who had not had his dinner the night
+before until nine o'clock, and whose steak this morning had been burned
+and his coffee muddy, had gone down-town in a huff, threatening to move
+to the hotel unless his wife found a servant or her sanity.
+
+Mrs. Haight, who wore a red flannel wrapper trimmed with black lace,
+which she believed became her style, shook up the sofa-cushions on the
+divan, where she longed to receive her guests reclining in Oriental
+voluptuousness, but had never dared, and dusted the table as if she were
+slapping an enemy's face. The bed was not made, nor likely to be before
+night, and she too knew the penalties of burned steak and bad coffee,
+enhanced by the irritability of the insomniac. She had her redeeming
+virtues, no doubt; all have, even burglars and murderers, until they
+slip into the region of pathology; but this morning she looked and felt
+like a she-wolf; and few mammals are so dangerous, particularly a
+she-wolf that has never suckled young.
+
+Her expected guests arrived promptly, glowing with the light dry cold,
+some wearing furs because they became the season, others thin cloth
+jackets over their shirt-waists. One had bundled herself into a broché
+shawl and "run over" hatless. Each, as she entered the parlor, cast a
+critical eye upon the silver spoon standing in lonely glory on the
+mantel-piece, and nodded or scowled, according to her bent. Mrs. Haight
+was far too cunning to detain them from the tables they fairly rushed at
+as the last member arrived, and it was not until they had "scrapped" and
+wrestled and stormed at and abused each other for at least two hours,
+not until their ugly passions were in full possession, and they threw
+down their cards with loud indignation that a substitute should be
+allowed "to compete for a prize, anyhow"--the substitute having won the
+spoon--that the hostess, with the peculiar slow fire in her eyes that
+marks the beast of prey in sight of its quarry, suddenly let it be
+understood that the high tension was to be relieved with a choice bit of
+scandal. It was some time since they had had one; propriety, like
+business honesty, being almost inevitable in a community little larger
+than a throne.
+
+Mrs. Wheaton exclaimed: "Your eyes look like two burnt holes in a
+blanket, Minerva. What is it? Hurry up. I must run home and supervise a
+new Swede that speaks ten words of English. She asked me if I wanted
+young children for dinner. I suppose she meant chickens, but one never
+knows, and Anabel's babies are just over the fence."
+
+"It's this, and it's no joking matter, Sarah Wheaton. I saw Mr. Gwynne
+pass this house at three o'clock this morning, and on Isabel Otis's
+horse. Now, I saw him going out to Old Inn, _walking_ before sundown.
+He had plenty of time to say what he had to say and get home at a decent
+hour--which is long before half-past ten, and that's what it's been many
+a night. This thing has become a scandal to the community, and I for one
+won't stand it any longer. Its downright immoral, and I'm not using too
+strong language purposely."
+
+"Oh my!" exclaimed Dolly Boutts. "You could never make me believe
+anything against Isabel. He's studying terribly hard--the judge told
+pa--and likely as not has insomnia. Englishmen are so terribly dull to
+talk to I shouldn't wonder if it was hard work for them to learn
+anything."
+
+"Insomnia!" cried Mrs. Haight. "I guess I have insomnia and I guess I
+know what I am talking about. What does a kid like you know of the
+wickedness of the world, or insomnia either? But this has gone just as
+far as _I_ intend to permit it."
+
+"It certainly looks very bad, very bad," muttered Mrs. Wheaton, whose
+own light eyes were glowing. "What steps shall you take, Minerva? Or
+what should you advise me to do? I am sorry I had forgotten the girl. I
+should have kept the eye on her that I intended."
+
+"It's a matter for all, not for any one of us. I intend to bring it up
+at the Club Meeting this afternoon, and I expect you all to back me, for
+the thing's a disgrace to the community, and all our girls will be
+talked about. In my opinion the best thing to do is to tell her to leave
+and go and live in that hot-bed of wickedness, San Francisco."
+
+"Why Minerva, you're a regular old Puritan witch-hunter!" exclaimed Mrs.
+Colton. "You never could make me believe that child had any harm in
+her--"
+
+"It isn't what one believes. It's what is. I know. I've studied human
+nature. If I don't know anything else I know that. She'll get out of
+Rosewater, or I'll hit her in her weak spot. I'll write her up for the
+San Francisco _Illuminator_. They'd give hundreds, and they can have it
+for nothing--"
+
+"Why, Minerva Haight, I'm ashamed of you!" cried Mrs. Colton. "It's like
+persecution, and you have no proof. Why should you know more of the
+world than we do, I'd like to know?"
+
+"I do, that's all. And I don't see her doing every mortal thing she
+wants, while others have to walk a chalked line through life. It's all
+or none. That's my creed. She'll soon wilt when she sees we mean
+business--either go, or take a chaperon, or marry the man, whichever she
+prefers. I don't care, so long as she ain't allowed to do as she pleases
+and no questions asked and no penalty paid. But she'll knuckle, for it's
+my opinion she's just making money to spend it in San Francisco--cut a
+dash there like her mother did before her. Probably wants to become a
+society leader and have a string of lovers. Nice product to hail from
+Rosewater. I think she ought to be sent back to Europe where they don't
+mind such goings on. The things you do read about the English
+aristocracy! It's my opinion _that_ Lady Victoria ain't any better than
+she should be. She looks it--and through us, just as if we were
+window-panes."
+
+"You are real crude, Minerva," said Mrs. Colton, crushingly, as she rose
+to go. "I thought Rosewater was near enough to the metropolis for us not
+to be as provincial as some folks farther up the line, who haven't the
+same advantages."
+
+"I guess we're all crude enough, if it comes to that," retorted Mrs.
+Haight. "I'd like to know what's cruder than a man's staying at a girl's
+house till two o'clock in the morning--and for all the high and mighty
+way he carries himself--and him the born image of Hi Otis. It's too
+ridiculous. I'd like to bring him down several pegs, too."
+
+"He bears only the most distant resemblance to Hi Otis," said Mrs.
+Colton, indignantly. "I never could endure Hi; he didn't have the
+manners of a car-conductor, and this young man's real polite and kind,
+besides having a _much_ more high-toned face. I don't believe you can
+run him out, either. He looks the kind to stay or go, just as suits him.
+And I'd advise you to think this matter over before you give it
+publicity. I might go out and speak to Isabel quietly--"
+
+"Not much she don't get off as easy as that!"
+
+Mrs. Wheaton nodded approvingly. "It's a case for the Club," said she.
+"We'll talk it out this afternoon and decide what's best to do."
+
+And all the others, save Mrs. Colton and the loyal Dolly, cordially
+agreed with her.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+The Rosewater Literary, Political, and Improvement Club met on the first
+and fourth Thursdays of the month, in a large room on the top floor of
+the Town Hall, and across the corridor from the Public Library. Saving
+only the business section of Rosewater, rejuvenated by the fruitful
+Leghorn, there was no such centre of activity within forty miles.
+Rosewater, once as disreputable as San Francisco in the Fifties, now
+contributed but an occasional drunkard or burglar to the languid powers
+on the first floor of the Town Hall. The reading public was largely
+confined to young girls with the taste for romance fresh on the palate.
+The new books wandered in a year after the rest of the world had
+forgotten them, and rarely in couples. One copy was quite able to quench
+the thirst for "keeping up," and was often read aloud in the intervals
+between cards. The standard works were well represented, however, and a
+reasonable amount of history. "All Rosewater's good for," quoth one of
+the biting wits of St. Peter, "is to die in. If you're born there people
+never forget it; it sticks to you like a strawberry mark on the end of
+your nose. And if you live there you might as well be dead, anyhow."
+Rosewater retorted that if St. Peter had a better library it was because
+she had nothing else to do than read, and, for all its court-house, was
+nothing but a suburb of Rosewater, anyway; or at the best a mere
+headquarters for drummers.
+
+On the afternoon following Mrs. Haight's card-party the large sunny room
+with its outlook upon marsh and hill was filled promptly at two o'clock;
+for the word had flown about town that Minerva Haight was on the
+war-path and that the scalp she pursued was Isabel Otis's. The
+President, as she rapped for order, betrayed no ruffling of the humorous
+imperturbability that had made her a power in Rosewater. Mrs. Leslie,
+although of "the old Southern set" of San Francisco, had none of the
+external elegances of Mrs. Wheaton, Mrs. Boutts and Dolly, or even of
+her own daughter. She was generally to be seen in a rusty black frock
+and bonnet, a pair of eye-glasses in black frames bestriding the bridge
+of her nose. But her eyes were very black and bright, her mouth was as
+firm as it was kind and humorous. Beside her sat the Treasurer, Mrs.
+Wheaton, whom Mrs. Leslie understood as thoroughly as she did every
+member of the flock that was really hers, although in matters of mere
+society she disdained to lead it. Mrs. Wheaton, for all her petty airs
+and evil-scenting profile, was really a woman of high ideals. Her
+severity to others was due to the secret knowledge that these ideals
+were beyond her personal accomplishment, and the satisfaction to be
+derived from audibly rating the failings of her neighbors. Her highest
+ideal was self-control, particularly in relation to the weaknesses of
+the flesh; but after a period of stern abstinence, she indulged
+inordinately in oysters, fried chicken with cream gravy, and ice-cream
+with cocoanut cake; and sipped a night-cap upon retiring. Her passion
+for cards had long since routed her will; but she intended to reform
+wholly in time, for she walked in fear of the Lord. If she judged the
+young harshly, she persuaded herself that she had only their well-being
+at heart. She was one of the pillars of the church and gave liberally to
+its support.
+
+Mrs. Haight, who, as we have seen, enjoyed one of those purely
+fortuitous reputations for cleverness, was Secretary of the combined
+wings of the Club, and sat on Mrs. Leslie's left. Mrs. Wheaton's portly
+person was sheathed in purple velvet, and there were handsome strings
+between two of her chins, but Mrs. Haight wore a battered hat of
+Neapolitan straw bedecked with a ragged bunch of carnations. It sat on
+one side of her ill-kept head, giving her a singularly rakish and
+definite appearance. She was furthermore attired in an old Paisley shawl
+belonging to her grandmother--what better way to advertise a
+grandmother?--over a blue alpaca frock made by her own unskilful
+fingers. Mr. Haight was the most prosperous druggist in Rosewater, but
+his wife had sounding virtues.
+
+The other members of the Club, some sixty in number, were as variously
+dressed as became their pockets or proclivities, decently for the most
+part, for there was no poverty in Rosewater. Mrs. Leslie took no notice
+of the charged atmosphere, but proceeded to business as methodically as
+if engaged in her morning housekeeping. The minutes of the last meeting
+were read by Mrs. Haight, in the cultivated tones of one who had recited
+upon the stage of her youth, "Curfew shall not ring to-night," and "The
+Wreck of the Hesperus." The huskily strident voice trembled slightly,
+but she read several pages of foolscap without a break, and finished
+with a flourish. Then Mrs. Leslie, in spite of scraping chairs, asked
+Mrs. Colton, Chairman of the Improvement Inspection Committee to read
+her report on the condition of the new concrete pavements, of several
+homesick palm-trees in the public squares, and on the prospect of
+removing tin cans and soda-water bottles from the picnic grounds. This
+resort was near the marsh, and it was the pet project of the ladies of
+Rosewater to extend it into a boulevard as far as Point Santiago, so
+that "public picnickers" should find an additional reason for spending
+their money in Rosewater, and extend the fame of the town. They had
+endeavored to extract the funds from their stingy lords by private
+subscription, failing an appeal to the City Fathers, who found other
+uses for the public funds; but even the civic Mr. Boutts was not ready
+for such an outlay. The women--who had accomplished so much, having
+literally transformed Rosewater from a broken-down pioneer country town
+into one of the prettiest spots in California--had by no means
+despaired; and when Mrs. Colton finished her report, Mrs. Leslie
+remarked:
+
+"Our boulevard may be nearer than you think. Mr. Gwynne has conceived a
+project for reclaiming the marsh-lands, and converting them, by means of
+levees and those tremendous dredges and pumps, into arable land--like
+the reclaimed islands of the San Joaquin River; and has persuaded Tom
+Colton to present a bill to that effect at the next meeting of the
+legislature--asking for an appropriation for the levees, at least. He
+has himself promised a handsome contribution for the boulevard,
+convinced that it will add materially to the wealth and importance of
+the town. He has even talked over Mr. Boutts--an important
+conversion"--nodding smilingly at Mrs. Boutts--"and Isabel Otis, who has
+forty-five acres of marsh, has promised that if the bill goes through
+she will also contribute a thousand dollars. She not only realized at
+once that the boulevard would bring more capital to Rosewater, but she
+means to sow the reclaimed land with asparagus--and we all know the
+profit in that. Her attitude and comprehension of the matter have
+gratified me extremely, almost as much as her continued residence in
+Rosewater after all her fine experiences abroad; to say nothing of
+engaging personally in a lucrative business instead of playing with it
+and leaving the actual work to dishonest help. She is an example I wish
+more of our young women would follow. But as regards Mr. Gwynne: I think
+he deserves a vote of thanks. He comes here a total stranger with an
+immense estate, from which he could derive a sufficient income for his
+pleasures, and he has already devoted a considerable amount of his time
+and splendid mental abilities to the welfare of this little town. A few
+of our older men have some public spirit, an idea or two beyond lining
+their pockets, but we do not boast a single young man who cares whether
+we have camellias or cabbages in the public squares. I feel sure that
+Mr. Gwynne will supply this deficiency and be a host in himself. I have
+talked with him several times, and he has said, in so many words, that
+as he intends to make this county his home he purposes to accomplish
+something in the way of general improvement. This means that he will,
+for my husband says that he not only has remarkable mind and will, but
+that he is a young man of incorruptible honor--and I know of no
+combination that we need more. So, ladies, I propose that we pass a vote
+of thanks to Mr. Gwynne, thus not only showing our appreciation of his
+interest, but securing his friendship for the Club."
+
+Mrs. Haight rose, sallow and trembling. She felt her sails flapping
+about her, but none the less was she determined to reach her goal if she
+had to get out and swim. She knew the President well enough to control
+the hissing of her venom, but as she turned to address the chair she
+found it impossible to imbue her tones with the suavity proper in a
+baleful counsel for the prosecution.
+
+"Mrs. President, Ladies!" she began, clearing her throat. "Before
+passing a vote of thanks to Mr. Gwynne I think it my duty to ask you
+dispassionately if you really think he is a person from whom we can
+afford to receive favors. And above all, if Isabel Otis should be
+permitted any sort of contact with the Club she has scornfully refused
+to join. That is not the point, however. The point is that I maintain
+that neither of them is fit for respectable people to associate with."
+She felt that her summary was precipitate, and drawing herself up
+defiantly looked hard at Mrs. Leslie. The President was regarding her
+impassively.
+
+"Why not?" she asked.
+
+"Because! As you force me to say it, Mr. Gwynne is out at Old Inn until
+all hours of the night. I have seen him riding home as late as half-past
+ten again and again. And I happen to know that before _that_ Lady
+Victoria came, they were practically alone in the house on Russian Hill
+one whole night. Mrs. Filkins, as you know, lives on Taylor Street, and
+she saw Paula Stone pass her house in the afternoon looking as mad as a
+hornet--she was sure she wasn't going back, and found out afterwards
+that she hadn't; and she saw Mr. Gwynne come down those steps at seven
+o'clock the next morning--going to catch the seven-thirty boat--looking
+as pleased with himself as Punch. But I might have stood all that for a
+while yet; I might have given Isabel the benefit of the doubt, since she
+had _asked_ Paula to chaperon her, and might have found out too late
+that she had gone--for she was gallivanting herself all day; I might
+have overlooked his staying so often till ten-thirty--although I
+maintain that an unmarried girl living alone on a ranch without even
+female help is a disgrace to any community--yes, I might have swallowed
+that for a while longer; but this morning--at three o'clock--I
+saw--_with my own eyes, ladles_--Mr. Gwynne riding home from Old Inn on
+Isabel Otis's sorrel horse Kaiser. Now I, for one, don't stand for such
+goings on. I propose that instead of passing a vote of thanks to Mr.
+Gwynne we pass a resolution to _cut_ both of them, and show them what a
+decent community is."
+
+She sat down in her flounces, and Mrs. Wheaton rose and seconded the
+motion. The others looked rather frightened, although alert and
+interested, and Mrs. Colton rose hastily and proposed that before
+putting such a momentous question to the vote, the whole matter should
+be thoroughly investigated.
+
+"We must also have the advice of our President," she added. "For my
+part, although I do not approve of young unmarried women living alone,
+still I cannot believe such dreadful things of anybody, let alone Isabel
+Otis. I am glad Anabel is not here. She would never listen to any
+insinuation against Isabel, and might be tempted to disrespect of her
+elders."
+
+"And you, Mrs. Boutts?" asked the President.
+
+"As a woman of the world I have not that implicit faith in human nature
+that some people are still so happy as to cherish. My daughter--who
+refused to come to-day, knowing the subject to be discussed--is
+indignant at these reports; but of course she is a mere child, and very
+much fascinated by Miss Otis. I do not by any means approve of the
+drastic methods proposed by Mrs. Haight--I should hope that California
+had taken _some_ of the old puritanical spirit out of us--but I do think
+that Miss Otis should be given to understand that she cannot import
+European fashions into Rosewater, and that she must have a chaperon. Let
+her feel that she has acted unwisely, at the very least, by not inviting
+her to any of the young people's gatherings in the future."
+
+"As there are no more except for card-playing, and as she has recently
+been the only hostess at an evening party the town has boasted for two
+years, your virtuous wrath bids fair to blow past her unheeded. Mrs.
+Plews, will you address us?"
+
+Mrs. Plews was the wife of the pastor of the aristocratic Episcopalian
+church, a pretty fluffy young woman, who visited the sick and made
+excellent ice-cream for the church festivals. "Oh, I don't know!" she
+exclaimed, deprecatingly. "It is all too dreadful! I no longer regret
+that Miss Otis does not come to church. I had thought of remonstrating
+with her once more--but when I recalled the last time! Now, it is indeed
+well that she has not been associating with our young folks. I am sorry
+this was not known before her party; I must really talk to Mr. Plews
+before I can say anything further."
+
+"Mrs. Toffitt, I am sure that you have something to say--and an opinion
+of your own."
+
+Mrs. Toffitt, a buxom highly colored woman of forty, who, since her
+husband's death, the year before, had continued his business--a general
+feed store--with striking success, and who was one of the most popular
+women in Rosewater, with her abounding good-nature, her high spirits,
+and her utter independence of speech, sprang to her feet.
+
+"I have this to say," she cried. "For a lot of puritanical, prying,
+spying, detestable old hens, we take the cake. Isabel Otis minds her own
+business. Why, in heaven's name, can't we mind ours? Does she owe
+anybody anything? Has she taken anybody's beau away? Anybody's husband?
+Does she walk the streets doing nothing but show herself, or go buggy
+riding with one fellow after another? Does she ever refuse money for
+charity, or for our improvements when it's asked of her? Was she a
+credit to the town with her record at the High School, or wasn't she?
+Are we proud of her travels in Europe, her high-toned connections, her
+business sense, the way she acted to that old reprobate of a father, or
+ain't we? That's what I want to know. And she's got real intellect
+instead of just the average American brightness; that's the secret of
+the whole trouble. What if she does sit up all night talking to a man
+who's got something besides chickens and dollars in his head? I'd do the
+same if I had the chance. Just make a note of that. If Mr. Gwynne likes
+to transfer his attentions to me I'll sit up all night right on Minerva
+Haight's doorstep, and talk about any old thing he wants. If I was as
+young and handsome as Isabel Otis I'd keep the best man going to myself,
+bet your life on it! And I repeat, it's nobody's business." She whirled
+upon the pallid Minerva with a flaming face. "Nice business you're
+in--sitting at your window all night watching for other people's slips.
+You'd make one fast enough if the Lord would let you, and that's what's
+the matter with you. Now, put that in your pipe and smoke it."
+
+She sat down amid much laughter and applause. Mrs. Leslie rapped
+vigorously for order, although her mouth was twitching.
+
+"Now, ladies," she said, suavely, "if you have all relieved your minds I
+will say a few words. First of all, I wish to state that I shall refuse
+to put the matter to a vote. It is a question that does not come within
+the jurisdiction of the Club, which was not organized to supervise
+morals as well as streets and sewers. You can all act towards Isabel and
+Mr. Gwynne exactly as your consciences dictate, but for my own part, I
+have this to say: I am astonished to find that the Club life, a life
+which women the world over have prided themselves upon as the greatest
+factor in broadening and elevating that their sex has ever known, seems
+to have done, in our case at least, so little to eradicate certain
+Oriental instincts and traditions. The cities are full of young women
+living alone, and self-supporting. Why should not a girl have the same
+privilege in the country? Because she is handsome and distinguished? I
+fancy that a good many girls in analogous circumstances are passing
+unnoticed. I have not the least doubt that a very respectable percentage
+of very respectable young women, living alone in their city flats, sit
+up late and talk to men that are interesting enough to keep them awake.
+I am quite sure that were I young in these emancipated times I should
+take full advantage of them. And emancipated is what we pretend to
+be--although the word itself is somewhat outmoded; a healthy sign,
+proving that we are no longer labelled. And if that does not mean
+personal liberty, freedom from the old ridiculous restrictions that
+were an insult to womanhood itself, what does it mean? It is a part of
+our mission to make woman as free and independent and happy as men, and
+without the slightest danger to the old high moral standards; for no
+woman that has had it in her to go wrong ever waited for the permission
+of her own sex. We are, in fact, we Club Women, the great sieve that
+separates the wheat from the chaff; the chaff has no more use for us
+than we have for it, and we are too wise in our own sex to waste any
+time on it. The women that were born to be the playthings of men are in
+a class apart--to be dealt with, to be sure, by Societies organized for
+and experienced in that purpose; and we have not even considered them in
+the stupendous effort we have made to secure the freedom of the higher
+order of women from the old miserable social thralldoms. And what we
+have accomplished is historic.
+
+"I have seen extraordinary changes in my time. When I was young a woman
+was an old maid at twenty-five. There was no appeal. To-day there are no
+old maids. Twenty years ago, in that old exclusive set of San Francisco
+led by Mrs. Yorba, Mrs. Montgomery, and for a little while by poor Mary
+Belmont, it was almost unheard of for a girl of the better class to walk
+alone on the street. If a man joined her the city fermented. Now, what
+with the influx of all these new people, the social laws have been
+modified to such an extent that my old friends must turn in their
+graves; although, of course, and very properly, a certain amount of
+chaperonage for young society girls is still demanded. But it is a mere
+harness of flowers, worn as a sort of a joke for most of the people in
+society to-day have flown upward on happy golden wings from strata
+where as much was known of chaperons as the American newspapers know
+about handling British titles. But, for my part, I find the whole change
+a vast improvement. Nothing could be duller than a girl's life in my
+time. And if society--the world of mere fashion--has broadened, how much
+more should be expected of us, who are the vanguard of our sex? who have
+set out to free women from every sort of senseless bondage they had
+endured for centuries, and no more from the tyranny of the physically
+stronger sex than through their own silliness and cowardice.
+
+"We are struggling to enfranchise our sex. We would like to try our hand
+at regulating the affairs of the nation. Here, in these smaller towns,
+all over the country, we have proved a far greater power for
+improvements of all sorts than men. Rosewater owes to us, and to us
+alone, its beautifully paved and shaded streets--we have no difficulty
+in remembering what a barren mud-hole it was--the trees that shade the
+poor horses at the hitching-rails; the beautiful squares, the tropical
+plants and trees, the improved sewerage system, the cleanliness of the
+marsh border, everything in fact that has transformed Rosewater from a
+mere set of roofs and walls into a delightfully habitable town.
+Moreover, we have raised both the moral and the intellectual tone, for
+although I at least have always discouraged too much interest in
+people's private affairs, the higher interests, and the increased
+intimacy among women, have done much to keep them out of mischief. Until
+this card fever descended upon the town, it was generally regarded as
+occupying a high place among communities of its size. Cards, however, I
+regard as a passing madness; it merely means that even yet we have not
+enough to do.
+
+"And--so it seems!--in spite of all that we have accomplished, in spite
+of our long and ofttimes disheartening struggle to lift ourselves above
+the average female woman, we are as ready to tear reputations to pieces
+as ever, to judge by mere appearances, to discount general character and
+behavior, to forget our ideals and give unlicensed rein to the mean and
+detestable qualities we still cherish in common with the mass of
+unenlightened women. I do not assert that I have never heard gossip from
+men; but it has always been from the men that spend their lives in Club
+windows, never from men that had some better way of filling their time.
+From my husband I have never heard a scurrilous word of any one, and he
+has a temper of his own, too. Now, so far as I can make out, we have not
+only been trying to usurp the time-honored prerogatives of men, but to
+attain their highest standards. While I deprecate violence of statement,
+I am inclined to agree with Mrs. Toffitt that a woman belonging to this
+Club, a Club which stands high in the Club life of the State, should
+have something better to do than to spend the night at her window spying
+on her neighbors. If she cannot sleep she can improve her mind or sew
+for the poor. If a man engaged in such nefarious night work and brazenly
+admitted it, I will venture to say that his Club, or his Lodge, at all
+events, would ask for his resignation. It would be quite in order with
+our avowed principles that we reprimanded Mrs. Haight instead of Miss
+Otis, but we will let the matter pass this time with a mere hint. One
+point is, by-the-way, that the latter not being a member of the Club it
+would be the height of impertinence to take her to task. But in any case
+I personally refuse even to consider the question of anything being
+otherwise with her than it should be. There is, no doubt, some wholly
+commonplace explanation of Mr. Gwynne's passing through Rosewater on her
+horse this morning. As for their constant companionship, what more
+natural? They are closely related, and she has been a very necessary
+sister to him. Nevertheless, I shall make it my unpleasant business to
+tell her that we are still the same old females, still incapable of
+conceiving of aught but one relationship between unmarried members of
+opposite sexes, that our imaginations and our positive knowledge of life
+are alike undeveloped. Then she can take a chaperon or not as she
+pleases. She will always be welcome in my house; and as for my daughter,
+she will only laugh at this tempest of her elders in a tea-pot. That is
+all I have to say."
+
+She finished amid much applause, some shamefaced, some hearty, but there
+were a number of lowering brows. When adjournment was declared a few
+moments later, she left at once, but the others remained to talk the
+matter over. The ingrained love of finding our sister worse than
+ourselves is not to be eradicated by a few years of Club life, and
+although the majority decided that Mrs. Leslie was quite in the right,
+several announced their intention to cut Isabel Otis. There was no
+informal resolution taken to ignore the matter, and, on the whole, Mrs.
+Haight went home with her crest up, and Mrs. Wheaton fasted for three
+days.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Mrs. Leslie was a brave woman, but when the judge suggested that it
+would be better for him to talk the matter over with Gwynne, obtain his
+explanation, and delicately hint the attitude of the town, she was
+nothing loath to renounce her mission. "The dear child," the friends of
+her mother all remembered, had once possessed a temper that only the
+peculiar circumstances of her life had chastened, and they had an uneasy
+suspicion that it still smouldered beneath the well-bred insolence with
+which she had so far received much friendly advice.
+
+By this time--mid-December was nigh--the judge and Gwynne had discussed
+many subjects besides the law. Mrs. Leslie, whose hospitable instincts
+were too deep to be blighted even by the servant question, had placed a
+room at Gwynne's disposal to be used when it rained, or he talked so
+late with the judge that the long ride home was not worth while. He
+dined with them several times a week, and found both these simple
+old-fashioned people delightful. And with Judge Leslie, alone of all his
+neighbors, could he discuss the affairs of the great world, get away
+from the politics and the small local interests that absorbed every
+other man in Rosewater. Moreover, Judge Leslie was well acquainted with
+his past career and often manifested a keen desire for details. Gwynne
+was not sure that these lapses were good for him, but certainly it was
+pleasant, stretched out there by the big fireplace in an old room full
+of books, English for the most part, to talk of himself and his
+achievements. Isabel rarely referred to his past, never encouraged him
+to talk about it. His mother had become as silent as a mummy; old man
+Colton might have lost his memory, and for Tom Colton British politics
+had no existence.
+
+But Judge Leslie understood and had much sympathy for his
+pupil--possibly believed in the virtue of the safety-valve. Certainly
+Gwynne invariably went to bed after these long talks content in mind and
+body; and the next day he was far too busy to trot out his ego and sit
+down with it. And his mind at least was happy in its new sense of
+expansion and acquisition, its increasing and developing powers. His
+studies had the further effect of moderating the purely personal
+viewpoint of the United States that had tormented him, and of enabling
+him to withdraw far enough to command glimpses of the New World as a
+great abstraction. And his contacts with the strange medley of small
+farmers and mechanics, with local politicians in back offices and
+saloons, even his acquaintance with the San Franciscans that were
+attempting to reclaim that bawdy borough, did not affect the universal
+idea he had at last succeeded in focussing. He had cast out disgust and
+disapproval as youthful and unphilosophical, resolved anew to play his
+part in the history of the country, letting the unborn events of his
+term of enforced quiescence determine what the part must be. He had not
+yet reached the stage of enthusiasm, but he had at least mounted to that
+of interest; and he had even caught himself wondering if, should a law
+pass in Great Britain, reducing the House of Peers to an elective body,
+or permitting peers of his grade to sit in the House of Commons, he
+would return? There was little doubt that there was more good to be
+accomplished in the new country.
+
+His English great-great-grandfather had been historically active in the
+reforms of 1832; a great-uncle had devoted his services to the passing
+of the Reform Act of 1867; and a cousin to the Corrupt Practices Act of
+1883. Reform was in his blood, and as, after all, the United States was
+as much his own as Great Britain, he hoped in time to feel for it the
+same passion of affection he had cherished for the country that had
+given him fame and honors with both hands. And he knew that his other
+hope of being of practical service to the United States in accordance
+with his own ideal was no idle dream, for it was quite apparent from the
+newspapers and reviews that the best men all over the country were awake
+at last to the perils besetting the Republic, and that a bloodless
+revolution was slowly making its way over the country. He had
+unmitigated contempt for the revolutionist of the red shirt, insatiable
+for the notoriety so easily obtained by appealing to the passions of men
+a shade more ignorant than himself; no blood revolution was possible in
+the United States during its present condition of prosperity. No country
+can be universally roused to revolt with any weapons more deadly than
+words until it has long felt the pinch of hunger in its vitals, and
+watched millions starve while hundreds consumed the fat of the land. No
+doubt there was grinding poverty in the crowded tenement districts of
+the Eastern States, but those men were not the stuff of which
+revolutionists were made, if only because they deliberately elected the
+rigors of the town rather than supply the crying demand for labor and
+servants throughout the country. It was only the idle that foregathered
+and talked anarchism or even socialism; not those that cared to work.
+
+Here in California there was practically no such thing as poverty, or if
+there was, the pauper, if fairly able of body, should be set up in a
+public pillory. With a scale of wages the highest in the world, a
+corresponding cheapness of every necessity of life, with the bare
+exception of coal, needed in excess during one short season of the
+twelve-month, sun for eight unbroken months, and a soil so fertile that
+in many places it yielded two crops a year, there would have been no
+discontent had it not been for the rapacity of labor unions, and the
+systematic agitations of men like Tom Colton. In every human heart there
+is the germ of discontent, no matter what the conditions, but Gwynne
+recognized the possibility of diverting this uneasy parasite from
+imaginary personal grievances to the public good, to measures which
+would benefit the mass, subtly elevating man's opinion of himself in the
+process, and so taking the first long stride in the direction of general
+political reform. It was only by making the masses see their own part in
+the abominable political corruption that made "graft" universal, and
+permitted the rapid concentration of the country's wealth into a few
+insolent hands, that the decapitation of the swarms of professional
+politicians could be accomplished. In no part of the United States could
+such reforms be attempted with anything like the same prospect of
+success, as in this State with its traditions of contempt of money for
+its own sake, and its almost primeval sense of independence. It was true
+that there was no superb indifference to money in the small towns, but
+much of the old spirit lingered among those that lived close to the
+soil; and Gwynne had never seen such uncalculating lavishness, such a
+humorous contempt for economy as in San Francisco. He was himself
+generous by instinct and habit, but this gay reckless openhandedness,
+whether a man had anything to spend or not, had already stirred some
+deeper instinct still, possibly his pioneer, perhaps his Spanish, and he
+had never enjoyed anything more in his life than certain nights in San
+Francisco, when he had sallied forth with his pockets full of gold and
+returned to Russian Hill on foot for want of a five-cent piece to pay
+his car-fare. He had himself too well in hand ever to give permanent
+rein to any such latent propensities, and he had no intention of
+impoverishing himself, but the fact that the genius of the city was in
+his blood warmed it to the strange, fascinating, wicked, friendly,
+young-old city on the rim of the Pacific.
+
+As it happened, he was not in the humor for reading on the morning after
+the meeting of the female clans, nor were there any clients in the outer
+office, and he uttered some of his impressions aloud to the judge who
+was sitting restlessly by the window, ostensibly watching Main Street.
+Gwynne had wondered at the old gentleman's sudden idleness, but fell
+easily into conversation this languid morning that was more like spring
+than belated winter.
+
+"I can understand the fascination of San Francisco for anybody," said
+the uneasy judge. "I wonder--" with a sudden inspiration, "if it
+wouldn't be better for you to go into the law-office of a friend of mine
+down there for a while. I mean--" in response to Gwynne's look of
+astonishment, "of course I should hate to lose you--quite as much as I
+hated to lose my own son, and yours is the only society in which I have
+found any positive refreshment for years. But--well! in fact it would
+be as well for you to leave Rosewater for a while--until all this talk
+has died out."
+
+"What talk?"
+
+The judge felt what courage was left in him oozing under Gwynne's icy
+stare.
+
+"Oh Lord! It's just this, Gwynne--just fancy I am really your father.
+There are a lot of infernal old hens in this town--where don't they
+roost, anyway?--and they have been exercising themselves over your going
+out to Isabel's so much, especially at night. They've got the idea into
+their empty heads that Isabel has come back from Europe, where she lived
+by herself, with all sorts of free-and-easy notions. Perhaps the real
+truth is that they distrust any girl as handsome as that who won't
+marry. The talk didn't amount to much until yesterday morning--"
+
+"Ah!" Gwynne stood up and took his hat from the little private rack.
+"Suppose you ask Mrs. Leslie to tell the hens that I have spent a great
+many futile evening hours, the only ones I have at my private disposal,
+trying to induce Miss Otis to marry me, and that yesterday evening,
+after the fourth or fifth refusal, I borrowed her horse, having walked
+out, and rode half-way to San Francisco to steady my nerves. Love and
+the law combined are somewhat of a load to carry. I will go out now and
+try my luck again. Perhaps this talk will influence her a bit. In fact I
+promise that it shall."
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Gwynne found Isabel just stepping out of her launch, after a business
+morning in Rosewater, and was hospitably invited to dismount and remain
+for luncheon.
+
+"Would you mind asking your Jap to make us some sandwiches and come with
+me up to my mountain shanty?" he asked. "I have rather a headache and
+want a long ride. Besides, it is high time I went. I should look over
+the roads, which they tell me are very bad after the heavy rains. I want
+to go into camp there in the early spring--have invited Hofer and one or
+two others for salmon-fishing. I have now sent three letters to the
+tenant, one Clink, by teamsters, and he has never replied. For all I
+know he may have burned the house down and decamped. So, altogether,
+this seems to me the time to go, and it would be very jolly to have you
+with me."
+
+"I'd like nothing better," said Isabel, delightedly, "after talking eggs
+and chickens all morning. And I haven't been up to Mountain House for
+years. It used to belong to Uncle Hiram, you know. He always fished
+there in the spring, and took me with him. Then Mr. Colton bought it
+in--I won't be ten minutes."
+
+"Now I know why you wear that hideous divided habit and ride astride,"
+said Gwynne as they started. "I have been half-way up the mountain once
+or twice, to say nothing of the Marin hills, and I have never seen such
+roads. They are a disgrace to the State. Why on earth doesn't the
+legislature take them in hand?"
+
+"Now _I_ know _you_ are in a bad humor," said Isabel, laughing. "You
+grumbled at everything when you first came to California, and now that
+you have become philosophical like the rest of us, you only anathematize
+when you are put out. I saw something was wrong the moment you arrived.
+What is it?"
+
+"I'll tell you later. This is our only chance for a sharp trot."
+
+It was quite two miles to the ascending road at the foot of the mountain
+range that divided the great valley. It rose gently for a time then
+suddenly became steep. Lumpy and slanting, already dangerously narrow in
+many places, for there had been a few days of hard rain, it led along
+the edge of cannons and chasms, creeks and little valleys as round as
+a bowl. Here and there was a farmhouse or a country home on a slope, set
+in the midst of fields just turning green. The first stretch of
+road--cut roughly in the mountain-side and then left to take care of
+itself--was on county property, but after an hour's climb along the
+flank of the mountain they reached the part of the great mass included
+in Lumalitas, where the road, although still public, had been mended now
+and again by tenants that had used the camp in the fishing season.
+
+"It is even worse than I thought," grumbled Gwynne. "I wonder if Tom
+Colton could be induced to put in a bill at the next legislature. It
+would be a good opportunity for him to make a promise with some hope of
+fulfilment."
+
+"The trouble is the farmers don't care," said Isabel, shrugging her
+shoulders. "There are only a few of them in the mountains and they have
+jogged up and down these bad roads so many years that they accept them
+as a matter of course. I don't know that I mind this, myself. It
+certainly is more picturesque than if it had become popular with
+automobilists of much influence in legislative councils."
+
+"At present you have to ride with your eyes on the road to make sure it
+is there."
+
+"We can take turns, and it certainly is beautiful."
+
+"Oh, beautiful!"
+
+But when the road improved for quite half a mile, he too gave himself up
+to the sensation of being lost in the heart of a mountain. The valley
+was far behind them and out of sight. There were groves of ancient oaks
+in the hollows, turbulent streams foaming over masses of rocks that had
+fallen from the cliffs above. Sometimes they looked down a thousand
+sheer feet into a bit of wilderness as unbroken as if on each side of
+the range man had not snatched the fertile lands from the savage a
+century before.
+
+The air grew colder and Isabel put on her covert coat. But it was a
+clear sparkling day, and when they reached the summit they could see San
+Francisco, a smoky mirage forty miles to the south, the ferry-boats
+crawling like beetles across the bay, the surf of the ocean on the rocks
+beyond the Golden Gate, a vast sweep of gray ocean; and the bulk of
+Tamalpais, that from this high point looked as if it had heaved itself
+free of the mass of mountains and forests about it. Two thousand feet
+below, their own valley, with its marsh and fertile ranches, looked like
+a dark ribbon between the hills, Rosewater like a toy village.
+
+They trotted their horses for a few moments on the level and then rode
+down into the little valley where an unsuccessful farmer of solitary
+habit had some time since rented the few acres of land surrounding
+Mountain House, with the understanding that the best rooms were to be at
+the disposal of the lord of Lumalitas during the fishing and hunting
+seasons. The log-house, or "camp," was very solid and had been built by
+the first James Otis, who was a mighty hunter; and the salmon-fishing in
+the creek, at present containing but a few feet of water, was so fine
+that hardly a spring had passed without a visit from the tenants of
+Lumalitas, who were constrained by the terms of the lease to keep the
+house in repair. Of late this had been the duty of the sub-lessee, and
+as no teams passed his isolated dwelling, and as he had not seen fit to
+answer his landlord's communications, even verbally, by the boy from one
+of the lower ranches who had carried up the missives, all Gwynne knew
+was that Mr. Clink was alive, and that the ranch was free of winter
+débris.
+
+They found the gentleman sitting on a stump. He had a hand on either
+knee, and his small watery unblinking eyes were fixed on space. A beard,
+narrow and grizzled and stained, rested on his lean front, or stirred
+gently in the breeze. He neither rose, nor otherwise noticed the
+approach of his visitors.
+
+Gwynne called, shouted, approached the verge of profanity, but he might
+as well have addressed the silent forest.
+
+Isabel elevated her nose. "To use the vernacular, he is on a long, slow,
+melancholy jag. I will go in and see how he keeps the house. It needs an
+airing at least. Every window is closed and probably has been all
+winter."
+
+She remained in-doors half an hour, putting things to rights with many
+mysterious touches known only to her sex. When she returned to Gwynne
+she found him sunning himself on the porch with his back to Mr. Clink,
+who stolidly regarded an old stump of geranium.
+
+"It is clean enough," she said. "But when you come, bring new
+blankets--or send them, and your provisions--the day before you bring
+your guests. I will come up with them and see that everything is in
+order. I might also turn the hose on Clink, if he has chosen that
+occasion to drench himself inside. At all events bring a cook--you can
+have Chuma; these people never can cook anything but fried meat and
+potatoes."
+
+Drifted leaves lay on the porch a foot deep. Isabel found a broom and
+swept vigorously, snubbing Gwynne's offer to do it himself. He watched
+her, crossly reflecting that she was never so unattractive as in that
+dust-colored divided habit, and wishing that he had waited for the
+evening hour; even if infrequently seductive, she was always lovely in a
+becoming gown.
+
+Finally, her labors over, she dusted an aged rocking-chair and sat down,
+fanning herself with her hat. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes
+sparkling, but she turned to look at the beautiful creek that had torn
+its way through the forest, and Gwynne suddenly felt that he hated her
+profile. During the last few weeks he had lost that sense of a constant
+and secret contest of wills, perhaps because his own had proved the
+stronger in the final engagement; perhaps, who knew? because she
+possessed all the infernal subtlety of the Spaniard. But her profile
+suggested relentless power, and he still had a secret hankering for the
+old-fashioned submissive female, liberal and indulgent to the sex as he
+was. He had reflected that he had met so many handsome finely developed
+girls, with a sufficiency of animated brightness, but well within the
+type, during the past few weeks, that it was rather odd he had not been
+captured; particularly as several of the most ripping would add
+materially to his fortunes. But he had come to the conclusion sometime
+since, when he hardly knew, that he would prefer to remain unmarried,
+and enjoy the intimate companionship of a congenial and interesting
+creature like Isabel, whom he never quite understood. He cursed the
+stale old conventions that interfered with his desires.
+
+Isabel turned suddenly and smiled. "How fierce you look!" she said.
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"Everything. Some one, Mrs. Haight, I suppose, saw me riding home on
+your horse at three o'clock yesterday morning, and the whole town is by
+the ears. Judge Leslie undertook to break the news to me, and I told him
+I had gone out to propose, and then ridden about the country to calm my
+raging fires. I feel that I owe it to you to propose in good earnest,
+and such as I am you are welcome to me."
+
+"I never heard such a graceful proposal. I wouldn't marry you if
+Rosewater stood on its head."
+
+"I was rather brutal about it, and I must honestly confess that I'm not
+particularly keen on marrying you, but I think we'll have to marry, or
+be deuced uncomfortable--"
+
+"Oh, nothing to what we should be if married. And Rosewater to me is a
+mere market for chickens and eggs. The only punishment they could
+inflict on me would be to burn down the hatcheries. I hate to bother
+with incubators."
+
+Gwynne stood up and knocked the ashes out of his pipe. "We must be
+serious," he said. "They are really malignant about it. I have felt it
+in the air for some time. Every time I pass that she-devil, Mrs. Haight,
+on Main Street, her eyes contract with a sort of malicious warning.
+'Just you wait!' is the way she would phrase it. And I always _feel_ her
+at her window when I ride home late. No woman of your age and beauty can
+defy public opinion alone. The world--and scandal spreads like a plague;
+San Francisco is only forty miles from Rosewater--the world can hurt you
+in a thousand ways, ruin your life. I really am only too willing to
+protect you, and I hope that you will marry me. I am sure we should get
+along--after a bit."
+
+"That was better. But I will not be driven into matrimony by gossip, or
+even scandal. That is no part of my scheme of life. And I know Rosewater
+better than you do. Mrs. Leslie, Anabel, Mrs. Colton, many of the most
+powerful, would never believe a word against me."
+
+"Not at first. But malicious tongues will wear the gloss from the
+best-befriended reputation in time. The kindest natures are
+conventional; and susceptible to all that take, or seem to take, a place
+in the ranks of established facts."
+
+"I won't do it," said Isabel, stubbornly; and as she turned her profile
+to him he almost swore aloud. "I shall conquer, or prove the whole
+modern game of woman a sham, a fool's paradise. I told you that I had
+set myself to drag strength out of the unknown forces. Well, I propose
+to use it now. And in your behalf as much as mine."
+
+"I can take care of myself.... I even think I could face the prospect of
+becoming your husband with a reasonable amount of equanimity." She was
+looking straight at him again, her face deeply flushed, her eyes
+shining. "It never occurred to me before, but I believe that if you
+would permit yourself to develop, you might become the most fascinating
+woman in the world. And if you did, I swear that you should be happy."
+
+"I am happy, and in my own way. I get something out of every moment. Do
+you think I am going to run the risk of losing all that for anything so
+dubious as this old game of sex?"
+
+"Very good game if it is played properly. I have a mind to teach you."
+
+"Well, you will not!"
+
+"I think I shall. It is either marry you or leave California."
+
+"That is a threat unworthy of you."
+
+"No threat at all. If you will not permit me to protect you in one way I
+must in another. I leave and throw everything over with great éclat. You
+have discarded me and I cannot stand the proximity."
+
+"They might merely think that you were running away from me."
+
+"I shall take good care they think what I choose. Women are more
+romantic and sentimental than malignant, the bulk. All they want is a
+starter."
+
+"But you need not leave California. You can move to San Francisco."
+
+"Now you are talking like a child. I shall return to England. As to my
+American career, my only chance lies here. I hate the rest of the
+country, and the best material is in California, anyhow. Yesterday I
+received a letter from my solicitor, enclosing one from Jimmy, who
+informed me that I was on every tongue, that the public curiosity was
+piqued, that the newspapers were demanding that I should return and
+accept my responsibilities, and that without doubt a place would be made
+for me in the new Liberal Cabinet. It is a propitious moment for
+return. If there is a time when a Liberal peer can make any running it
+is when his party is in power."
+
+There was a pause for several moments. Gwynne filled and lit another
+pipe. Isabel stared at a ring she twisted about her finger, Mr. Clink at
+the geranium stump. The low dull roar in the forest tops was unceasing,
+but for other sound of life they might have swung off into space.
+
+Finally Isabel spoke. "I won't marry you," she said. "But all ends will
+be served if we announce an engagement. We can state that we think it
+best not to marry until your law studies are concluded. It can be
+postponed once or twice on other pretexts, then fall through. By that
+time gossip will be forgotten, people will have lost interest in us. In
+San Francisco they are not likely to hear of this at all, or if they do
+it will not matter, and if you fall in love with any of the _cotillon_
+beauties I will release you in due form and give you my blessing."
+
+"I have not the least intention of undertaking life with a _cotillon_
+beauty. Your compromise will do for the present, but you will understand
+that my proposal is a bona fide one, should you arrive at a more
+rational frame of mind."
+
+"I sha'n't fall a victim to any irrational state of mind. I won't marry.
+Why, even people that like me too much interfere with my sense of
+liberty."
+
+Gwynne laughed. "We had better be starting," he said.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+They parted at the foot of the mountain, and as Isabel approached her
+own house she saw Anabel Colton's trap tied to the garden gate. She set
+her teeth and slackened the pace of her horse, but Anabel and Miss
+Boutts had seen her, and leaned over the edge of the veranda, calling to
+her impatiently. She gave her horse a cut with the whip and rode rapidly
+to the stable. When she finally reached the veranda she greeted her
+friends courteously enough, and then, as she noted their expression of
+defiant loyalty, remarked, sweetly:
+
+"Of course you have been expecting to hear that I am engaged to Mr.
+Gwynne, but I only really made up my mind to-day."
+
+"Isabel!" Both fell on her neck, Dolly with tears, and she responded
+with what enthusiasm was in her, and gently deposited them into two of
+the veranda chairs. With a very fair simulation of the engaged girl she
+answered their rapid fire of questions, and even informed Anabel that
+she would prefer silver to china when the day for presents arrived, and
+promised that she should come to the rehearsal of the ceremony, since,
+unfortunately, the young matron's own happy state debarred her from
+officiating at the altar. But she was averse from lying, even by
+implication, and was glad to see them go. After they had turned for the
+last time to blow her a kiss, she went within, slammed all the doors on
+the lower floor, stamped her feet, and hurled a book across the room.
+Finally she swore. After that she felt better and sat down to read a
+letter from Mrs. Hofer that awaited her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"... I can't do anything with your Lady Victoria" [the lively young
+matron ran on after a few preliminary enthusiasms]. "She went everywhere
+at first, but just sat round looking like a battered statue out of the
+Vatican with some concession in the way of clothes--not so much.
+Literally she made no effort whatever, and, you know, _American men
+won't stand that_. Perhaps that's the reason she suddenly called off and
+refused to go anywhere. But what can she expect? American women may talk
+too much, but at any rate they are the sort American men know like a
+book, and our knights have no use for inanimate beauties a good many
+years younger than my Lady Victoria.
+
+"Now she appears to do nothing but walk--stalk rather. She goes over
+these hills as if she had on seven-league boots. One would think she was
+possessed by the furies; or perhaps she is afraid of getting fat.
+
+"I am simply dying to see you again. If you don't mind--I like you
+better than any one I ever met. You combine everything, and although you
+make me feel as fresh as paint and as Irish as Paddy Murphy's pig, still
+you always put me in a better humor with myself than ever. How do you do
+it? You suggest all sorts of things that I can't define at all. Comes of
+living alone and making a success of it, I suppose, getting ahead of
+mere femininity and all the pettinesses of life. That's flying rather
+high for me, so I'd better come down. Please _make_ Mr. Gwynne come to
+my party. I intend that party to be the greatest thing ever given in
+California--since the old Monte Cristo Ralston days, anyhow: and have
+all sorts of surprises that I won't tell even you. The ballroom is quite
+finished and is a perfect success. It is _too_ fine to think that you
+will make your formal début in it. Everybody is coming. Mr. Gwynne
+simply must. I know of about a dozen girls who would have given him the
+_cotillon_ if he had asked them, and even now, when they are all
+engaged, I know of at least two who would not hesitate to throw their
+men over. We all like him tremendously, the men as well as the women.
+Mr. Hofer and I--do you know, we have just a dark suspicion--where _is_
+Elton Gwynne, anyway? That would be too good to be true. He could own
+the town. We know an _individual_ when we see one, and wouldn't we
+appreciate the compliment! We'd like him all the better for having
+accepted him when he was plain John Gwynne, and we'd like ourselves
+better still. You know how we make up our own minds out here. Look at
+the famous actors and singers we've rejected, and the reputations we've
+made. Not like New York, that never expresses an opinion until a sort of
+consensus has sweated up to the surface. I hate New York. Can't you come
+down and pay me a visit of a week? I should love it. Call me up on the
+telephone."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Isabel pondered over this missive for a few moments and then reread
+parts of a long letter she had received the day before from Flora
+Thangue.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"... I almost wish Jack would return, although at first I approved of
+his going. His case seemed so desperate. But since the elections there
+has been so much talk of him, so many prophecies as to what he will do
+when he returns--they believe him to be travelling in South America--so
+much seems to be expected of him, especially now that the Liberals are
+in, and there is so much dissatisfaction with the Cabinet--I really
+believe he would be the one to keep the party in power and that his
+becoming prime-minister would be a question of only a few years. Not
+such a bad outlook! But I don't care to say all this to Jack--or even to
+Vicky. You are responsible for the present state of affairs, and I am
+sure you realize what a tremendous responsibility it is. Besides, you
+know every side of the question over there as I do not. Think it over,
+dear Isabel.... Julia Kaye, I happen to know, has been trying to get his
+address. So far, she has not landed another big fish, and no doubt
+thinks that Jack's disgust and enthusiasm have both worn themselves out
+by this time. Don't send him back, but bring him. Of course he has
+fallen in love with you. Besides, you could accomplish any mortal thing
+you put your will to. Do, please, think it all over. A few years' delay,
+and he might return and find it too late. The public memory is short.
+There are rivals. The one he had most to fear from has an
+Under-secretaryship, and lets no one forget him. There will be deep
+resentment at too long an absence, especially if he should become an
+American citizen meanwhile. They would never forgive that.
+
+"... About Vicky. I wish I could have gone with her, but she did not
+feel that she could afford to take me, and Vicky's spasms of economy are
+not to be discouraged. But, thank heaven, she has you and Jack. Perhaps
+all she really needed was a change: she was always an individual, but
+she got to be distinctly peculiar after you left--nerves, I suppose:
+only instead of being merely irritable like other women she sealed
+herself up like a Mahatma preparing for astral flight. I only wish she
+was one. Women of her class no longer take to religion, when the fires
+are dead, but they certainly need a substitute, and I should think
+theosophy would be as good as any. It is such a delightful mixture of
+vagueness and cock-sureness, and even more picturesque than Romanism. It
+is time for me to follow the fashion and write a book, and I think I'll
+paint the mysterious delights of India as a late autumn resort. I am so
+sick of all these public mausoleums for youth! It would be a positive
+relief to think of all our erstwhile beauties stretched out in some
+frescoed cave with their ears and eyes and noses sealed up with wax,
+while their ever-youthful spirits sallied forth for new conquests on the
+astral plane. But Vicky never 'made up': one must say that much for her.
+Only this terrible fetish of youth! Heavens! the tragedies my
+sympathetic soul has endeavored to see as tragedies only. Not that
+growing old seems to be the worst of it. The underlying tragedy is that
+they can't care enough, and this they take to be the real end of youth,
+and patter up and down the old worn-out track of device, trying to fool
+themselves as well as others. But Vicky, as I said, is an individual: a
+touch or two more and she might have been a genius. She is like the mass
+of women in many things, heaven knows, but her divergences are the more
+startling; and the point of divergence lies down in the roots of her
+pride. She suddenly felt the complete loss, the final departure of
+youth, and she accepted it like a fallen goddess, and refused even the
+sudden and startling renewal of Sir Cadge Vanneck's devotions. She had
+nothing left to give him, and although her pride may have urged her to
+show the world that she still could capture a man like that, I think he
+really bored her to death, and she was satisfied to parade him for a
+time and then publicly throw him over. And she once loved him, I am
+certain of it. That is tragedy, if you like. I fancy she has desperate
+moments, but she will pull through in her own way. Don't delude yourself
+with the notion that she is sitting down in sackcloth and ashes with her
+past! Those women don't repent, for they never admit that the laws of
+common mortals apply to them. What is their royal pleasure to do they
+do, and when it is over a square inch of their memory might have gone
+with it. To mull themselves, commit some flagrant error that lands them
+in the divorce court, or high and dry in the outskirts--that is another
+matter. They repent then, _sans doute_; and get no mercy. We overlook
+everything at this apex of civilization but stupidity. We respect the
+high-handed but not the light-headed. That is one reason those
+long-winded novels of sin and repentance--generally over one slip and
+when the man has wearied--leave us cold. We know too much. It seems such
+a lot of fuss about so little. If some of these good, painstaking,
+and--let us whisper it--bourgeoise novelists had seen one-tenth of the
+pagan disregard for all they cherish most highly, that I have seen, and
+if they could only be made to comprehend--which they never could--how
+absolutely admirable these same women are in many other respects--such
+capacity for deep undying friendship, such uncalculating loyalty, such
+racial possibilities of heroism--well, they would do a good deal harder
+thinking than they have had to do yet, if they attempted to readjust
+their traditions to the actual facts of life. But the old traditions get
+back at our women all the same, although they don't suspect it. They pay
+the penalty in that late--sometimes not so late--intolerable maddening
+ennui. Heavens! how many women I have heard wish they were dead. Thank
+God I am a virgin!
+
+"Of course, dear Isabel, I would not write like this about Vicky to any
+one on earth but yourself. But she is on your hands, so to speak, and I
+feel you should have some sort of comprehension of her. To understand
+her fully is impossible. She is unhappy, that is the main thing--what
+with all I have intimated, and the great change in her fortunes--I can
+hardly imagine Vicky without Capheaton and the reflected glory of
+'Elton Gwynne'; and, no doubt, she finds California an exile and has
+realized by this time that she can be of little use to Jack. Better make
+a fortune for her in your wonderful American way and bring them both
+home."
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+Isabel called up Mrs. Hofer on the telephone, and after being switched
+off and on half a dozen times, and crossed wires and all the other
+mishaps peculiar to the California telephone service had reduced both to
+a state of furious indifference, Mrs. Hofer accepted Miss Otis's
+inability to go down to San Francisco until the day of the party, and
+her promise to pay the visit during Christmas week, with equal
+philosophy.
+
+The party was to be on the night of the 24th, and Isabel did not see
+Gwynne again until the evening of the same day. Judge Leslie went to
+Santa Barbara to spend the holidays with his son, and his pupil to
+Burlingame and Menlo Park for a week. After the polo and various other
+sports at the former resort, with a set that bore an outline resemblance
+to the leisure class of his own country, the gay life at the Club and
+the multitude of pretty girls always flitting amid compact masses of
+flowers, he found the now unfashionable borough of Menlo Park somewhat
+dull; although he had good snipe-shooting on the marsh with his host,
+Mr. Trennahan. The whole valley, however, had a peculiar charm for him;
+when riding alone past the fields of ancient oaks with the great
+mountains on either side, almost a sense of possession. For all this
+magnificent and richly varied sweep of land, now cut up into a few large
+estates and an infinite number of small ones, into towns, and villages,
+hamlets, and even cities, had once been the Rancho El Pilar, and the
+property of his Mexican ancestor, Don José Argüello. He knew that in
+those old days it must have looked like a vast English park, and he felt
+some resentment that his ancestors had not had the wit to hold fast to
+it until his time came to inherit.
+
+Mrs. Trennahan's father, Don Roberto Yorba, had bought a square mile
+from one of the Argüello heirs, and a few rich men of his time had
+followed his example; and slept in their country-houses during six
+months of the year while their women yawned the days away, deriving
+their principal solace in contemplation of their unchallenged
+exclusiveness. Stray members of those old families were left, and were,
+if anything, more exclusive than their parents, disdaining the
+light-hearted people of Burlingame, unburdened with traditions.
+This was still the set that never even powdered, faithful to the
+ancient code that it was not respectable, and who spent the greater
+part of the year in the country, finding their pleasures in the
+climate--soporific--excellent old Chinese or Spanish cooks, and in
+reminiscences of the time when the fine estates had not been cut up into
+little suburban homesteads for heaven only knew whom.
+
+Mrs. Trennahan had sold her father's place, and bought a superb estate
+in the foothills, where she entertained in the simple fashion of the
+Eighties. Trennahan still took the haughty spirit of his chosen borough
+with all his old humor, but he liked no place so well, even in
+California. A New-Yorker is always a New-Yorker, however long he may
+live in California, but he becomes more and more attached to the
+independent life, the even climate, above all to the cooking; and
+Trennahan was no exception. He had found Magdaléna the most comfortable
+of companions, she had presented him with two fine boys--who were
+preparing for college, at present--and a lovely daughter; and he was, in
+a leisurely way, collecting earthquake data, for future publication, and
+amused himself with a seismograph; which worried Magdaléna, who thought
+the instrument much too intimate with earthquakes to be a safe piece of
+household furniture. Gwynne liked them both as well as any people he had
+met in California, and engaged the beautiful Inez--who would seem to
+have embodied all her mother's old passionate longing for physical
+loveliness--to dance several times with him at the great ball which was
+to be the medium of her introduction to society.
+
+"I am still old-fashioned," Mrs. Trennahan confided to Gwynne, with a
+sigh. "I never have liked new people and I never shall; Mr. Trennahan
+has not laughed it out of me. But what will you? They are seven-eighths
+strong in San Francisco, I have a daughter who naturally demands the
+rights of her youth--so I make the best of a bad bargain. But I
+protest."
+
+When Gwynne arrived at the house on Russian Hill late in the evening it
+occurred to him to tap on Isabel's door and tell her that he had obeyed
+her orders, recalled all the traditions down in their common ancestor's
+old domain, and "got the feel" of the place. He had never crossed the
+threshold of this room although he had brushed his hair many times in
+the spotless bower by the marsh, and he was surprised, after a moment's
+colloquy through the panels, by an invitation to enter. He was still
+more surprised to find Isabel sitting before her dressing-table in full
+regalia, although they were not to start for the party until eleven
+o'clock. She wore the white tulle gown with the dark-blue lilies in
+which she had created a sensation at Arcot, and looked more radiant than
+he had ever seen her. Her eyes were like stars, her cheeks were pink;
+her red lips were parted, the upper trembling with excitement.
+
+"Come! Look!" she cried. "See what your mother has given me. I had to
+dress at once to see the whole effect."
+
+She lifted and fingered rapturously a row of splendid pearls that lay on
+her neck.
+
+"Did you ever see anything so beautiful? All my life I have wanted a
+string of pearls--real pearls that you read about, although I thought
+myself fortunate to have that old string of Baha California pearls, and
+never expected anything better. At first I wouldn't take them, but
+Cousin Victoria said they were her mother's, a gift from _her_ father
+when she married, so that I ought to inherit them, anyhow; and might as
+well have them while I was young. She vowed she should never wear them
+again, as her skin was no longer white enough for pearls. I can't
+believe it!"
+
+Gwynne looked at her curiously. "I had no idea you cared for those
+things. I could have given you pearls. Your pose has always been to
+scorn the common weaknesses of your sex."
+
+"You are just a dense man! I have all my sex's love of personal
+adornment, if you like to call that a weakness. Do you suppose I admire
+myself in that riding-habit or those overalls? Don't I always dress for
+supper even when alone? Have I not a lot of lovely gowns? Look at this
+one! I am so glad I never wore it again until to-night. As for jewels, I
+adore them, and when I am a millionaire I shall have little shovels full
+like those you see in jewellers' windows, just to handle; and the most
+lovely combinations to wear. But I don't ruin my complexion pining for
+what I can't have--or have lost. Of course poor mamma had beautiful
+jewels, but they went the way of all things."
+
+Gwynne looked at his watch. "I shall get a bite in town," he said. "The
+shops will be open till midnight. Hofer will endorse a check for me; I
+have sold three farms in the past week and have a pot of money in the
+bank. There is something else I want you to wear to-night--"
+
+"I won't take jewels from you--"
+
+"You are not only my fiancée but my cousin--"
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"I shall be back in about two hours. Mind you are sitting just there
+when I arrive."
+
+As he went swiftly out and closed the door, she shrugged her shoulders,
+and her eyes danced with anticipation. After all, she could return his
+present when the farce was over, and she was in a mood to have the world
+poured into her lap.
+
+She dined alone with her Puritan and Spanish ancestors, and when the
+brief meal was over, went up and exhibited herself to Lady Victoria, who
+was in a state of silent fury at being the victim of a headache. She
+complimented Isabel upon her appearance, however, and added:
+
+"I hope this pretended engagement will end in reality. You are of our
+blood. I recognize it more and more. I am thankful he escaped Julia
+Kaye. You are--could be--all I am afraid I compelled myself to believe
+she was."
+
+"Do you want him to go back to England?" asked Isabel. "I had a letter
+from Flora the other day, and she thinks it is my mission to restore him
+to his country."
+
+"I don't care. What difference does it make? I want him to be happy, and
+he can have a career anywhere. In your case beauty is not a curse, and I
+should be glad to see you concentrate your gifts where you can find and
+give real happiness. Now, enjoy yourself like a girl to-night and don't
+bother about Jack or any one else--certainly not about me," as Isabel
+stood looking down upon her with a puckered brow.
+
+Lady Victoria, in a négligée of salmon pink under a red light, and
+reclining on her divan with a box of cigarettes beside her, and a French
+novel in her hand, looked little less handsome than when she had
+captivated Isabel's girlish fancy a year ago. It was only the utter
+weariness of the eyes, and a subtle hardening of the whole mask of the
+always immobile face, that betrayed the sudden rupture with a long
+complacent youth. But she looked at Isabel's glorious youth without a
+pang of envy in her cynical, if not yet philosophical, soul, and said
+again, with emphasis:
+
+"Marry him. You can do it. Any woman can marry any man she wants. That
+is the reason we are never really happy. We never love men, as we
+imagine that we could love. We have fevers for them that last a few
+weeks, and then we become maternal and endure them. We might love a
+demi-god, never man as we know him. Perhaps in some other world--who
+knows?"
+
+Isabel pricked up her ears. Was Lady Victoria meditating the
+consolations of the Church--or of Flora's more modern substitute? What a
+solution! But she dared not ask. She was still a little afraid of her
+complicated relative. She begged her not to read too late, and went out,
+promising to conciliate the offended Mrs. Hofer.
+
+As she walked down the hall she stooped absently and picked up a scrap
+of paper, hardly aware that she held it in her hand until she sat down
+once more before her mirror. Then she glanced at it. To her surprise it
+was an advertisement of a prize-fight, cut from a newspaper; and on the
+margin an illiterate hand had scrawled, "_Nine o'clock sharp._" She
+wondered which of the servants was indulging in the distractions of the
+ring. All except Lady Victoria's maid were Japs. Could the Frenchwoman
+have found a lover who had introduced her to the forbidden pleasures of
+the town? Obviously it was not Gwynne's for the date was two days old,
+and he had been in Menlo Park at the time. But she had more interesting
+things to ponder over. Being a good housekeeper, she folded the scrap
+and hid it under one of the little silver trays, intending to give it in
+the morning to Lady Victoria, who was the temporary mistress of the
+mansion. Then she fell to counting her pearls, wound them twice about
+her throat, decided that she preferred the single long ellipse falling
+among the blue flowers on her bosom, marvelled, in an abandon of
+femininity, at the dazzling whiteness of her skin. She was beautiful, no
+doubt of that; it might be as Lady Victoria and Flora Thangue asserted,
+that any future she chose was hers to command; and, as the latter had
+intimated, to be an English peeress, with her husband at the head of the
+state, was no mean destiny. To-night, her almost fanatical love of
+California was dormant. She felt wholly personal. Whatever the future,
+she wanted to be the most admired girl at this party to-night, to
+dominate its long-heralded splendors as a great soprano rises high and
+triumphant above the orchestral thunders of a Wagner opera. Old
+instincts were stirring subtly. She had the rest of her life for great
+ideals. To-night she would be an old-time belle: as Concha Argüello had
+been just a century ago, as Guadalupe Hathaway, Mrs. Hunt McLane, Nina
+Randolph, and "The Three Macs," had been in the city's youth; as Helena
+Belmont had been but twenty years before. She recalled the oft-told
+story of the night of Mrs. Yorba's great ball, in the house next to the
+one which was to be the theatre of her own début, when Magdaléna Yorba,
+Tiny Montgomery, Ila Brannan, and the wonderful Helena had been
+introduced to San Francisco, and the most distracting belle the town had
+ever known had turned the heads of fifty men. It was far easier to be a
+belle in that simpler time than to-day, when the San Franciscan vied
+with the New-Yorker in the magnificence of furnishing and attire, and a
+mere million was no longer a fortune. And the city more than maintained
+its old standard of beauty, for its population had nearly doubled; the
+handsome girls of the upper class had learned the art of dress, and even
+among the shop-girls there was a surfeit of pretty faces and fine busts.
+As to the demi-monde it was the pick of America, for obvious reason.
+
+But Isabel was an ardent dreamer, and as she sat in her silent old home,
+high above the city's unresting life, she imagined herself into a
+blissful picture where she should realize to the full all the desires
+dear to the heart of a girl. It was true that she had created a _furore_
+that night at Arcot, but her triumph had been extinguished by fright and
+the tragedies that came in its train. And no triumph abroad ever quite
+equals the conquest of your own territory. Isabel concluded that if it
+were a matter of a single season, she would rather reign in San
+Francisco than in London--but her dreams were cut short by Gwynne's
+rapid step on the plank walk, and a moment later he was tapping on her
+door.
+
+She looked up at him with undisguised expectancy.
+
+"I am going to enjoy it," she said. "I shall accept it. I don't care!"
+
+"I should hope so, after all the trouble I have had." He sat down in a
+low chair beside the dressing-table and facing her. "Hofer had been
+turned out of the house and had taken refuge at the Mission. I took an
+automobile and rushed out there, only to find that he and his friends
+had concluded to come in and dine at one of the restaurants. Definite,
+but I know their tastes pretty well, and finally tracked them down. By
+that time I was starved, but when the dinner was over Hofer went with me
+himself to the jeweller's--"
+
+"What is it?" asked Isabel, impatiently, her eyes on a long box Gwynne
+had taken from his pocket.
+
+But Gwynne seldom had an opportunity to tease her. He drew his finger
+along the heavy coil of hair that rose from the very nape of her neck
+and pushed forward a soft little mass on to the brow. "I have always
+wanted to see something here," he said. "I remember once seeing a lovely
+print of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, who wore her hair somewhat as
+you do--"
+
+"Not a bit of it. Her hair was generally half-way down her back--"
+
+"Well the effect was the same--and in this print she had a row of
+daisies or stars; I never could remember which--"
+
+"You haven't brought me daisies?" said Isabel, in disgust.
+
+Gwynne pressed the little gilt nob, and as the lid flew up Isabel cried
+out, with delight.
+
+"You shouldn't! But I don't care! I said I wouldn't. I never expected
+anything so gorgeous, though--"
+
+She caught the box from his hand and fastened the diamond stars in the
+line he had indicated. There were five, graduated in size, and they gave
+her beauty its final touch of poetry and light. Isabel gazed at her
+dazzling reflection with parted lips and dancing eyes, then turned
+impulsively, flung her arms about Gwynne's neck, and kissed him. He
+pushed her away roughly.
+
+"Don't do that again!" he said. "I am not your brother, nor one of your
+girl friends. Can I look about? I have always had a curiosity to see
+this room. I had an idea that it was different from the one at the
+ranch."
+
+"You can look at what you like," said Isabel, indifferently. "I shall
+look at my stars. _Madre de Dios!_ as our Spanish ancestors would have
+said. _Ay yi! Valgame Dios! Dios de mi alma! Dios de mi vida!_ I never
+was so happy in my life."
+
+Gwynne walked about the large old-fashioned room with its bow-window,
+and alcove for the bed. He had half expected that the room he had so
+often passed with reluctant steps would be furnished in blue or pink,
+but it was as red as that of the traditional queen. Isabel had brought
+up all the old crimson damask curtains that had been fashionable in her
+grandmother's time, and covered the windows and walls of her bedroom,
+even the head of the mahogany four-poster in which her mother and
+herself had been born. The carpet was new, but a dull crimson, like the
+faded hangings, and the dressing-table with its quantity of chased
+silver--one of the few inheritances she had managed to retain--was the
+only spot of light in the rather sombre room: it was all white muslin
+and bright crimson silk. There was an old-fashioned settle against the
+wall and three stiff chairs. Gwynne liked the room, and had a vague
+feeling that he knew Isabel a little better. Certainly it expressed a
+side of her of which he had caught but an occasional glimpse.
+
+He pulled the curtains apart and shading his eyes from the light of the
+room looked down towards the city. It had vanished under a sea of white
+fog that broke against the ledge of Nob Hill. A cable-car might have
+been a comet flashing along the edge of a void.
+
+"I wonder," he said, "I wonder--should San Francisco disappear--be
+burned by that fire you are always expecting--or if the bay should
+shoal, or the Golden Gate rush together, so that she would have no
+reason for existence, and gradually be devoured by time--I suppose the
+fog and the winds would still be faithful. I can imagine the fogs
+rolling in and embracing her, and the winds raging about every forgotten
+corner, centuries after there was anybody left to curse either."
+
+"Was it Mrs. Kaye or Lady Cecilia Spence that said you just missed being
+a poet? I hope some slumbering ancestor is not struggling for
+resurrection out here. I much prefer that you should be a statesman."
+
+"I intend to be, nor have I any desire to turn poet. I have seen too
+many in London. But this city, ugly as it is, appeals in its own way to
+the imagination--more, for some unknown reason, than the most poetic I
+ever saw in the old worlds. There is something almost uncanny about it.
+While it is raw, and crude, and practically in its infancy, it at the
+same time suggests an unthinkable antiquity. Perhaps--who knows?--it had
+a civilization contemporary with the Montezumas--or with Atlantis; and
+it is the ghosts of old unrecorded peoples that linger and give one a
+fairly haunted feeling when one climbs these hills alone at night."
+
+"Much better you keep your hand on your pistol and your eye out for
+foot-pads--and one dreamer in the family is enough. I hope I have not
+infected you."
+
+She forsook her glowing image and looked at him inquisitively. He
+wandered about the room again and paused to look at a row of
+daguerreotypes on a shelf, dead and forgotten Belmonts.
+
+"You do dream a good deal," he said. "Judging by your varying styles of
+beauty as well as other things, you must be possessed by a dozen
+different sorts of old Johnnies trying to mutter something up out of the
+dark."
+
+"I'm going to be nothing but a dreamer for a whole week."
+
+"If that means that you will forget chickens, and dress yourself
+decently, I shall do what I can to heighten the illusion. Should you
+like me to make love to you?" he asked, turning to her with a quickening
+interest.
+
+"That might wake me up," said Isabel, politely. "This week is crowded
+with parties and things. I am to visit Mrs. Hofer and go to all of them.
+You won't see much of me until New Year's eve, when I come home and we
+dine at a Bohemian restaurant with Lyster and Paula, and watch the
+street crowds after. But I do not look so far ahead. If I am a success
+to-night I am going to make believe that I am an old-time belle like
+Helena Belmont, or my poor little mother, for that matter. And I shall
+feel just like her when I start, for Angélique will pin up my skirts
+under a long cloak, and pull carriage boots over my slippers so that
+nothing will be spoiled going down those steps. I suppose I can't hope
+to be quite such a belle as if I had lived in those less-sophisticated
+days, but who knows? And I can forget Rosewater--and Bohemia; I sha'n't
+even think of the Stones until New Year's eve; I sent them their
+Christmas presents this morning, on purpose. I am going to be frivolous,
+coquette, and imagine myself a girl of the old Southern Set, when there
+were no new people. And I'm going to make them _think_ I am a great
+beauty, whether I am or not. I remember mamma used to say to me:
+'Cultivate the beauty air. That often is more effective than beauty
+itself. Tiny Montgomery was a beauty according to every known standard,
+but she had no dash, and was never looked at when Helena Belmont was in
+the room.' So to-night, you'll see me sail into that ballroom as if I
+already had the town at my feet. By-the-way--the last time I began to
+feel like a real girl again was that night at Arcot--and I did feel
+eighteen--triumphant--happy--until I got back and saw Lord Zeal in the
+library. I have never forgotten his face."
+
+"Nor have I," said Gwynne, dryly; but he turned pale. "I suppose you
+haven't had the least suspicion what he came to tell me that night?"
+
+"I thought to say good-bye without letting you know--it isn't possible
+that he told you he intended to kill himself?"
+
+"He told me a good deal more. He had shot Brathland. Murdered him, in
+plain English. You may fancy the night I had with him."
+
+Isabel stared up at him, the radiance gone from her face.
+
+"And you have been carrying that about in addition to everything else?"
+
+"It was brutal to tell you this to-night! I can't imagine why I did,
+particularly as I have never told even my mother--who, like everybody
+else not necessarily in the secret, thinks that Zeal killed himself in
+despair over his failing health. But--yes, I remember that dress now--I
+rarely notice the details of women's clothes--but I remember admiring
+those blue lilies on that airy white stuff--I suppose you suddenly
+brought the whole thing back as vividly as if we were at Capheaton
+instead of out here on the edge of creation. You must forgive me and
+forget it."
+
+"Yes I will! I'll forget everything for a week." She wheeled about and
+rubbed her cheeks. Gwynne stooped suddenly and kissed the little black
+mole on her shoulder.
+
+"This is all I ask in return for the baubles," he murmured; and then as
+he met a blazing eye: "Could I do less than restore your lovely color?
+But I must fly and get into my togs."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+The old-fashioned interior of the Polk House, with, on the lower floor,
+its double parlors connected by sliding doors, its narrow central hall,
+and its many shapeless rooms of varying size, had been entirely
+remodelled by the essentially modern Mrs. Hofer. Her husband had wished
+to build an imposing mass of shingles and stones, but Mrs. Hofer was far
+too impatient to wait a year--perhaps two, if there were strikes--to
+take up her abode on Nob Hill, and the Polk House was in the market.
+Perhaps something in the stolid uncompromising exterior of the old
+barrack appealed to her irresistibly, mausoleum that it was of an
+aristocratic past. But upon the interior she wasted no sentiment, and
+some half a million of her husband's dollars. There were now three great
+rooms on the lower floor and four small ones, besides a circular hall
+with a spiral marble stair. The drawing-room, which ran from east to
+west, was one of the most notable rooms in the country, had been the
+subject of violent controversy, newspaper and verbal, and was a
+perpetual delight to the dramatic soul of its mistress. The most
+original artist the State had produced had painted a deep frieze which
+was a series of the strange moonlight scenes that had made his fame: the
+deep sulphurous blue of the California night sky, the long black
+shadows, the wind-driven trees, the low desolate adobe houses abandoned
+in the towns settled by Spain. Now and again a cluster of lights
+indicated a window-pane and a belated tenant, but the garden walls were
+in ruins, the tiled roofs sagging, the ancient whitewash was peeling;
+all blended and lifted into a harmony of color and pathos by the genius
+of the artist. The expanse of dull green-blue walls of rough plaster
+below the frieze was unbroken; on the marble floor there were blue
+velvet rugs. The furniture was of ebony and dull-blue brocade. There was
+not even a picture on an easel, but there were several Rodins and
+Meuniers. At the lower or west end of the room the wall had been removed
+and replaced by a single immense pane of plate glass. From this window,
+always curtainless, there was a startling view of the steep drop of the
+hill, beetling with houses and steeples, Telegraph Hill beyond and a
+little to the north; then the bay, and the towns on its opposite rim. At
+night the scene, with its blue above and black below, picked out with a
+thousand lights--massed into a diadem beyond the bay--looked like a
+sublimation of the painter's work. Within, the cunningly arranged lights
+saved the room at all times from being too sombre, and were set to
+reveal every detail of paintings far too precious to have been
+recklessly lavished upon a wooden house in the most recklessly built of
+all great cities.
+
+The dining-room--which had the proportions of a banqueting-hall, with an
+alcove for family use--was hung with tapestries and furnished with
+chairs lifted bodily from a castle in Spain; and it was a room in which
+no one would remember to look for ancestors. The library also commanded
+a view of the bay and had been decorated by native artists with
+imitations of the Giorgione frescoes, charmingly pink and smudgy. The
+hangings and furniture were of royal crimson brocade, and the walls were
+covered with books. Mr. Toole, who was a scholar of the old-fashioned
+sort, of which California still holds so many, had selected the books;
+and the contents were as noteworthy as the bindings. In a special alcove
+was a large number of priceless Fourteenth and Sixteenth Century
+editions. From this sumptuous room curved an iron balcony, where the old
+gentleman might be seen sunning himself any fine day, his steel
+spectacles half-way down his nose, and a volume propped on the shelf of
+an easy-chair furnished with all the modern improvements.
+
+On the white satin panels of the large round hall were a few of the most
+valuable old masters as yet brought to the country, but Mrs. Hofer, who
+was a patriot or nothing, did not hesitate to mix them with the best
+efforts of her fellow-citizens, nor to proclaim her preference for the
+native product. It was all very well to have old masters, and modern
+Europeans, if it was the thing, but she never felt quite at home with
+them, and liked her California inside as well as out.
+
+The four little reception-rooms, or boudoirs, were so many cabinets for
+treasures, and on the night of the ball, like the rest of the rooms on
+this floor, were entirely without further adornment; only the white
+marble of the spiral stair was festooned with crimson roses; and the
+narrow hall that led from the rotunda to the new ballroom was dressed in
+imitation of a long arbor of grape-vines, and hung with clusters of
+hot-house grapes and Chinese lanterns. The ballroom had been built out
+from the back of the house upon the steep drop of the hill, and as even
+its graduated foundation did not lift it to the level of the first
+floor, it was reached by a short flight of steps. For three months Mrs.
+Hofer's judicious hints had excited the curiosity of the town, and all
+that were not bedridden had presented themselves at as early an hour as
+self-respect would permit. Mrs. Hofer, to use her own phrase, had
+"turned herself loose," on this room, and even her husband, who had
+gasped at the sum total, indulgent as he was, admitted to-night that
+"she knew what she was about." The immense room was built to simulate a
+patio in Spain. The domed roof, in the blaze of light below, looked to
+be the dim blue vault of the night sky. The gallery that encircled the
+room was divided into balconies, and from them depended Gobelin
+tapestries, Eastern rugs, silken shawls--yellow embroidered with red,
+blue embroidered with white--after the manner of Spain on festa days.
+The background of the gallery was a mass of tropical plants alternating
+with latticed windows and long glass doors. Sitting with an arm or elbow
+on the railing, was every California woman of Mrs. Hofer's acquaintance
+that had the inherited right to wear a mantilla, a rose over her ear,
+and wield a large black fan; that is to say, those that were too old or
+too indifferent to dance. How Ada Hofer induced them to form a part of
+her decorations nobody ever knew, themselves least of all; but there, to
+the amazement and delight of the hundreds below, they were, and it was
+many years since the majority of them had looked so handsome. Beneath
+the balcony was an arcade where many seats were disposed among palms and
+pampas grass. The inevitable fountain was at the end of the room; it was
+of white stone, and colored lights played upon its foaming column. The
+musicians were in the gallery above it.
+
+When Gwynne and Isabel descended the steps and stood looking down upon
+the scene for a moment, the younger people were dancing. Every woman
+seemed to have been fired with the ambition to contribute her own part
+to the brilliancy of the night. There were tiaras by the score in these
+days, and the gowns had journeyed half-way round the world. There had
+been imported gowns in the immortal Eighties, when Mrs. Yorba reigned,
+but never a tiara; and Isabel for the first time fully realized the
+significant changes worked by the vast modern fortunes and their
+ambitious owners. Blood might have been enough for their predecessors,
+but the outward and visible sign for them.
+
+And all sets were represented to-night. It is doubtful if any woman had
+done as much to entice them to a common focus as the surmounting Mrs.
+Hofer. She was not the leader of San Francisco society, for that office
+was practically an elective one, and meant an infinite amount of trouble
+with corresponding perquisites; it must be held by a woman of supreme
+tact, experience, executive ability, and practically nothing else to do.
+The present incumbent, to the infinite credit of San Francisco, was a
+member of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in
+California; or in America, for that matter; and although still young,
+and with less to spend in a year than the Hofers wasted in a week, she
+had been chosen, after the death of the old leader, and some acrimonious
+discussion, to rule; and rule she did with a rod of iron. But she took
+her good where she found it, and was grateful for what Mrs. Hofer, with
+her beautiful house and irresistible energy had already accomplished.
+For Mrs. Hofer was by no means too democratic. If she had drawn all
+factions to her house she had taken care that only the best of her own
+kind came too, and this best was very good indeed; for it was educated
+and accomplished, more often than not had mingled in society abroad; an
+honor to which many of the ancient aristocracy had never aspired. No one
+recognized this fact, and the irresistible law of progress, better than
+the Leader, in spite of her Spanish blood; and to-night she sat in the
+very centre of the north gallery, her charming dark face draped in a
+mantilla some two centuries old. Beside her sat Anne Montgomery who had
+not a drop of Spanish in her, but whom Mrs. Hofer had done up with a
+brand-new mantilla of white lace and an immense black fan. Miss
+Montgomery had a lingering sense of humor, but it suited her to look
+young and pretty once more, if only for a night. Mrs. Trennahan, who was
+really fond of Mrs. Hofer, particularly as she had been adroitly
+persuaded that this party was to be a mere setting for her lovely young
+daughter, also decorated the gallery in one of the old Yorba
+mantillas--it had belonged to the beautiful aunt for whom this house had
+been built by the husband she scorned--and wore it for the first time in
+her life. Trennahan had shaken with a fit of inward laughter, but had
+compelled his eyes to express only admiration and approval.
+
+Other dowagers sat below, some bediamonded and others not: the "old
+Southern Set" lived on diminishing incomes; new industries were
+decreasing the values of the old. They had lost none of their pride, but
+philosophy had mellowed them, and they were honestly grateful for such
+splendid diversion; and Mrs. Hofer's suppers cost a small fortune, even
+in San Francisco. Their offspring cared as little for traditions as for
+supper, and had married or were marrying into the newer sets, rapidly
+obliterating what lines were left. As for the new, they were legion, and
+not to be distinguished by the casual eye from those that traced their
+descent to the crumbling mansions of South Park and Rincon Hill; and
+they had the earnest co-operation of the best of the world's milliners.
+The pick of Bohemia was also present, those that were distinguishing
+themselves in art and letters, or even on the stage, for Mrs. Hofer had
+learned some of her lessons in London. All that were now looked upon as
+county families, spending as they did but one or two months of the year
+in the city, had come to town for this ball, but the country towns were
+represented only by Gwynne and Isabel and the Tom Coltons. The group of
+men so desperately interested in the municipal affairs of the city
+disliked and distrusted Colton; but Mrs. Leslie had been born on Rincon
+Hill, and all doors, old and new, were open to her daughter. Isabel
+caught a glimpse of Anabel among the dancers, in a gown of primrose
+satin almost the color of her hair, and a little diamond tiara made from
+some old stones of her mother's.
+
+"Well!" exclaimed Isabel. "What do you think of us? Is it not a
+wonderful scene?"
+
+Gwynne nodded. "All that is wanting is a background of caballeros in the
+gallery, silk and ruffles, and hair tied with ribbons. But I suppose the
+old gentlemen objected. There must be some limit to Mrs. Hofer's powers
+of persuasion. But--yes--it is a wonderful scene, and you are a
+wonderful people to take so much trouble."
+
+The waltz finished and Mrs. Hofer bore down upon them. She wore white
+brocade, the flowers outlined with jewels, shimmering under a cloud of
+tulle, and her neck and her fashionably dressed head were hardly to be
+seen for the rubies and diamonds that bound them. She was fairly
+palpitating with youth and triumph, and delight in the dance, and
+although without beauty or a patrician outline, there was no more
+radiant vision in the room. She reproached Isabel for being late,
+informed her that she had ordered all the best men to keep dances for
+her, summoned several, and then bore off Gwynne to introduce him to the
+prettiest of the girls. In a few moments Isabel was engaged for every
+dance before supper; she had given the _cotillon_ to Gwynne.
+
+She had realized immediately, that upon such a scene, with such a
+background, she could hope to make no such overwhelming impression as
+had fallen to the lot of Helena Belmont; surrounded by buff-colored
+walls and a small exclusive society--for the most part disdainful of
+dress. Nevertheless, she was soon pleasurably aware that she was the
+subject of much comment, not only in the gallery, but among the hundreds
+of smart young girls and women on the floor, the men that danced, and
+those that supported the walls. The old beaux, left over from the days
+when Nina Randolph and Guadalupe Hathaway had reigned, who had put the
+stamp of an almost incoherent approval upon the dazzling Helena, that
+famous night of her début, were dead and dust; but another group,
+including the quartet that had as promptly declared themselves the
+suitors and slaves of the exacting beauty, were present to-night,
+critically regarding the débutantes. Their comparisons were less
+impassioned than those of their old mentors, for they were tired; they
+had disposed of much of their superfluous enthusiasm in the increased
+difficulties of making an income, since the brief reign of a heartless
+witch, whom they still remembered with an occasional pang of sentiment,
+but more gratitude that they had not had her as well as fortune to
+subdue. None had prospered exceedingly, but all had done well. They were
+still in their forties, but as gray as their fathers had been at sixty;
+indeed, looked older than Trennahan, who had disdained to add to his own
+and his wife's fortunes, and lived merely to enjoy life; and they would
+far rather have been in bed. But three of them were indulgent family
+men. Eugene Fort had clung to the single state, but the others were
+contributing one or more daughters to the evening's entertainment; and
+they had all drifted naturally together to discuss the new beauties
+before retreating to the haven at the top of the house where there was a
+billiard-table and much good whiskey and tobacco. They were disputing
+over the respective claims of Inez Trennahan, who was a replica of the
+California _Favoritas_ of a century ago, and Catalina Over with the
+Indian blood on her high cheek-bones, and her mouth like an Indian's
+bow, when Isabel descended the stairs. They promptly gave her the palm,
+although they did not turn pale, nor lose their breath.
+
+"The grand style," said Trennahan. "I wonder will the home-bred youth
+appreciate it? In your day she would have had a better chance, but most
+of these worthy young men, when they have been to college at all, have
+patronized Stanford or Berkeley; in other words, never been out of the
+State, and, no doubt, prefer the more vivid, frivolous, and essentially
+modern product."
+
+"If it lay with us," said Alan Rush, sadly. "But it is as you say. She
+will frighten most of the young fellows. By Jove, she looks as if she
+had danced at Washington's first ball. But that's it. Nothing free and
+easy, there. It's no longer the fashion to be too aristocratic."
+
+But Isabel, if she did not create a _furore_ among the young men, who
+would have thought such a performance beneath their dignity, was, at
+least, generally admitted to be "Pretty well as stunning a girl as you
+might see in a long day's journey," "a regular ripper," "the handsomest
+of the bunch," and as far as "mere looks went" the "pick of the lot."
+The girls viewed her with no great favor, but the majority of the women,
+especially those in the galleries, sustained the verdict of the men; and
+the Leader, in the course of the evening, descended and introduced
+herself, claimed relationship, and graciously intimated that if Isabel
+cared to join the _cotillon_ clubs and the skating-rink--_The_
+skating-rink--an exclusive yet hospitable wing would be lifted. A
+younger brother of Mr. Hofer, who had also multiplied his paternal
+million, devoted himself to her seriously, and Gwynne, who soon had
+enough of dancing, gracefully renounced his claims to the german. They
+had one waltz together and then he did not see her again until the hour
+of departure, when he stood in the hall and watched her descend the
+winding white stair between the roses. He thought her a charming picture
+in her long white coat, with a lace scarf over her head, and her arms
+full of costly toys. When she reached his side she ordered him to put
+her favors into the pockets of his overcoat, and keep his hand on his
+pistol, as she would not risk losing one of them, much less her jewels.
+Her eyes were very bright, and her cheeks deeply flushed, but were the
+cause a fully satisfied ambition, he could only guess.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+The hour was four, and after they had said their last good-night to the
+guests whose homes lay between the Hofer mansion and their own, they met
+but one foot passenger as belated as themselves. This was a big man that
+loomed suddenly out of the fog. Isabel screamed and ran into the middle
+of the street, and Gwynne, who had obediently taken out his pistol, half
+raised it. But the man laughed.
+
+"I'm on the lookout for thim meself," he said, in a rich brogue. "Good
+luck to yees."
+
+As they let themselves into the house, Gwynne threw his hat and coat on
+the settle in the vestibule, and then ran his hand through his hair and
+rubbed the back of his head, a habit of his when he had a suggestion to
+make.
+
+"I remember we were going to sit up the rest of that night--or
+morning--after Arcot," he said. "Are you very tired?"
+
+"Tired? I shall not sleep a wink for hours. The fire is sure to be laid
+in the tower-room."
+
+They went into the small circular room, furnished in several shades of
+green, that Isabel had retained for her own use, and while she shook
+down her skirts Gwynne applied a match to the coals. The raw morning air
+had penetrated the house, too old-fashioned to have a furnace, but
+wooden walls are quickly heated. When Gwynne had removed the blower
+several times and satisfied himself that the hard coals would burn, he
+resumed the perpendicular.
+
+He looked doubtfully at Isabel, who was still wrapped in her cloak, and
+had elevated her feet, covered with the long carriage-boots, to the
+fender. "Sha'n't you take off those things?" he asked. "You don't look
+as if you meant to stay."
+
+"You can take off the boots, but I'll keep on my coat for a few
+moments."
+
+He laughed as he knelt again. "I certainly am getting broken in. I have
+known Englishwomen to pull off their husband's hunting-boots after a
+hard day's work--"
+
+"The idea!"
+
+"Very good idea. Do you mean that you would not?"
+
+"Well, I might, as a return favor. You need not take all night to pull
+off mine."
+
+"You might, at least, let virtue be its own reward. It's not often it
+has the chance."
+
+"Well, get up and don't be an idiot. I suppose you have been flirting in
+the conservatory all the evening and haven't had time to readjust your
+mood."
+
+"Mrs. Hofer has no conservatory. Great oversight. But I did sit out a
+dance or two in that room with the immense window--"
+
+"With whom?"
+
+"I have forgotten her name. Will you have a cigarette?"
+
+"No, but you may smoke if you like."
+
+He had settled himself in a deep chair on the opposite side of the
+hearth. There was a silence of nearly ten minutes, until Isabel,
+suddenly removing her coat, brought Gwynne out of his reverie.
+
+"I cannot say that to-night was in any sense a repetition of my own
+experience at Arcot," he said, abruptly. "That night--I have tried to
+forget it--I had enough adulation to turn any man's head. I fancy it
+_was_ pretty well turned, and that made the wrench during the small
+hours the more severe. Still, it has been an interesting evening, and
+one or two things happened."
+
+"What?" Isabel was full of her own experiences, but too much of a woman
+to betray the fact when a man wanted to talk about himself.
+
+"I danced for a while, but I had had exercise enough during the day, and
+didn't care particularly about it. Besides, all the girls I danced with,
+and that one I sat up-stairs with for a few minutes, not only talked my
+head off, but quizzed me, and I did not understand it. To my amazement,
+I learned not long after that they know who I am. Can you imagine how it
+got out?"
+
+"They know everything. It is an old saying that the San Francisco girls
+scent a stranger the moment he leaves the tram at the Oakland mole, and
+know all about him before he has registered. The obscurest knight could
+not hide himself in this town. Rosewater alone saved you so long. How
+did they quiz you?"
+
+"Each began at once to talk about my 'distinguished relative, Elton
+Gwynne.' I may be more dense than most, or perhaps I was merely bored,
+but I assumed that they thought I was his brother and knew his
+whereabouts. When supper was half over, and I was congratulating myself
+that I had got out of the _cotillon_, even with you, for it meant
+dancing with a lot of others, my host took me firmly by the arm and
+marched me up-stairs. He informed me that he was 'bored stiff,' could
+see that I was, and had 'coralled' a few more choice spirits. We went,
+not to the smoking or billiard-room, but to his own bedroom, and here I
+found four or five more of your strenuous millionaires, the reform
+editor, and the lawyer that looks like a bull-dog waiting for the word
+to spring at the throat of the Boss and his whole vile crew.
+
+"Here we sat and smoked until the air inside was as thick as the fog
+that blotted out the lights of the city and towns opposite. Of course
+the talk was of the rotten state of San Francisco. I never heard the
+whole story before, and it made my hair stand on end. I knew that vice
+flaunted itself more openly here than elsewhere, but I did not guess
+that the thousand and one establishments of every sort, from the lowest
+negro dive under the sidewalk, and the snares for the very young of both
+sexes, straight up to the most gaudy 'French restaurants,' as well as
+Chinatown, Barbary coast, and all the rest, paid tribute to the gang of
+political ruffians that have got control of the city. No wonder the last
+have developed a preternatural sharpness that makes it next to
+impossible to bring the charges home, for they will all be rich enough
+in time to move to Europe and buy up such salable scions of
+improverished houses as happen to be on the market. The thing is as well
+known as I know that you are my third cousin, but, although the
+second-rate grafters are brazen enough, it is not worth while to attack
+them until the Boss is done for, and so far he has proved much too
+clever to be caught. A college man, although of low origin, and an
+accomplished lawyer of a sort, he pockets huge sums from these
+disreputable establishments, for himself and his minion, the mayor, and
+calls them attorney's fees. Naturally the panderers to vice won't admit
+they are blackmailed: they are between the devil and the deep sea; if
+the fight came on in earnest, and they gave evidence against the Boss,
+and the Boss won, he would clean them all out and put others in. The
+Reformers, if they won, would clean them out too; so, naturally, they
+hold their tongues and hope this reform movement will peter out as so
+many others have done. So do the Board of Supervisors whom the Boss also
+owns and through whom he blackmails the great corporations. But--and
+when they had got to this point in the talk there was an abrupt pause,
+and then Hofer turned to me and said: 'Even if you don't come in and
+join us, which I always hope you will do, I know a man that can keep his
+mouth shut when I see him. So fire away.'
+
+"And then they discussed the fact that one of their number had recently
+gone to Washington to ask the President to send out an able man of the
+Government Secret Service; they have every reason to believe that this
+request will be complied with. With sufficient evidence they would then
+make a quiet crusade in the hope of rousing public spirit to the extent
+of forcing in a grand jury that could not be bought by the Boss.
+Needless to say he has controlled every grand jury that has met during
+his reign, and one might as well hope to convict a wind for unroofing a
+house, even were he not master of every legal trick himself, and had he
+taken less pains to cover up his tracks. In this detective lies their
+chief hope at present; but what a slender hope it is, when you consider
+the devil-may-care character of these San Franciscans, who would dance
+on the edge of hell, with equal nonchalance, if only there were a screen
+between. There is not an outstanding excuse for forming a vigilance
+committee, as there was during the Dennis Kearney-Anti-Chinese riots of
+1879, and there is no such aroused public spirit and indignation as
+sustained the Vigilantes of the Fifties. These rascals take good care to
+be non-sensational in their methods, and what the San Franciscan doesn't
+see doesn't worry him. The city is rich, prosperous, famous, tourists
+are pouring in, the best in drama and opera comes yearly--to be
+presented in fire-traps whose owners pay toll to the Boss; they already
+have the handsomest hotels in the world, the finest cooking, climate;
+even earthquakes--severe ones--have moved elsewhere. What can you do
+with a people like that? They are fairly insolent in their sense of
+security. Let the political gang make their share. There is enough for
+all. But don't bother us. Let us be happy. _Vive la bagatelle._ There
+you have the motto of San Francisco.
+
+"By the time they had threshed the subject out, explaining details and
+plans to me, as if I were already one of them, I was feeling pretty
+uncomfortable. Naturally, I blurted out that I could no longer accept
+their hospitality and confidence on false pretences, and told them who I
+was. Each got up in turn, solemnly held out his hand, and said, 'Shake.'
+Then Hofer informed me that they had all been practically certain for
+some time that I was myself; being good enough to add: 'We knew there
+couldn't be more than one of you; and we are also able to put two and
+two together, occasionally. Before we thought of it, however, you struck
+us all as being a man accustomed to homage. Later we discovered that you
+were choke full of seven different kinds of ability, and it was then
+that the twos began to move towards each other on the board; and we
+decided that we must have you here, right here in San Francisco. What
+can a man like you find in a God-forsaken place like Rosewater, anyhow?
+The Eggopolis! You can't afford to hail from there; it would stick to
+you for the rest of your life. And we have just got to have you. We may
+have some of the ablest lawyers in the country in San Francisco, and a
+few honest ones, but we can accommodate one more; and a man that will
+throw over a great title and an already won name for the sake of
+standing on his own legs--that's the sort of stuff the old pioneers were
+made of. So, here you must come, and stand shoulder to shoulder with
+us.'
+
+"I replied that I must finish my law studies with Judge Leslie first,
+and have some little practice under his direction; that I intended to go
+in for politics, but that for some years all the power over men I could
+acquire would be through the law--and I had remarkable chances for
+contact in and about Rosewater; where, moreover, if they learned who I
+was it would not matter much. It might be quite otherwise in the city.
+To this they agreed: that is to say, that I should remain in Rosewater
+for six months or a year longer; but they asked me to promise that if
+any great emergency arose, in which they believed I could be of use, I
+would come at their call. And I promised."
+
+He rose and moved restlessly about the room. "Upon my word!" he
+exclaimed; and Isabel, who had not taken her eyes off him, although he
+had addressed the greater part of his talk to the fire, noted that he
+was paler than usual--and that his eyes were very bright; "upon my word,
+I really do feel more elated than on that night at Arcot. That small
+devoted band of men!--most of them with millions they might take to the
+most civilized capitals of the world and spend in splendid enjoyment--I
+never have met such patriotism! It is magnificent! And to find it out
+here in this stranded city--that fascinates the very heart out of you,
+by-the-way--I don't know that I wonder so much--I believe I shall
+succumb myself in time--it is like being on another planet. At any rate
+I hated myself to-night for any sickness of spirit I may have permitted
+to linger--for a while my very personality seemed to melt into what may
+prove an even greater cause than all that appears on the surface. The
+present California may be merely the nucleus of a great future Western
+civilization, so unlike the Eastern that no doubt it will dissever
+itself in time and breed still wider divergences; until the old
+generic term American will no longer apply to both. Moreover, it
+already feels that it owns the Pacific, and faces the Orient alone.
+And to rebuild this city--you have seen the Burnham plans--transform
+it into the most beautiful city of the modern world--to give it a
+great, instead of a merely brilliant and erratic civilization--a perfect
+administration--what dreamers! What imagination! It is an inspiration to
+come into contact with an idealism that money, and power, and daily
+contact with the mean and base in human nature--"
+
+"I could love you!" cried Isabel. "If you say any more, I believe I
+shall kiss you again."
+
+"If you do," said Gwynne, deliberately, "I shall neither pinch you nor
+push you away. But you may regret it, nevertheless."
+
+He threw himself once more into his chair and clasped his hands behind
+his head. "It is an astonishing fact," he said--"This--I was reading the
+history of the Kearney riots, only the other day. The commentator was
+very severe on the Irish and German element that imperilled the city for
+purely personal reasons; that was responsible for the most remarkable
+and reprehensible of all the State Constitutions. That was not quite
+thirty years ago. Whether any of these men, who are mainly of Irish or
+German descent, are the sons or grandsons of any of those old Sand-lot
+agitators I have no means of knowing; probably not, their fortunes were
+no doubt already in the making, and the founders had graduated from the
+class that went to sand-lot meetings and shouted, 'The Chinese must go.'
+But it is certainly one of the oddest evolutions in history that it
+should be the descendants of that foreign element alone that take any
+real interest in this city; that are ardent to reform it, beautify it;
+that are willing to devote their time and a good part of their fortunes
+to that end. So far, although I have met in the clubs many old gentlemen
+of charming manners and prehistoric descent--that is from '49, or even
+the more pretentious East and South; and, at all sorts of places, their
+sons--who are either building up new fortunes or spending old
+ones--there is not one, so far as my observation serves me, that has
+lifted a finger to fling off this octopus. Hofer says they have even
+ceased to grumble. Their incomes are assured. Some are merely well off,
+others immensely wealthy--with a sufficiency invested elsewhere. All can
+command about the same amount of luxury, however their establishments
+may vary in splendor. And nothing can exceed the luxury of their Clubs.
+The older men at least--and they are not so old--have subsided into a
+slothful content that makes them a cross between a higher sort of
+carnivorous animal and the tacit supporters of the criminals in power.
+These friends of mine, whose fathers may or may not have listened to
+Kearney in the Sand-lots, are worth the whole lot of your ancient
+aristocracy--hybrid, anyhow--and if I do 'hang out my shingle' here in
+San Francisco, they are the only ones I care anything about knowing.
+They are the only real Americans I have met, for that matter--according
+to your own standards--" He broke off abruptly and leaned forward,
+smiling at his companion. "I meant to ask you as soon as we got home to
+tell me all about your first great party in your beloved city, but I
+have been led away by my natural egotism. You were, by general acclaim,
+I fancy, the beauty of the evening. Did you enjoy it all as much as you
+expected?"
+
+"I fancy I should have enjoyed it more if I had been up-stairs with you.
+I found it more of an effort than I had imagined to make conversation
+with those young men. Of course I enjoyed being openly admired and
+besought for dances. Who wouldn't? But I never deluded myself for a
+moment that I was anything approaching those old-time belles. As the
+conditions have passed away, however, my vanity doesn't suffer. At all
+events I am going to carry out my program and rush about to everything
+that is given this week, to forget Rosewater, every aspiration, all that
+ever happened to me. Every girl should have one girl's good time, and
+although mine is belated, it would be silly to let it pass. Besides, I
+am curious to see if I really can--well, delude myself."
+
+"So am I! I have an idea you won't. You are quite different from all
+those girls, who are at the same time the brightest and the most
+frivolous, the most feminine and the most modern, the most daring and
+the most indifferent, I have ever met. Those that have been as carefully
+brought up as our ninetieth cousin, Inez Trennahan, are simply moulds
+for the future to run into. There were several young persons that looked
+as if they might go pretty far in a conservatory--perhaps that is the
+reason Mrs. Hofer has none. She appears to have Irish virtue in excess,
+and I expect the larky would get short shrift from her. But you--you are
+quite unlike them all."
+
+"I am a Californian," said Isabel, defiantly.
+
+"Yes, but of a very exclusive sort--to say nothing of the peculiar
+circumstances that were bound to breed seriousness of mind. And you have
+quite a distinguished collection of real ancestors, and intellect
+instead of mere cleverness. It is only once in a while that your--let me
+whisper it--Western frankness and ingenuousness leap out--the
+impulsiveness, the electric passion. When a certain amount of
+readjustment has gone on inside of you and your more natural elements
+work their way up and take possession, I really believe I shall fall in
+love with you, and marry you out of hand--if you remain as beautiful as
+you are to-night."
+
+"All right," said Isabel, pretending to stifle a yawn. "That would be
+interesting. All the clocks are booming something. Let us go out and see
+if the sun is rising."
+
+She wrapped herself in her cloak once more, and they climbed to the
+crest of the hill and watched the sun rise behind the Berkeley mountains
+and bathe San Francisco in trembling fire. It routed what was left of
+the fog, although for a time the walls and waters of the Golden Gate
+looked darker than before, and Tamalpais was a mountain of onyx. In a
+few moments the smoke that wrapped the San Francisco day in a brown
+perpetual haze began to ascend first from the little chimneys and then
+from the great stacks. But until then every steeple, every tower, the
+great piles of stone and brick in the valley, the old gardens full of
+eucalyptus-trees and weeping willows, the strange assortment of
+architectures on Nob Hill, even the rows of houses on the tapering
+half-circle of hills beyond the valley, miles away, stood out as bright
+and sharp and shadowless as if caught and imprisoned in a crystal ball.
+It was the drifting smoke that seemed to bind all together and make the
+city fit for humanity.
+
+Gwynne pointed to a spot far to the southeast, in the valley between
+Market Street--the wide diagonal highway that cut the city in two, and
+ran from the ferries almost to the foot of Twin Peaks--and the high
+mound known as Rincon Hill. "There," he said, "are the hovels and shops
+that cover the block belonging to my mother and myself, and that is to
+make us rich. Half is practically sold, and the proceeds, and the money
+raised on the other half, will erect a building that is to cost some two
+hundred thousand dollars. The insurance rates will be enormous, but even
+so the income should be really a great one. If all goes well, the
+foundations--of reinforced concrete, although they still laugh at
+earthquakes--but Mr. Colton is a monster of caution--will be laid in
+about six weeks, and then I shall watch the steel framework rise with a
+very considerable interest."
+
+"That means the beginnings of a millionaire. Do you really care so much
+to be rich?"
+
+"I know the value of money," said Gwynne, dryly. "I have no intention of
+buying men after the fashion of your friend Tom Colton, but it is a
+mighty good background for personality. Now you had better go in and get
+some beauty sleep."
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+Miss Montgomery called as Isabel and Gwynne were sitting down to
+luncheon at two o'clock. She was not in the best of tempers, for she had
+renewed her youth briefly the night before, her old admirers had shown
+her much gallant attention, and if she had gone home with a song in her
+heart and a flame in her eyes, she had been but the more conscious of
+the wooden spoon upon awakening. She had risen with no very keen regret
+for her vanished claims upon men long since married and consoled, for
+she had never been what is called a marrying girl, but with her mind
+inclined to gloomy meditation upon lost opportunities far more dear. She
+had never ceased to believe that, the fates conspiring, she might have
+become one of the great musicians of the world; for although she was
+willing to admit the defect of will that had reduced her to the ranks,
+she had not grasped the historic fact that the born artist accomplishes
+his fulfilment in spite of all obstacles, imagined or real. Her
+obstacles had been purely sentimental, for her family were commonplace
+selfish people not worth considering, and, her endowment being just
+short of distinguished, a misplaced sense of duty and the stultifying
+influences of her home were responsible for her profession as caterer at
+the age of thirty-six. Her people had belonged to the type that held in
+aristocratic disgust the "woman who did things," "showed herself to the
+public"; moreover, as Isabel had told Gwynne, they worshipped the
+flower-like artistic young creature, and would let neither the world nor
+man have aught of her. She was twenty-eight when her family died, and
+knowing that as a music-teacher she could not hope to compete with
+finished instructors, she had looked ever her other talents and found
+that the only one which promised immediate returns was a certain knack
+for sauces and sweets. All her friends rushed to her assistance, and
+while broiling over a hot stove, stirring jam, wished that dear Anne
+were not so proud and would accept a check without any fuss. But Miss
+Montgomery quickly graduated from this amateur stage. She set herself
+deliberately to work to become a _chef_, and, from offerings to the
+Womans' Exchange, she was soon supplying choice dishes for luncheons,
+and finally entire dinners. She had a warm friend in the then Leader of
+San Francisco Society, and her own cleverness and indomitable
+perseverance did the rest. She sometimes reflected that if she had found
+the iron in her nature sooner she might have been fiddling in Vienna;
+but perhaps her highest gift had really been culinary, perhaps she
+needed the enthusiastic encouragement which she found on all sides when
+she embraced that appealing art; at all events she succeeded, was
+educating a promising orphan relative, and laying by for her old age.
+Another friend, no doubt, was the massive family silver which had
+escaped the wreck. Many of the new people, Mrs. Hofer among others, did
+not care for the responsibility of a luxury so tempting to thieves, and
+for which they had no innate predilection; they were more than willing
+to pay a reasonable sum for ancestral decorations upon state occasions,
+and to dine from artistic plated ware meanwhiles. Not but that there
+was a sufficiency of solid bullion to be seen on many a San Francisco
+table, and there were several golden services in the city; but rich
+people have all sorts of economical kinks, and Miss Montgomery found
+this one profitable. Another thing, no doubt, that had contributed to
+her success, was the business-like attitude she had assumed as soon as
+she felt herself a professional. She accompanied her refections to the
+kitchen door, although the front was always open to her, and
+philosophically pocketed the customary tip.
+
+And she had struggled valiantly against becoming an embittered old maid;
+in the main, had succeeded. To the world, at least, she rarely turned a
+scowl, and she had never lost a friend. But there were times when she
+hated her parents. Since Isabel's return she had had more than one
+rebellious hour, for Isabel had taken her life in both hands, snapped
+her fingers at restraints and small conventions, and, so far, at least,
+had made good. And the younger girl's development, to one that had known
+her always, was extraordinary. On the other hand, she exulted in the
+prospect of a member of the old set coming prominently to the front once
+more. She had spent a week with Isabel at Old Inn, and received a
+certain measure of confidence. She hoped that Isabel would really make a
+fortune, and urged her to follow Gwynne's example and put up a modern
+building on her San Francisco property. Money was easy to raise, for
+change and improvement possessed San Franciscans like an epidemic, and
+few but were not anxious to convert "South of Market Street" into a
+great business district. Although she was grateful to the new people,
+particularly Ada Hofer, who, to use the lady's own expression "made
+things hum," in her heart she disliked the breed, and deeply resented
+the fact that the old set, even those by no means impoverished, to-day
+formed little more than a background. They were to be seen everywhere,
+they were still a power in a way, but they were by no means prosilient.
+Therefore, as she sat in the old dark dining-room on Russian Hill and
+listened to Isabel's praise of the interest that Hofer and his set took
+in the political and artistic regeneration of the city, she was moved to
+break out tartly:
+
+"Are you giving them credit for altruism? They have their millions
+invested here, naturally they crave a reasonable prospect of retaining
+them--also of increasing them by filling Fairmont, and other projected
+caravansaries for the rich, with winter tourists from the East; possibly
+Europe. They not only fear the corporation cormorants--whom they can
+never reach so long as the Board of Supervisors is controlled by the
+Boss--the Boss himself and all his devouring horde, but the greatest
+menace of all: that San Francisco will in time, and before very long, be
+owned body and soul by the labor-unions. Then, even if they managed to
+save their wealth, the city would be intolerable for the socially
+ambitious or even the merely refined."
+
+"You are unfair," said Gwynne; "for these men all have enough to pull
+out and invest elsewhere. They could go to New York and buy a big
+position, as so many of their predecessors have done. Or to London. Of
+course no man ever lived that was wholly disinterested, unless he was a
+fanatic, but it is vastly to the credit of these men that they love
+their own city, stand by it--determined to make it livable, not only for
+themselves, but for future generations; instead of moving away and
+becoming millionaires of leisure."
+
+"Oh yes, I don't deny that they have enthusiasm--the remnant, no doubt,
+of what in their European ancestors was temperament. Americans don't
+have temperament. Or if we have we are far too self-conscious to show
+it. In the East it has been quite eradicated. Out here where gambling is
+still in the blood--and that blood is mixed--where the air is full of
+electricity, and the very ground under your feet none too certain, we
+are a little more primitive; we have an excitability that makes
+strangers find us more like the Latin races of Europe than our relatives
+beyond the Rockies. And although the set you admire does not drink, nor
+live the all-night life, it has its own demands for spice and variety,
+and its own ways of gratifying them. Love of change, love of any sort of
+a fight, is in the blood of your true Californian--particularly here in
+San Francisco, where all the great gambling fevers, from the days of '49
+to the wild speculations in Virginia City stocks in '76, have raged up
+and out. Your friends are merely playing a big game. Successive defeats,
+and the formidable front of the enemy, make it the more stimulating.
+They have that fanatical love of San Francisco that every one out here
+has who doesn't hate it, and they find it more exciting to stay here and
+gamble for big stakes than to watch their wives spend money in New York,
+and console them for snubs. Another point--they are far more
+enterprising than the rich men's sons that preceded this generation--or
+set, rather. They keep on making money, you may have observed. And
+fashions change. New York Society is no longer the Mecca of the worldly
+San Franciscan, and it has also become the fashion to invest huge
+amounts here; in many cases, entire fortunes. These men really could not
+pull out without great loss of income, and they all know how safe it is
+to leave one's interests in other people's hands. In this town, at
+least, no one has ever done that without regretting it."
+
+"If the fashion has changed I dare say it is these men that have changed
+it. I always bow to feminine logic, but nothing you have said so far has
+changed my attitude. Besides, I admire their taste. This is the only
+part of America that has made any appeal to me, and there is no question
+that if they force through the Burnham plans, this city, with its
+wonderful natural advantages, will be as beautiful as ancient Athens.
+Surely you must admit ideality in men that can conceive such an ideal
+and cling to it, no matter how forlorn the hope."
+
+"That's just what I object to. The least imaginative of us realizes that
+nature gave San Francisco a beautiful face and that man has done all he
+could to scar it. But even did these men obtain control--which they
+can't short of lynch law--it would take half a century to remove the old
+city piecemeal. Do you imagine property-owners are going to change their
+natures and sacrifice profitable office buildings and shops for the sake
+of widening streets and making boulevards and parks? Do you realize what
+it would mean in the way of individual sacrifice to build winding roads
+about these hills instead of the improved and perpendicular gullies we
+have to-day? Not even your own would do it. They merely dream and talk,
+although, no doubt, they would make all the changes that promised large
+personal profits. I suspect that the secret of their zeal is the desire
+to deflect the tourist tide from south to north."
+
+Gwynne laughed. He was a stubborn idealist, and having found something
+at last to admire he purposed to hug it. "You belong to the pessimistic
+camp. I discovered that when you honored Old Inn. And I have lived here
+long enough to learn that it is full enough. But you are all different
+from other Americans, and for that reason I find the most discontented
+of you interesting."
+
+But Miss Montgomery suspected that he was quizzing her and would not be
+drawn further. Instead, she proposed a walk, and Gwynne in his turn
+suggested that they go over and look at his property, which he had
+visited once only. Miss Montgomery knew the history of every house old
+and new, and told them many anecdotes as they walked down the steep
+hills or along the cross streets to Kearney, at the base. The new houses
+had fine gardens, the old ones were gloomy with eucalypti, or ragged
+with palms, but everywhere were flowers, even at this season, giving an
+immediate relief to the eye from the long dull perspective. On six days
+out of the seven the streets were torn with wind when they were not
+drenched with rain, and in the dry season the dust was intolerable;
+although San Franciscans vowed it was a part of the picture and missed
+it when abroad. But gay as certain sections of San Francisco was at
+night, its residence districts always had a deserted air, and on Sunday
+nothing could exceed the brown desolation of the shopping streets. From
+a variety of causes San Franciscans were averse from too much
+pedestrianism, and one could walk for blocks and pass nothing but an
+occasional carriage, or the trolley-cars shrieking up and down the
+hills, or emptying themselves into Kearney and Montgomery streets with
+the racket of a besieging army.
+
+But this Christmas Day it was clear and warm, and the wind drifted about
+as if its wings were tired. All the world was on the cable and trolley
+cars, but bound for park and sea, and in the opposite direction from the
+three on their way to the valley south of Market Street. Kearney Street
+would have looked like a necropolis had it not been for several patient
+horses standing with their feet on the pavement, their ears cocked
+towards a saloon, or establishment for "rifle practice"; and even Market
+Street, on week-days barely passable with its trucks, four lines of
+cars, and a mass of humanity, was almost deserted. They walked past the
+Palace Hotel, down Second Street, and by many dingy peeling low-browed
+and entirely hideous shops and flats, with glimpses into unsavory cross
+streets, until they came to the block owned by the Otises since the
+early Fifties. Even in its present condition the rents were
+considerable, and as it was but a stone's-throw from several other new
+office buildings, there was no question that in the course of a few
+years the land value would be doubled, and Gwynne regretted being forced
+to sell a portion of his share in order to be able to erect a building
+large enough to pay. What was left of Hiram Otis's portion, inherited by
+Isabel, stood on the opposite corner, and now yielded only ground rent,
+the old buildings having crumbled on the stock-market. But the land
+could be sold conditionally, and once more Miss Montgomery suggested
+building. Gwynne turned to Isabel with interest.
+
+"Do!" he exclaimed. "Come in with us, and we'll put up a larger
+building. Sell your land and I'll borrow money on one of the ranches,
+and sell out my Consols. Then I can hold on to all this, and we'll none
+of us have so long to wait for large returns."
+
+"I am afraid of fires," said Isabel, dubiously. "The most vivid memories
+of my childhood are standing at my window on the Hill in my night-gown
+and watching whole blocks down here in flames. The wonder is that yours
+have never gone. Now I get my ground rent, no matter what happens." But
+before she had finished speaking she had made a sudden movement towards
+Gwynne. "I will do it," she said. "It will be better--all round."
+
+"Good! And I intend to put on outside shutters of asbestos, so, with
+walls of concrete and steel, and as little wood inside as possible, we
+should weather anything short of subterranean fires."
+
+Then Miss Montgomery took them through South Park, the oval enclosure,
+surrounded by high brown sad-looking houses looking down upon a bit of
+dusty green, and pointed out the long-deserted mansions of the
+Randolphs, the Hathaways, the Hunt McLanes, and of others who had
+dispensed the simple lavish hospitality of the Fifties and Sixties. She
+was intensely proud of the fact that her mother had been born in South
+Park, and pointed with a sigh, not all unconscious affectation, to the
+stiff three-storied house that had come, with so many others, "round the
+Horn" in the Fifties. Beside it, looking like an old man with his arms
+hanging and his jaw fallen, its windows vacant and broken, its paint
+long unrenewed, and cobwebs on the very doorstep, stood the Randolph
+House, the theatre of the most poignant of all an Francisco's initial
+tragedies. Isabel had told Gwynne the story of Nina Randolph, and as
+Anne repeated it he recalled the name of Dudley Thorpe, and remembered
+that he had left the reputation of a good parliamentarian and M. F. H.
+
+They went up to Rincon Hill, once the haughty elder sister of South
+Park, now looking like a lonely island in a dirty sea covered with
+wreckage. There still remained several handsome old ivy-covered
+mansions, and many beautiful as well as picturesquely dilapidated
+gardens. Rincon Hill had contributed two peeresses to England, Lee
+Tarlton and Tiny Montgomery, and Gwynne not only knew them both, but was
+the more interested, as Cecil Maundrell's sudden elevation to the
+earldom of Barnstaple during his active youth had served as an
+object-lesson to himself. Mrs. Montgomery's old home was in good repair,
+but she was in Europe as usual, and Randolph Montgomery, now in the
+diplomatic service--too independent for the machine, he had been driven
+out of politics some years since--preferred the more central comforts of
+a hotel when he visited San Francisco. Two old family servants were
+sunning themselves in the garden. The window-curtains were presumably
+packed in camphor, and the dim panes suggested a cobwebbed and desolate
+interior. Gwynne glanced across the ugly shabby but teeming valley to
+the symbols of stupendous energies concentrated on its edge, and the
+variegated magnificence of the hills, piling like roughly terraced
+cliffs above it; then west to the mountains by the sea, green, unclaimed
+by man as yet, although the dead were thick on the hills just below. It
+was a city struggling out of chaos, but perhaps more interesting than it
+would be a century hence, when it had fulfilled its destiny and become a
+great metropolis of white marble and stone. A century? Nowhere had era
+succeeded era with such startling rapidity, nowhere in one short
+half-century had the genus American passed through so many phases. The
+evidences were all before him. Once again he had the impression of
+standing in the presence of hoary age--ugly premature age--was that the
+secret of the vague suggestion of an unthinkable antiquity that so often
+rose like a ghost in his mind?
+
+The girls announced that they should ride back, and they walked over and
+took a Third Street car. It was almost empty when they entered, but was
+invaded at the next corner by a belated pleasure party bound for the
+Park, a noisy disreputable crowd of flashy men, and girls with bold
+tired eyes, a thick coat of the white paint which has made the fortune
+of the San Francisco chemist, and gaudy cheap attire. Known in the
+vernacular as "chippies," they bore a crude Western resemblance to the
+Parisian grisette, and what they lacked in style they made up in sound.
+They were the class that monopolized boats and trains on Sundays,
+screaming steadily through the tunnels, and returned late, no longer
+happy because no longer able to make a noise. One of the young women
+pointed a finger at Gwynne, screaming, "I choose you!" and plumped
+herself on his lap, to the suppressed delight of Isabel and Miss
+Montgomery. But Gwynne looked blankly at her ill-buttoned back and the
+immense buckle of her belt, while the rest of the party, those that sat
+and those that swung to and fro at the straps, mocked her for choosing
+so unresponsive a knight. The car stopped to accommodate another relay,
+and Gwynne by a deft movement transferred the lady to his own seat, and
+engineered the girls out of the car, before two hoodlums, who were
+working their way up from the lower door, could reach them.
+
+They found a garage and a good automobile, and spent an hour or two out
+on the ocean boulevard. When they returned to town, Miss Montgomery
+alighted at one of the hotels where she was to dine; and, the chauffeur
+announcing that he could not "make another hill," Gwynne and Isabel
+started for home on foot.
+
+The city rose in a succession of hills from the level, and they climbed
+slowly, talking little. Suddenly Gwynne laid his hand on Isabel's arm
+and stopped, directing her gaze upward. They were at the foot of one of
+the narrow almost perpendicular blocks that rose between Pine and
+California streets. On either side were brown old-fashioned houses,
+several of them set back from the street, and surrounded by trees and
+high close fences. It was almost dark, but a moon was due, so the street
+lamps were not lit. Crawling down from the street above, on one side
+only, and clinging to the upper houses, was the advance guard of the
+fog. It had come in stealthily and halted for a moment, taking strange
+shapes. It looked like the ghost of an ancient fog, and the very houses,
+in which not a light had appeared, might have been deserted for a
+century. In a moment it began to crawl down the side of the street,
+seeming to fill the whole city with silence. It was a scene
+indescribably gloomy, haunting, forbidding, and to Gwynne, who had
+studied the city in many lonely rambles, to whisper of the unrelieved
+gloom of lives behind that stage where the most famous of American
+Follies danced for ever in her cap and bells. The spirit of sympathy was
+in the fog and the brief darkness for the thousands of broken dogged men
+and women that rarely caught sight of the cap and bells. For them the
+ashes, the embittered memories, the blasted hopes, a quiet sullen hatred
+for the city that had devoured their hearts and left them automatons.
+This was a phase of the city's life of which the enthusiastic shallow
+tourist had never a hint. It took a man of genius like Gwynne to feel
+the genius of the city in all its sinister variety. He had hardly pieced
+his impressions together as yet, but he told Isabel a little of what his
+subconscious ego had formulated, and she had never liked him so well as
+when she took his arm and they ascended into the sudden downrush of the
+fog.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+Gwynne returned to Lumalitas on the following day and Isabel moved down
+to Mrs. Hofer's. This had seemed a rather superfluous proceeding to Miss
+Otis, but Mrs. Hofer would take no denial, and lodged her guest in a
+suite the luxury of which at first delighted and then stifled her. She
+liked splendor and luxury in the abstract, but some lingering shade of
+Puritanism in her resented the enthralment of the higher faculties. Her
+rooms were upholstered with satin from floor to ceiling, the
+toilet-table was bedecked with gold, and the furniture had been made for
+some favorite of Napoleon during the First Empire. Isabel was haunted by
+a vague sense of impropriety, which she ridiculed but could not stifle.
+
+And for the first time in her life she became weary of flowers. When she
+arrived there was an abundance of the more costly in her boudoir--those
+that were raised in hot-houses that the rich might not be balked in
+their laudable desire to spend--and before the week was over, her rooms,
+as she wrote to Gwynne--chuckling on his veranda--looked like a
+florist's shop and smelt like a funeral. Everybody she met, and several
+that she did not, sent her the floral tribute. The bell rang every hour.
+When the imperturbable footman finally appeared with a box that looked
+like a child's coffin, Isabel told him pettishly to throw it into the
+back yard. All Americans send flowers to a pretty girl as a matter of
+course, but the San Franciscan indulges in an avalanche where his more
+economical Eastern brother is content with good measure, pressed down,
+but not running over.
+
+But the offerings were by no means confined to the young men that Isabel
+met at the functions of the week. "Old friends of the family" were
+interested to welcome to their midst the beautiful daughter (albeit
+somewhat eccentric) of Jim Otis and Mary Belmont. Enthusiastic maidens,
+and others--anxious to proclaim their delight in this sudden invasion of
+their preserves--sent roses with stems four feet long and chrysanthemums
+that looked like painted cauliflowers. After a tea at the Presidio,
+given in the open square, and in honor of the descendant of its most
+historic Commandante, Don José Argüello, that reclaimed precinct being
+singularly prolific in flowers, the offerings arrived on the following
+day in an ambulance.
+
+It was an energetic week. When Mrs. Hofer was not herself entertaining,
+she and her guest lunched and dined out daily, attended several teas
+every afternoon, a _cotillon_, a skating masque, and five balls. Two of
+the luncheons were at Burlingame and Menlo Park, whence they motored as
+valiantly as if the roads were European. How so much was crowded into
+one short week Isabel never understood, but finally came to the
+conclusion that the rush at its worst was better than remaining for two
+consecutive waking hours in the Hofer mansion. Mrs. Hofer was always
+amiable and charming, but she was overwhelming. Her energies demanded
+the safety-valve of constant speech, and she was one of those American
+hostesses that hold that to neglect a guest is an unpardonable breach of
+hospitality. She even gave up bridge for the week. Moreover, Isabel was
+not long discovering that she contributed her part towards the
+sustenance of that wondrous buoyancy, those eternal high spirits, that
+glorious _joie de vivre_. The woman was an unconscious vampire. Men did
+not feel it, and saw only her irresistible youth, but she squeezed women
+as she did her morning sponge, and had no real intimates; although few,
+herself least of all, understood the secret. If she had liked Isabel
+less, it would have been more endurable, but she had never liked any one
+more, to say nothing of the fact that she was determined to give her
+"the time of her life." She descended upon her helpless guest with a
+rush of silken skirts--that sounded like wings--and a torrent of bright
+chatter, during every unoccupied hour or moment. Isabel's only
+experience of hospitality heretofore had been in England, where a guest
+might die and be resurrected between the formal hours of reunion and the
+hostess be none the wiser. It had never occurred to her that visiting
+might become hard labor, and as she had met few people whom she had
+liked as spontaneously as Ada Hofer, she had come to her without a
+misgiving. But she was soon hiding behind the curtains of the big rooms
+down-stairs, and, upon one memorable occasion, took refuge under the
+library table, while the sweet rapid voice of the hostess clarioned
+throughout the house. She was drawn guiltily forth by a deep chuckle
+from the arm-chair in the window. Mr. Toole regarded her with a twinkle
+in his bright old eyes, and no resentment.
+
+"I won't tell on ye," he said. "I feel like it meself, at times. Ada's a
+good child, as good as a born egoist can be, but--well--we are not all
+made on the same plan. And this life don't suit you. You're a dreamer. I
+know one when I see one, for I've that side to meself, and now that
+life is easy it's most the only side I've got left. Sit down in that
+corner behind the bookcase and I'll read to you from one of the old
+poets, Byron, belike. If Ada finds us, I'll send her kiting. She didn't
+bring me up."
+
+When Isabel, in the solitude of her bed, found time to think, she
+concluded that if she could eliminate all men from her week except Mr.
+Hofer and those of his particular set, she might still enjoy herself.
+The San Francisco society youth has always been a failure. Except in
+rare instances he has not been outside his native State, has read
+nothing, and is casual of manner. Although more young men of the favored
+class attend the home universities than formerly, the students that
+derive the full benefit of these institutions are rarely those that
+intend to make a business of dancing, and calling on Sunday afternoons.
+It is yet too soon to weld cultivation with leisure, and, for the matter
+of that, most of the society youth have their living to make, combining
+business and fashion with a moderate success. Like Wellington's puppies,
+they have proved themselves of sound metal when put to the crucial test,
+but as an intellectual diversion they might as well be mechanical toys.
+The leader has not yet arisen that can permanently combine the older and
+younger sets. They mingle at great functions, but the dancing set
+monopolizes the season's stage.
+
+Of this set Mrs. Hofer was an enthusiastic member, and even at dinner
+rarely entertained any other. Occasionally, and once during Isabel's
+visit, she invited some friends of her husband, who never went to
+parties, and often entertained when his wife was elsewhere; but these
+men did as much talking as listening, and that was no part of Mrs.
+Hofer's system. Isabel had flashing vistas of small groups of men and
+women, distinguished socially as well as mentally, that entertained each
+other, or met at a new club through which Mrs. Hofer whisked her one
+night,--a club where the best of Bohemia met the more intellectual
+members of society; and she knew that in these groups she might find
+also the higher class business and professional men, and a few of
+leisure that enjoyed life without either dancing or drinking. But Mrs.
+Hofer, although far too well satisfied with life and herself to be a
+snob, loved brilliancy, splendor, constant excitement, dancing, chatter;
+and only her chosen set could provide the banquet. She could dance every
+night from ten until two, and awaken in mid-morning as fresh as a rose.
+She had the wardrobe of the storied princess, and her guests and friends
+must contribute their share to the brilliancy of all gatherings. She
+detested shabbiness; it was the only thing that depressed her spirits.
+Proud as she was of her husband, his aims, and his position in the
+community, his friends and their themes frankly bored her. She liked
+talk, not conversation. She really loved him, however, and was far too
+clever to let him feel neglected. He was inordinately proud of her, and
+grateful that she permitted him to give his time to his own interests,
+instead of dragging him about to groan against the wall. She had her
+little crosses and disappointments, for she had many servants and
+dressmakers; but, on the whole, Isabel had never seen any one so
+persistently happy, nor with more reason. Even her three children were
+as sturdy as young calves, and although they yelled like demons for an
+hour every morning--reawaking to the sense of a vague something life
+still denied them, and infuriated at the thought--Mrs. Hofer merely
+turned over on her pillow with an indulgent smile. It never occurred to
+her that the rest of the household might be less indulgent; and the
+nursery above Isabel's room was not the least of the causes that
+contributed to a frantic longing for the thirty-first of December.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+But it was not until four o'clock on the day of release that she found
+herself actually alone in her chilly and chaste boudoir on the higher
+hill; Mrs. Hofer escorted her home and remained for many last words.
+Then Isabel fell into a chair before the mounting fire and shut her
+eyes. Lady Victoria was out. Gwynne was not expected until the evening
+train. She wished that she had not promised to dine with the Stones at
+seven. The house was as silent as a tomb; but while she was still
+rejoicing in the sudden cessation of sound and motion, the door opened
+and Gwynne entered. She gave him a surly nod, and he explained that he
+had come down in the morning, in order to be at hand to welcome her; had
+even meditated going to her rescue. Isabel deigned no reply, and he took
+possession of a deep chair, settled himself on his backbone, and
+regarded her attentively.
+
+"I am sorry you have not enjoyed your week as much as I have done," he
+observed. "The weather has been magnificent, and I have spent all the
+days out-of-doors, riding, walking, duck-shooting--taking liberties with
+your boat, and even your launch. I never enjoyed myself more--after such
+close study, and all the rest of it, I suppose. I must say you don't
+look very fit. You are pale instead of white, and--well--cross. Judging
+from those models of literary elegance and Christian charity, the San
+Francisco weekly society sheets--with which I whiled away that infernal
+train journey--you have been fêted like visiting royalty, photographed
+by the foremost in his art--which would appear to be the equivalent of
+painted for the Academy--and your family history seems to have been
+written up from old files, with even more picturesqueness than
+accuracy--"
+
+"I wish you would keep still. You didn't talk half so much in England. I
+shall hate you if you become wholly American."
+
+"I am a born egotist. Ask my mother. Or my long-suffering friends and
+constituents. You did all the talking at Capheaton--or gave me a wide
+berth. But here my mother neither talks nor listens--" He paused
+suddenly and lowered his voice. "Is anything the matter with my mother,
+do you think? I never saw any one so changed. Do you suppose she hates
+California and is staying here only on my account?--I have offered more
+than once to pay her bills; and she is used to them, anyway. For
+heaven's sake persuade her to go back and enjoy herself in her own
+fashion. I really don't need her--haven't time. And in spite of your
+liberal thorns and maddening incomprehensibilities, you can always put
+homesickness to flight. Sometimes I think she is ill, and then again she
+looks as fit as ever."
+
+"She has developed nerves. All women get them sometime or other. And
+there is a certain order of women with whom beauty and fascination are a
+vocation. When those pass they hate life."
+
+"What rot. No doubt she's a bit off her feed and restless. Probably the
+climate doesn't suit her. Heaven knows it is nervous enough. But I don't
+pretend to understand women. What's up with you? Didn't you enjoy being
+a belle, after all?"
+
+"I was not a belle. I was a distinct failure."
+
+"What?" Gwynne sat up and forward. "If you want to psychologize, fire
+away. It always interests me."
+
+"I have no intention of psychologizing. I haven't had time to think. But
+I do know that a life lived all on the surface--and at lightning
+speed--doesn't suit me a bit." She gave him a rapid sketch of her week.
+"I was with them, but not of them; no doubt of that. Old Mr. Toole told
+me one day that I was a dreamer, and I am afraid that is the solution. I
+like to imagine myself doing things, but I don't like actually doing
+them. I found that out over and over again in Europe. I can't tell you
+how I have longed for a girl's good time here in San Francisco--denied
+all these years, and my birthright. I was bored everywhere. I cannot
+make talk; I can only talk spontaneously when I am interested. I
+couldn't even enjoy the dancing--for the prospect of entertaining those
+brats between times. And they were all afraid of me. I never could be a
+belle like either the old ones or the new ones; the fault lies wholly in
+myself, not in circumstances or materials. _I don't really want it._ No
+girl can be a social success unless she cares tremendously for it.
+Merely pretty girls are often popular, simply because popularity is the
+breath of life to them. I wouldn't try it again for anything on earth. I
+long to be at home watching the marsh, and not a soul to talk to. That
+was all I was made for. A dreamer! I am terribly disappointed."
+
+"But Society is a mere phase. So is Stone's Bohemia. The town is full of
+clever people. You can select and form your own set--when you are
+ready."
+
+"I am afraid I don't care about it. I dislike the actual effort. So long
+as Mr. Hofer and those men are talking I am interested, but even so I
+have enjoyed--far more--thinking about and planning to know them. I am
+nothing but a dreamer."
+
+"And you have just discovered that?" asked Gwynne, curiously. "I may not
+have made an exhaustive study of woman, but up to a certain point I know
+you; and I have not waited for Father O'Toole to enlighten me. I could
+have told you that you would hate all this sort of thing. You had a mere
+taste of it in English country-houses, where entertaining has reached
+such a point of perfection that a man never feels so much at home as
+when in some one's else house. If you had waited for a London season you
+would have been as quickly disillusioned. You have the most impossible
+ideals--"
+
+"I can realize them when I am alone," said Isabel, defiantly. "I shall
+be as happy as ever on the ranch, the day after to-morrow."
+
+"That sort of happiness will do very well for a while--living in your
+imagination and all that. But what is it going to lead to?"
+
+"Lead to? It is enough in itself."
+
+"You can't live on moonshine for ever. I told you before that I
+understood your particular form of idealism; but although I believe that
+man will certainly be happier when he lives more within that structure
+of infinite variety, himself, less and less dependent upon the
+aggregations Life has devised for amusing and tormenting him, still we
+must reach that condition by very slow degrees; if we take it with a
+leap the result will be an ugly and disastrous selfishness. If you can
+prove to the world that you have found happiness in the cultivation of
+the higher faculties, you will serve a purpose in life, for you will
+encourage a certain class of women born with such serious lacks, in the
+health or the affections, or even in the power to endure the mere
+monotonies of married life, that they are better off alone; but who
+often feel themselves a failure and drop into morbidity and decay. That
+means contact for your highness, however. If you sit down by your marsh
+for the rest of your life and dream, you miss the whole point. And when
+time forced you to realize the uncompromising selfishness of such a
+life--where would your happiness be then?"
+
+"Now you are talking by the book. Why are we so sure that it is a part
+of our duty to make others happy? That may be but one more superstition
+to rout. If we manage to be happy ourselves, and through the exercise of
+the higher faculties alone, we may be serving an end decreed from the
+beginning; by some subtle process, as incomprehensible as even the
+commonplaces of life, add to the sum of happiness, and so serve life far
+better than by scattering ourselves all over the surface. But I told you
+something of this before and have not forgotten the result."
+
+"Neither have I, but one can get accustomed to any idea. What I want to
+know is--do you leave youth entirely out of your calculations?"
+
+"Oh--youth! Well--it is possible I might not if I had not lived through
+its tragedy already--for which I am thankful."
+
+"You have had romance and tragedy, and you are a very experienced young
+woman, but you have not had happiness," said Gwynne, shrewdly. "That,
+too, is a birthright, and sooner or later you will demand it. Social
+conquests have palled in seven days. In time chickens also will cease to
+satisfy, and books, and dreams, and sunsets, and liberty. The peculiar
+conditions and events of your first quarter-century demanded an interval
+before beginning again; and filled with all you have deliberately
+chosen--all, that is, but chickens, which are a work not of God but of
+supererogation. But intervals come to an end like other things. When
+this finishes you will suddenly demand happiness--the real thing."
+
+"You mean that I will fall in love again, I suppose."
+
+"I mean that you will love."
+
+"Now you are hair-splitting. Are you qualifying to contribute
+fictionized essays to the American magazines?"
+
+"I am stating facts and don't care a hang about sarcasm. Just now you
+have spasms when some aspect of nature exalts you. I have watched you
+with considerable amusement. But it is natural enough--merely a sort of
+forerunner of what will happen when nature establishes her currents with
+your own interior landscapes. Then there will be earthquakes and
+hurricanes--your cultivated realism and inherent romanticism will become
+hopelessly mixed, and you will be really happy."
+
+"More likely, such moments are the forerunners of a state which shall be
+an eternal exaltation. Personal immortality is only to be desired if it
+insures the lifting of our faculties to their highest power of
+expression. Anything else would mean a boundless ennui. As for my
+present inertia, is it not the duty of some few to pass their lives in
+appreciation of the past? Heaven knows there are enough looking out for
+the present. And I am sick of the superstition that love is all. I told
+you before that the happiness of women, at least, depended upon
+relegating it to its proper place. Once I regretted that Prestage did
+not die while I still believed in him, so that I could have lived my
+life with his memory, as Concha Argüello did with Rezánov's. But even
+that would have been a species of slavery, and I should have chafed at
+the bond; never had this divine sense of freedom."
+
+"I pass over the majority of your arguments--I must sleep on them. But
+when have I maintained that love was all? If that were my doctrine
+should I be reading my head off, investing in Class A buildings, talking
+politics to farmers, and revolving plans for the conquest of California?
+I should be making love to you. That is what I should like to do,
+however, and what I propose to do when I am ready."
+
+"Are you in love with me?"
+
+"I hardly know, but I suspect that I shall be. If I deliberately choose
+you now as my life partner, you cannot complain that I am the mere slave
+of passion. I don't fancy I look it at this moment. I have had those
+fevers, and am willing to admit their brevity. No doubt if I had not
+been so occupied of late I should have had another. As it is, I am
+blessedly permitted to foresee it; and to keep my brain clear enough
+meanwhile to think for both of us."
+
+"Very cousinly, but I can think for myself."
+
+She had risen, but he stood with his back against the door for a moment.
+
+"Another thing--" he said. "You need a buffer. You have remarkable
+powers, and you might realize some of your dreams if the prospect of
+initiatives did not alarm your secretly feminine soul. The two of us
+together could conquer the world. Now go ahead and dream until dreams
+pall and I have more time."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+"Ibsen will live, not as a dramaturgist, but as the greatest professor
+of dramaturgy the world has ever known." "Only one way left to be
+original--never write about Italy." "When we say that a man is a high
+type what we really mean is that he is the great exception to the type."
+"That progressive type of bore--the man with a grievance." "San
+Francisco is the cradle and the grave of more genius than ever was
+packed into any city, ancient or modern. It is like our money, 'easy
+come, easy go.'" "And more Hell." "An epigram is only to be forgiven
+when a memorable thought is packed into a phrase that sticks."
+
+As Isabel and Gwynne escaped from the little Italian restaurant into the
+blare and glare of the street, their heads were ringing with much
+brilliant if somewhat affected talk. They had sat with their hosts at
+the "newspaper table." It was the fashion at the moment to express life
+in paradoxes, and with a nice adjustment of commas and colons. There had
+been no talk of politics in this Bohemia, nor of society; nor yet of
+other subjects that commanded its attention when the long day gave place
+to the shorter night: the women present were respectable, many of them
+wives, and not a few went into society when they chose. There was much
+talk of the fads with which the world was ridden, never a reference to
+the literature or art of the past; and there was something almost
+pathetic in the prostration of these brilliant young men, who had never
+crossed the boundaries of their State, to European groups, some of whose
+members were already passé, but still loomed gigantic from the far edge
+of the Pacific. Few American writers are popular in California, however
+they may be read; and the reason, no doubt, lies in the mixed blood to
+which all Europe has contributed, and which is full of affinities little
+experienced by the rest of the country. Even the famous cooking is
+un-American. The French, Italian, and Spanish restaurants are exactly
+what they claim to be; their very atmosphere might have been imported.
+The many that prefer restaurant life even to the excellent cooking to be
+found in the average home, give their highest preference to the legacy
+of the Spaniard; they eat hot sauces and Chile peppers with every dish;
+and _tamales_ are sold on the street corners. This is enough to make the
+San Franciscan an exotic, and it contributes in a great measure to his
+fatal content. These young men had no real knowledge of the world, but
+they had their own world, and were by no means provincial in the
+accepted sense. But the majority were satisfied to coruscate to an ever
+applauding audience--for a few years; with money easily got and
+delightfully spent; to regard Life as a game, not as a business.
+Afterwards the rut, the friendly pocket--nowhere so open as in San
+Francisco--a job now and then, more than one way of forgetting that in
+times gone by a fellow was one of those "coming men" the wanton heedless
+city turns out with the same profusion that gorges her markets and
+flaunts her sun for eight months of the year.
+
+To Gwynne they seemed like some primitive race flourishing before its
+time. He no longer argued with them, for he had the disadvantage of
+being a scholar, and it interfered with his tolerance of fads on the
+rampage; but they saddened him, made him feel almost elderly--and
+abominably healthy. To-night, although some of the complexions of these
+young men were green, and others red, they had been brilliant without
+undue hilarity. They intended to get very drunk later on--if only as a
+compliment to the New Year--but they were far too accomplished for
+precipitancy. Stone, alone, refilled his glass so often that Gwynne
+announced abruptly that they were missing the fun in the street, and
+Paula promptly took possession of his arm. Stone followed, rumbling
+disapproval, with Isabel. This arrangement was not to Gwynne's taste,
+but he had developed subtlety in such matters and bided his time.
+
+Kearney Street from Telegraph Hill to Market Street, a mile or more, was
+a blaze of light, and crowded with people. It was a very orderly throng,
+for it was composed of the respectable element of the city, and if they
+had laid dignity aside for the moment, they were not distractingly
+noisy. All were throwing confetti, and many had tin horns. Isabel saw
+the Hofers, arm in arm, tooting vigorously. Half of society was there;
+and many staid and strenuous business men were promenading with their
+wives and daughters, more than one with his neck encircled by paper
+ribbons of many hues. The street-cars had stopped, but there were a
+number of automobiles filled with masques, singling out their friends on
+the pavement and hurling confetti.
+
+But it was not until Stone and his party reached the great central
+highway, Market Street, that the scene was characteristic. Here the
+windows of the Palace Hotel, and all the other buildings, great and
+small, were illuminated and filled with people. And the entire city
+would seem to have emptied itself not only into Market Street, but into
+those streets on the north side that completed the "all-night district."
+The people in the windows wore their gayest attire, and there was often
+music as well as light behind them. They threw down confetti by the
+bushel on the masses below. And the masses! There was no polite
+restraint here. Largely recruited from the immense South of Market
+Street district, they were out for a good time, and its inevitable
+expression was noise. They were in the best of tempers, but the din was
+terrific. They hooted and yelled, and every one of the several thousand
+had a tin horn and blew it with all his might. Every undefended ear was
+victimized. Isabel pressed one of her own against Stone's shoulder and
+covered the other with her hand. But she stared at the crowd with all
+the interest of the secluded for the mass. There were painted ladies of
+all grades, and hundreds of shop-girls, covered with white paint or
+lavender powder, their figures exaggerated with the corset of the
+moment, and violent plumage on head and waist, although they had
+prudently left their best skirts at home. Many of them were
+astonishingly pretty, and no doubt more respectable than they looked.
+Mrs. Paula was in her element. She wore her red hat and blouse, waved
+her hands to the windows, exulted in the showers of confetti that
+descended in response, and shouted into Gwynne's ear that she was
+singled out for special attentions. In truth she received more than her
+escort relished. Her natural affinity with the class above which she had
+risen so high had never been more patent, and kindred spirits looked
+from many approving eyes. Suddenly both cheeks were painted black by a
+too fraternal hand, and then a man tried to kiss her. This was more than
+even Paula could stand, and she flung herself into her husband's arms,
+daubing his shirt with black and red. He dropped Isabel and struck out
+furiously. There was an immediate scuffle, during which Gwynne basely
+drew Isabel's arm through his and pressed forward into the thick of the
+crowd.
+
+"We have had enough of them, and no doubt they have had of us," he said,
+comfortably. "Now we will enjoy ourselves."
+
+"Well, if they blacken my face don't notice them. One would think Lyster
+would know how to play the game by this time."
+
+"He is always ready to fight after the fifth glass of champagne. I have
+had lively experiences with him."
+
+Conversation was impossible in the din. Isabel's face was smudged more
+than once, but no other liberty was attempted. Gwynne also looked like a
+chimney-sweep, and was addressed as "darling" several times, but the
+crowd was inoffensive until a chain-gang of hoodlums dashed irresistibly
+through it, pushing many off the sidewalk, and rousing a lurid
+accompaniment. One man, solid and stolid, stood his ground on the edge
+of the chain and administered a hearty kick upon each ankle as it
+passed. There were angry howls in response, but none could retaliate
+without breaking the chain, nor indeed could they control its momentum.
+
+"That is one of those things one would like to have thought of one's
+self," said Gwynne, admiringly, rubbing his ribs, for he had hastily
+swung Isabel outward, and received much of the impact. "We might as
+well get out of this."
+
+They slowly made their way into one of the cross streets that seemed to
+leap like a blazing meteor down from the darkness of the heights. But
+the crowd was still as dense, and the street but a third the width of
+Market Street. Not even an automobile attempted to force its way. Saloon
+doors were swinging. Policemen stood in front of them, but there was no
+further disorder. Gwynne and Isabel pressed back against the wall of a
+shop and watched and waited. They were to celebrate the birth of the New
+Year with the Hofers at a restaurant on the block above, but there was
+no prospect of reaching it at present.
+
+The sky was cloudless. If the evening chill had come in from the
+Pacific, it was routed by the mass of humanity and the downpour of heat
+from the electric lights. All the great signs were blazing, many in
+colors. And there was music in all the saloons and restaurants; it rose
+and fell with the noise of the tin horn and the hoot of the happy. The
+people in the windows here threw down not only confetti but flowers, and
+stacks at each elbow added to the mass of color. Even the men had tied
+bright silk handkerchiefs about their necks, and they were bestrewed
+with bits of gold and silver paper, and festooned with colored ribbon.
+Gwynne and Isabel were quickly singled out and pelted with balls that
+opened with the impact and tangled them together with the endless paper
+streamers.
+
+It was eleven o'clock before the crowd began its retreat to their
+restaurants, and Gwynne and Isabel were able to make their way up to the
+celebrated resort where the Hofers awaited them. They were shown to a
+dressing-room where they could wash their faces, and then to the gallery
+above the body of the restaurant which was divided into boxes, and
+occupied by all sorts and kinds of people, including many of their
+friends. In Hofer's box was a large bottle on ice and a table set for
+supper. Mrs. Hofer, looking less approving than earlier in the evening,
+sat half-hidden by a curtain, but her husband, in common with most of
+the other people in the gallery, was throwing confetti upon his friends
+below. He seized Gwynne and dragged him to the front of the box, and the
+new arrival was greeted by shouts from every man, it seemed to him, that
+he had met in San Francisco. The large hall with its tables of all sizes
+was as densely packed as the streets had been.
+
+"Ever see anything like this before?" demanded Hofer. He paused with a
+gasp and dislodged a ball of confetti from his throat. "Look with all
+your eyes, old man. There are the best and the worst--all who can pay
+the price: the reformers cheek by jowl with the mayor and the Boss, by
+Jove! The matron and the other kind of matron, the fair young girl who
+hopes to buy a rich husband, and the sort that has to give more and take
+less; the family man and his family, not a bit afraid of contamination,
+enjoying himself to the limit; financiers, millionaires, corporation
+bosses and curb-stone brokers, newspaper men, artists, politicians big
+and little, society youths and girls severely chaperoned. See that crowd
+with the queens of the Tenderloin? Ever hear what one of our local wits
+said about them: 'Pity the worst of men should be named for the best of
+fish!'"
+
+Hofer, who felt it his duty as a good citizen to empty his bottle with
+the rest of the world on New Year's eve, rattled on. Mrs. Hofer gave an
+occasional warning cough. Like most San Francisco women of her class
+there was a good deal of prudery under her gayety, and no instinct
+whatever for Bohemia. She had come to the restaurant because her husband
+had urged it, but she took no part, and threw only an occasional glance
+at the floor. But as Isabel was manifestly interested, she presented her
+arm and hat to the gaze of the crowd, that her guest might partake in
+the doubtful fun if she wished.
+
+Isabel and Gwynne, still tangled in the paper streamers and vigorously
+pelted from below, leaned eagerly over the railing and flung handsful of
+gold and silver bits upon the already glittering throng. It certainly
+was an astonishing sight. There was little seeking after
+inconspicuousness, even in the boxes. All were there to celebrate the
+birth of the New Year, and to "play the game," however chastened they
+might feel on the morrow. All were drinking champagne and growing more
+hilarious every moment. One girl modestly dressed, and known to Mrs.
+Hofer as an entirely respectable young person, although not of her own
+class, was sitting on the knee of the man she was to marry, and drinking
+from his glass. The ladies of the lower ten thousand were nicely graded.
+Some were dressed with a severe and simple elegance, and painted as
+delicately as a miniature. These were very quiet, the carven smile on
+their crimson lips not disturbing the careful arrangement of their
+features; and their eyes never lost their jewel-like immobility. They
+were attended by what is vaguely known as "men about town," men with
+money to spend and no position to lose. It was no longer the fashion
+among conspicuous men to flaunt their mistresses, but these indefinite
+persons kept the old traditions alive. Still other women blazed with
+paint and jewels and excessive richness of attire. In attendance were
+the big sleek brutes, whom all other men held in contempt. But all were
+happy to-night and asking no man for his respect.
+
+At a table in the very middle of the room was a young, buxom, and very
+naughty-looking damsel, who evidently was a belle: the circle of black
+coats about her round table was unbroken save by herself. What dress she
+wore was black, and on her golden head was an immense black hat covered
+with feathers. Her abundant diamonds were almost overwhelmed. Every time
+one of her escort raised his glass to his lips he toasted her, and she
+rose to respond, presumably to give the company the benefit of the tiny
+waist that tapered off the white acre above. She was irreverently
+hooted, but imperturbably rose and fell like a jack-in-the-box.
+
+Hofer finally sat down to supper with his guests, but they had barely
+finished when every clock in town began to boom the midnight hour and
+there was a wild ringing of bells all over the city. Down-stairs one of
+the young men ran to the orchestra, whirled the leader from his seat,
+flung off his own coat, and led the crashing music with a tin horn.
+Hofer and Gwynne went to the front of the box, glasses in hand. All
+below had sprung to their feet and were waving and clicking their
+champagne-glasses, singing, catcalling, tooting, cheering. Even Isabel
+and Mrs. Hofer leaned forward. In the turmoil they did not notice that
+the young woman in the centre of the room was standing on her table, her
+befeathered head flung back, draining her glass; but they turned just in
+time to see one of her admirers rifle her bodice and wag his trove at
+the company.
+
+"This is too much!" cried Mrs. Hofer, furiously, and running to the
+back of the box. "Nicolas, I insist!" But Nicolas was enjoying himself
+immensely and paid no attention.
+
+Isabel had been about to follow Mrs. Hofer when she lost her breath and
+nearly fell over the edge of the box. Lady Victoria, accompanied by a
+man who was unmistakably a pugilist, had entered by a side door.
+
+Isabel's brain seemed to eliminate every thought it had ever possessed
+and hurriedly to remodel down to one agonizing point. The pair were
+endeavoring to force their way forward to a table that evidently had
+been reserved for them. Gwynne was leaning over the railing drinking to
+Mr. and Mrs. Trennahan. In a moment his interested eyes would rove over
+the crowd again. Isabel suddenly fell on him, bearing him backward.
+
+"Take me out--quick!" she gasped. "I am horribly ill!"
+
+Gwynne, grasping his hat, was fairly borne out of the box. As Isabel was
+ghastly and trembling he assumed that she was really ill, and made no
+protest, but half-carried her down the stair. They attracted no
+attention and reached the sidewalk in a moment.
+
+"If we can only find a carriage!" he said, solicitously. "You never can
+walk up those hills. What an atmosphere that was! I don't wonder you
+came a cropper. I hope the Hofers won't mind--"
+
+"Nobody minds anything."
+
+She took his arm and they walked up the street. The bells were still
+ringing, horns tooting, but the street was comparatively empty. At the
+corner a Salvation Army corps was singing hymns to a flabby and penitent
+congregation. Just beyond was a row of hacks awaiting the weary
+reveller, and in a moment Gwynne and Isabel were driving rapidly along a
+dark and deserted street.
+
+"Do you feel better?" he asked.
+
+She did not answer for a moment, afraid of breaking down. Gwynne was
+sure to offer prompt consolation, and even if he assumed the brotherly
+attitude, she had no wish to be taken in his arms. In spite of herself
+his calm reiteration that he intended to marry her had forced its seed
+into her brain, for ideas projected from bold determined minds are
+insistent things. But never had love and all connected with it been so
+hateful to her as at this moment. He peered into her face.
+
+"You are not going to cry!" he exclaimed. "You!"
+
+"No, I am not! But I never was so nearly overcome. Such noise! Such
+sights! Such heat! It was too bad to take you away, though. Shall you go
+back?"
+
+"Not I! May I smoke? We shall be an hour reaching the base of our cliff
+at this rate. He is apparently going out to the cemeteries under
+pretence of avoiding the hills."
+
+He elevated his feet to the opposite seat and lit a cigarette.
+
+"I wish my mother had come home before we left. It was a pity for her to
+miss this. Even if she would not dine with us, I could have returned for
+her."
+
+"I saw her in the crowd with a party of people. I might have told you,
+but my mind has been in as many pieces to-night as a bag full of
+confetti. I am sure she has seen it all."
+
+"Good. It was what you might call a trifle variegated, but not to be
+missed. Great old town, this! No wonder they think California is the
+world, out here. It is what they say of the London flats:
+'self-contained.' I like Hofer better than ever. The man whom champagne
+transforms into a big silly boy is the right sort. Is there really a
+workaday world, a city to reform, and two ranches up the valley?"
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+They reached home sooner than might have been expected, but there were
+many fares below, and the hackman galloped down the hill as recklessly
+as if a slip would not have been the death of himself and his valiant
+beasts.
+
+Isabel went directly to her room and persuaded Gwynne to go to his,
+arguing that some one of his mother's party would be sure to bring her
+home. As he was to take the 7:30 train he made no protest. Even were he
+still awake when Lady Victoria returned, the fog was rolling in; nor was
+he likely to be leaning from his window.
+
+Isabel heard her come in two hours later, and it was another hour before
+she slept. She had determined to ask her wayward but still awesome
+relative to leave San Francisco before her son found her out or she had
+time more fully to disgrace him. But how to approach the most
+unapproachable woman she had ever known with so delicate a proposition
+was a question that made her toss about her ancestral bed and kept the
+blood in her brain. She recalled the slip of paper announcing a
+prize-fight, and wondered at her stupidity; for she had heard something
+of the resources of blasée women ere this.
+
+Finally she fell asleep. She was awakened by a sharp earthquake--grim
+herald of the coming year! She was too well seasoned to have felt
+anything more than a passing annoyance, had she not heard Lady Victoria
+give a piercing scream and run from her room. Whereupon she rejoiced
+wickedly, flung a wrapper across her shoulders, and went into the hall.
+Gwynne was standing in his doorway, looking more asleep than awake, and
+intensely disapproving. Lady Victoria was leaning against the wall, her
+eyes wide with terror. Isabel took her firmly by the arm, marched her
+into her room, helped her into a dressing-gown, and, pushing her into a
+chair, took one opposite.
+
+"How dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Victoria. "I had forgotten about
+earthquakes--"
+
+"Earthquake!" said Isabel, contemptuously. "That was a mere vibration.
+We had sixty-two of those last winter. If you only stay long enough we
+will show you what California really can do. Every ten years or so we
+have a good hard shake--enough to bring the plaster down; and every
+half-century or so she gets up and turns over. I have made a specialty
+of earthquakes, and could tell you extraordinary tales of some of the
+great ones of the south--"
+
+"Please do not. I prefer to forget. But don't leave me. Fancy Angélique
+sleeping through such a thing!"
+
+"Doubtless she is not in the house. All the world was out last night."
+
+"Was it?"
+
+"I think this as good a time as any other to tell you, Cousin Victoria,
+that I saw you last night--just as the clocks were striking twelve."
+
+"Did you?"
+
+Her trained features did not betray her, but Isabel saw the figure under
+the loose gown grow rigid and brace itself against the back of the
+chair. And as Isabel stared at her, with the desperate courage born of
+the sudden plunge, it seemed to her that she felt a vibration from the
+nausea, the disgust, the hatred of life, the death-rattle of great
+passions dying hard. She wondered again, if, given the same conditions,
+she would have differed much from the woman she had brought to bay. Her
+early trials and provincial upbringing had developed her Puritan
+inheritance, but she had had flashing and startling glimpses of her
+depths now and again. For a moment she felt the waters of an immemorial
+ennui rise high in her own soul, then drop to the grinning skulls and
+sparkless ashes of old pleasures. She shuddered back, and raised her
+eyes once more to the haughty mask opposite.
+
+"I think I understand," she said, gently. "But you must go. I kept him
+from seeing you to-night. But he would find out in time. As you know how
+he believes in you, you can imagine the consequences. I suppose you have
+not done anything so public before, or I should have heard of it. I
+vaguely recall that women can look on at prize-fights from private
+boxes. Last night, it isn't likely that any one noticed. Or if they did
+they would question the evidence of their senses in the morning, the
+best of them. So please go."
+
+She paused. Lady Victoria stared at her without the slightest change of
+expression. Isabel continued imperturbably. "London is so vast--if you
+must have that sort of liberty, for heaven's sake go where it is most
+likely to be overlooked--and where libel laws are operative. For all its
+license, San Francisco is one of the most censorious and unrelenting
+societies in the world, and has more old-fashioned people than New York.
+If you become the talk of the town, and those awful weekly papers find
+you out, Elton will be a long while living it down. It will make
+ridiculous all his efforts at reform. Perhaps he would no longer care. I
+fancy it would affect him that way."
+
+She rose, and Lady Victoria rose also and walked to the door. As she
+opened it she smiled grimly. "You have courage," she said. "I am more
+than ever convinced that you are the wife for Jack. I will go."
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+1906
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+On the same afternoon Lady Victoria developed appendicitis and went to
+bed for two months. She was only in danger for a short time, but the
+doctor announced his intention of giving her a rest cure, and his
+patient, who was profoundly indifferent, made no protest. And if
+invalidism is a career, an illness is an adventure; moreover, no doubt,
+it was a relief to Victoria Gwynne to have her thinking done by some one
+else for a time. Isabel had thoughtfully rung up the handsomest doctor
+in San Francisco the moment the disease declared itself, and it was to
+be expected that he would find his patient interesting enough to spend
+an hour by her bedside daily. It was manifestly impossible to transfer a
+woman of Lady Victoria's heroic proportions down that rickety and almost
+perpendicular flight of steps to an ambulance, but the best of nurses
+were engaged, Anne Montgomery agreed to come every morning and attend to
+the housekeeping, Gwynne established a long-distance telephone beside
+the bed, and Mrs. Trennahan, whom Lady Victoria liked--she could not
+stand Mrs. Hofer--promised a daily visit; and an automobile trip to the
+south as soon as the doctor would permit.
+
+It was nearly a week before Isabel, who had sat up with Gwynne during
+the first two nights, and been on the rush ever since, was able to
+return to her ranch. She had offered to remain in town altogether, but
+Lady Victoria replied with some show of irritation that if either she or
+her son sacrificed their time and interests on her account it would
+oppress her mind with a sense of guilt, and hinder her recovery. She
+would telephone to them at a certain hour every day, and if they came
+down once a week as usual she should enjoy seeing them, instead of being
+worried by a sense of obligation. In truth she was glad to be rid of
+them for more reasons than one.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when Isabel arrived in Rosewater, and
+business detained her there for several hours. She dined with the Tom
+Coltons, and the conversation was a quaint mixture of babies, politics,
+servants, and the Hofer ball. Colton drove her home, and talked the
+steady monotonous stream with which he tricked the world into believing
+that his own ideas were still in the germ. Upon this occasion he might
+as well have betrayed his secrets or quoted the poets, for Isabel paid
+no attention whatever to his monologue. She was consumed with her desire
+to be alone once more. She was tired of the very sound of the human
+voice, and remembered with satisfaction the silence of her Chuma and the
+taciturnity of her men.
+
+When she finally reached her home she illuminated it from top to bottom
+and wandered about in a passion of delight. Her sensation of gratitude
+and novelty in her solitude and freedom could not have been keener if
+she had been absent for six months. Although it was too cold to sit
+out-of-doors, she walked up and down the piazza for an hour, watching
+the crawling tide and the brown tumbled hills. The boat was late, and
+every other light was out when it appeared, a mere string of magic
+lanterns with a red globe suspended aloft. Isabel struck a match and
+answered the captain's familiar greeting from his high perch in the
+pilot-house; then went within, for the fog was rolling over Tamalpais,
+dropping down the mountains in great sea waves. But even then she would
+not go to bed, and lose her knowledge of recovered treasure. After a
+time, however, she fell asleep in her chair before the fire. She awoke
+suddenly, but drowsily surprised and disappointed not to find Gwynne in
+the chair opposite. Then she became aware of the cause of her
+interrupted slumbers. There was the sound of fire-arms and of barking
+dogs on the hills sacred to the Leghorn. In three minutes she had her
+skirts off, her high boots on, and was running, pistol in hand, to the
+colony, announcing her coming by a preliminary discharge. Then for the
+next hour she and her men fought one of those hordes of migratory rats
+that suddenly steal upon chicken-ranches and leave ruin behind them.
+Isabel had a genuine horror of rats. She would far rather have faced an
+army of snakes; but with her rubber boots, the well-trained dogs, and
+her accuracy of aim, she had nothing to fear. Those that were not
+slaughtered were finally driven off, and Isabel, content even in this
+phase of her strictly personal life, went to bed and slept the sleep of
+youth and health and an easy conscience.
+
+The next day began the torrential rains that lasted for three weeks,
+almost without an hour's intermission; that wiped out the marsh, and
+threatened floods for all the valleys of the north. The boats no longer
+looked as if cutting their way through the lands, but adrift on a great
+lake. Tamalpais and the mountains below it had disappeared, as if
+hibernating, and the winds raged up and down the long valley, shaking
+old houses like Isabel's to their foundations, and leaving not a leaf
+on the trees. Nothing could be wilder or more desolate than the scene
+from Isabel's piazza, where, encased in rubber, she took her exercise,
+often battling every inch of one way against a driving wall of rain.
+Rosewater, or any sort of house except her own, she did not see for days
+at a time, nothing but that gray foaming muttering expanse of water, its
+flood and fall no longer distinguishable. At first she was more than
+content to be so isolated. Her practical life occupied little of her
+time; only a daily, and always unexpected, dash up the slopes to see
+that her men were not shirking their duties, and a weekly trip to
+Rosewater with her produce: she used her own incubators in bad weather.
+A visit to San Francisco she did not attempt, and she was quite sure
+that the daily conversation over the telephone--when it had not blown
+down--was as sufficing for Lady Victoria as for herself. She read and
+studied and dreamed, became indifferent to what she chose to call her
+failure as a society ornament, and planned a larger future; to be
+realized when she had come to care less for dreams and more for
+realities. No doubt that state of mind would develop before long, and
+meanwhile she might as well enjoy herself according to her present mood.
+Nothing could alter her belief that all unhappiness came from contacts,
+and certainly she had proved her theories so far, and took a pagan joy
+in mere living. She loved the wild battle of the elements, the waste
+below her garden, with as keen a sensuousness as the spring and the
+flowers, and often sat late in her red room by the fire to enjoy its
+contrast with the desolation without.
+
+But Gwynne was not a man to be dismissed from the thoughts of any one
+that knew him as well as his cousin, He had taken his part in her life
+as a matter of course, and of late they had been very intimate. During
+the first days and nights of his mother's illness, they had talked, or
+sat in companionable silence, by the hour. She had been assailed by
+regrets more than once that she was to have no part in his life, that he
+had already won some of his hardest battles with no help of hers, and
+deliberately had matched their spirits and driven her off the field
+where she had subtly sought to manage him. She liked him the better for
+this, but while her vanity retired with philosophy, she regretted her
+inability to help him. That she had it in her to assist and encourage
+him in many ways, she needed to be told neither by himself nor his
+mother, but she was unwilling to pay the price. That she felt his charm,
+took an even deeper interest in him since he had announced his intention
+to marry her, she did not pretend to deny, and sometimes caught herself
+looking out upon a future in which he had as inevitable a part as if it
+had been decreed from the beginning of time. She also dreamed of the
+satisfaction and pleasure it would give her to make him really love her,
+become quite mad about her. But again she was unwilling to pay the
+price. She argued that this was merely due to the persistence of the
+solitary ideal; and refused to face the cowardice that lurked in the
+bottom of her soul. Heroic in every other development of her highly bred
+character, she had all the secret fear and antagonism of her sex for the
+other, a profound resentment of the male instinct for possession, and
+the deeper terror that what Gwynne might find would eventually make her
+wholly his. Life had given her a deep surface; the depths below it sent
+up rare vibrations; and her mind was seldom unoccupied. She could add
+layer upon layer of evasions and subtleties with no prospect of a rude
+disturbance; and when the wind ceased for a time she tramped over the
+hills. But she missed Gwynne increasingly, wondered that he did not
+brave the elements and come out to her; finally felt herself shamefully
+neglected, and would not answer his occasional telephone queries as to
+her well-being.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Three days of floundering through the mud between Lumalitas and
+Rosewater exhausted Gwynne's patience, and he engaged a furnished suite
+of rooms on Main Street, moved in his law library, Imura Kisaburo
+Hinomoto, and several easy-chairs, invested in a red wall-paper for his
+sitting-room, and was immediately so comfortable, and so relieved to be
+rid of his dripping sighing trees and flooded valley, that he was almost
+happy. As he looked down from his window upon the slope of the street
+crowded with muddy wagons and men in oil-skins and high rubber boots, he
+recalled the ironical picture Isabel had drawn, that memorable night at
+Capheaton, of his own future appearance; and as he could not ride out to
+Old Inn in any other garb, an excess of vanity deterred him from going
+at all. To be sure he could drive out in a closed surrey, but he would
+have felt equally ridiculous, and Isabel, beyond doubt, would scorn him.
+Better let her think him indifferent for a while; it might do her good.
+He could save himself from discourtesy by telephoning occasionally, and,
+for the matter of that, the less he thought of her at present the
+better.
+
+For the first time he came intimately in contact with the men of
+Rosewater: "leading citizens" too busy to call upon him at Lumalitas, or
+to sit down in their places of business for a chat during the day, and
+too well trained to ask strangers home for dinner, were any hospitable
+instincts left in them. But they soon discovered that his rooms were
+very comfortable and inviting, his whiskey and tobacco "above par." The
+homeless citizens of Rosewater, while their wives wrangled at bridge or
+five-hundred, fell into the habit of "dropping in at Gwynne's," instead
+of going to the Lodge or the dingy back room of some saloon or lawyer's
+office. They were at liberty to take off their coats and put their feet
+on the railing surrounding the large iron stove that sat well out into
+the room. There were even spittoons for such as clung to the old
+tradition; and in a short time the large newly built, almost luxurious
+room took on somewhat of the character of that forum of an older time,
+the corner grocery. Judge Leslie seldom honored these assemblies, as he
+was tired at night and rejoiced in a comfortable home; nor did Tom
+Colton, whose domestic virtues were pronounced; but Mr. Wheaton came,
+and Mr. Haight, Mr. Boutts, and other solid business men old enough to
+be Gwynne's father; and they were all deeply interested in Rosewater
+first, State politics second, and national affairs once in four years;
+or oftener if there was any pyrotechnical departure from routine.
+European politics interested them not at all, and if they had any
+suspicion of Gwynne's real status, they were too accustomed to minding
+their own business to take any liberties with his reserve.
+
+But they were fully alive to the importance of his addition to the
+community. He was a large landholder, selling many small farms to
+acceptable persons; he spent money freely, buying everything he needed
+for his household and farm in Rosewater, instead of sending to the city;
+he was studying law with a view to practising in their midst; and now
+that Judge Leslie--who proclaimed him a marvel--was threatening to
+retire, his keen and cautious fellow-citizens needed nothing more than a
+man of first-class legal ability to take care of their great and varied
+interests and defend them against the corporation bogie. They found
+themselves hinting that he should engage in politics as well, when his
+probationary years were over.
+
+When Gwynne shrugged his shoulders one night and remarked bluntly that
+he had no desire to work with either of the California machines, and
+would unquestionably come a howling cropper if he worked against either,
+Mr. Wheaton answered with the nimbleness of a mind already made up, that
+he could be sent to Sacramento on an independent ticket--manipulated by
+the honest men of Rosewater--to fight such of the frauds and tyrannies
+as the State was suffering acutely from at the moment. During reform
+spasms the machines were practically powerless, and with the brilliant
+abilities he would be able to display as soon as he entered public life,
+and backed by a powerful influence, he could win his way to higher
+things before the wave subsided. They wanted a senator in Washington who
+was for his State first and himself next, even more than they wanted a
+lawyer; and for that matter he could serve their anti-corporation
+interests better there than here. Meanwhile he would have many
+opportunities to speak and show the stuff that was in him, draw converts
+to himself with his fiery eloquence and hard practicality, inculcate the
+desire for better things, and the necessity for reducing the influence
+of the army of petty professional politicians to a minimum, make of
+himself so central and inspiriting a figure that when his time came the
+best element of both parties throughout the State would form an
+independent body under his leadership.
+
+This was an alluring picture, but if Mr. Wheaton, who had had as little
+to do with politics as possible, was a bit of a dreamer, there was no
+question that his dreams were shared by more practical men at the
+present moment than for many years past; and that his theories were
+sound, however formidable the alert, resourceful, enormously capitalized
+army which stood between them and execution. His idol was Abraham
+Lincoln, and in consequence he "banked" on the good in human nature as a
+factor, which, in sudden recrudescences of indignant energy,
+accomplished revolutions of far greater moment than the overthrowing of
+political machines.
+
+Mr. Wheaton had launched forth upon one particularly stormy night when
+he happened to be Gwynne's only guest. The host, not to be outdone, was
+sitting with his feet on the railing of the stove, but as far from the
+spittoon as possible. He had listened to the long monologue, which
+involved a sketch of Lincoln's varied career, with more attention than
+might have been inferred from his half-closed eyes, and his pipe had
+gone out. It was only recently that any of his neighbors, barring Judge
+Leslie and Tom Colton, who shared his secret, had definitely proposed a
+political career to him, in other words divined his abilities and
+ambitions. But Mr. Wheaton had once been young and adventurous himself,
+and much if not all of his success in life was due to his shrewd
+divination of human nature. No man could drive a harder bargain than
+"Wash" Wheaton (he was named for the father of his country), but he had
+never been wanting in a vein of humorous sympathy, nor in a fair
+capacity for friendship as well as enmity.
+
+He raised his eyes from the coals and looked directly at Gwynne, who was
+relighting his pipe.
+
+"I don't like Tom Colton," he said, abruptly. "And it's not so much
+because he is the son of that old skinflint, neither. He is a little too
+much the product of the times--a sort of polished up descendant of that
+hoodlum element that terrorized San Francisco in the Seventies. He
+started out as a mere or'nary politician, but the Democratic Boss took
+him up and his ambitions are growing. What with the money he has and
+will inherit, and the devilish gall of him, he can play a deep game, and
+his chances of winning look a little too fair to suit a good many of us.
+He's nothing better than an anarchist, and without the excuse of the
+common anarchist--who, at the worst--or his own best--risks his life.
+Tom Colton and men of his stamp wouldn't risk the skin of their little
+fingers. All they do is to build a red-hot fire under the political
+caldron, stir it up with a big stick until it doesn't know where it is
+at or what it is made of, and then float into power on the steam. This
+has been one of the rottenest States in the Union for a good many years,
+and no wonder such men as Tom think they can about do as they please;
+but a good many are getting pretty damned tired of it, and there's a
+sort of reform mutter going on here and there that will gather and swell
+if skilfully manipulated. We've been talking you over, and have
+concluded to back you up for all we are worth as soon as you are
+ready--that is to say we would but for one drawback--your friendship
+with Colton."
+
+"If you choose to call it that. I have told him in as plain English as
+he will ever hear what I think of his politics, and that if I ever enter
+public life myself I shall devote my energies to running him and his
+like out of it. He is too good-natured and too sure of himself--and his
+State!--to mind. Moreover, he has four years the start of me. It is
+possible that I shall go to Sacramento with, and even speak for, him;
+but he understands perfectly that I am only after experience, will
+advocate nothing I disapprove of--he actually has certain reforms in his
+political basket, and whatever may be his intention to compromise when
+he reaches Sacramento, I, at least, can advocate them in all sincerity;
+and further open the eyes of all these people to what they ought to want
+and to have. All this is perfectly understood between us. I, and the
+honest public clamoring for its rights, do not weigh a feather in the
+scale, in his opinion, against the might of organization."
+
+"Very good. I suspicioned something of the sort. He can't corrupt you,
+and you couldn't get a better insight into corruption than through him;
+so fire away. What's your program, anyhow?"
+
+"It's too soon to make one--be sure that I am willing to return your
+confidence with my own"--as the sharp china-blue eyes opposite
+contracted; "but I can do little now except win the confidence of the
+farmers in this district and of men like yourself. But if a reform party
+does achieve power, if only for a term, the first thing for it to do is
+to overhaul the ballot system. Before we reformed ours we were as deep
+in the mire as yourselves. When the American voter is under the
+supervision of an honest judiciary, a general system of local reforms
+will follow as a matter of course."
+
+Mr. Wheaton sighed. "You would have to begin with the judiciary. If you
+reformed them, and had any strength left, and then reformed the ballot
+in the manner of your own country, I guess you'd get about anything you
+wanted. But you'll need a tidal reform wave, I'm afraid. However, you
+never can tell what one year will bring forth in this country. On the
+other hand, the results of certain reforms, fought and died for, have
+done as much to make us pessimists as any of the immovable abuses. Take
+the question of Civil Service Reform, for instance. In the old days when
+you wanted to induce a man to give you the benefit of his abilities and
+influence during an election, you held out hopes of preferment, and he
+took your word if he knew your word was good, and worked with a decent
+sort of ambition--all things being relative. What happens now? Few find
+anything promising or attractive in the competitive examination. You ask
+a man--the professional politician he is now, sure enough--to help you
+get your candidate, or yourself, in, and what happens? The gentleman
+coolly demands, 'How much?' and holds out his hand. You fill it or he
+turns his back and walks off. There is just that much less of good left
+to appeal to in this particular brand of human nature. Ours is a much
+more complicated civilization than yours, Mr. Gwynne. You were dealing
+with Britishers only, in 1832. We are trying to digest the riffraff of
+the world, and can't do it, in spite of such incorrigible optimists as
+Judge Leslie. Immigrants in the first generation have just about as much
+feeling for the American flag as a chicken has for Rosewater. They look
+upon vote-selling as a legitimate way of improving their fortunes, and
+they are the easy prey of such agitators as Colton, because they had
+nothing in their own countries, and want the earth in this. Of course
+their children go to the public schools, and become Americans, but we
+always have the problem of fresh hordes to deal with. And new and
+old--it is easy to plant the weevil in their brains that the rich have
+corralled all the money, and the laborer--even in California, where he
+gets the highest wages paid on this earth--is a miserable victim, and
+entitled to all he doesn't make. They never remember that nearly every
+capitalist in the country has risen from their own ranks, and that their
+dreams are mainly occupied with doing the same. But you might as well
+talk to the trade-winds, especially with such men as Tom Colton stirring
+the caldron. 'Get rich quick; and selling votes is as good a starter as
+any.' There you have the moral sickness of the country in a nutshell.
+And few professions pay better than that of the politician. The pettiest
+division leader, who does the Boss's dirtiest work, and has fewer
+redeeming virtues than the midnight burglar, makes such a good thing out
+of it that the prettiest Salvation Army lass couldn't convince him of
+the error of his ways. And he enjoys himself. To hang around saloons,
+prize-fights, help out shyster lawyers with their tricks, and play the
+game hard during election times--that satisfies him until he sees a
+chance of stepping into a bigger pair of boots of the same make. But,
+thank God, there are more honest men out of politics than in. That is
+the trouble, but there they are, and it will be a part of your business
+to round them up. Well, I guess I've held forth long enough. I'll send
+you round a few volumes from my Lincoln library to-morrow. I always go
+to it when I lose my faith in human nature. Good-night."
+
+And he gathered up his long legs and went out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In his many talks with his friends in San Francisco, Gwynne had received
+practically the same suggestions. The lawyer who advised this group in
+its necessarily intermittent campaign against the San Francisco
+politicians was one of the ablest in the United States. He had offered
+Gwynne a place in his office, a 'courtesy partnership,' when he was
+ready to move to the city. But Gwynne deliberately remained undecided
+for the present, although half inclined to practise in the country for
+some years. If he could not have the inestimable education of the old
+days, when lawyers jogged about the country with the circuit judges for
+months at a time, he could at least get into close contact with the
+plain people in a manner that in a city would be practically impossible.
+Until the rains began, and after his definite understanding with Colton,
+he had, during his hours of exercise, formed the habit of "dropping in"
+upon the small farmers of his political district, under pretence of
+asking their advice; gauging and sowing. Upon the men that had bought
+land of him he was able to bestow many small favors, and his old
+experience with the tenantry of Capheaton gave him an instinctive
+knowledge of their wants that added to the sum of his popularity. To his
+inferiors he had never shown the arrogance of his nature, and he
+welcomed these small toilers as a substitute for his old tenants; for he
+had missed the poor that kept the sympathies quick--and, perhaps, gave
+richer shadows to life.
+
+His long lank American figure and slight resemblance to Hiram Otis, who
+had been an institution if not a favorite, his readiness to stand drinks
+to his farmer acquaintances, and others, whom he happened to meet in
+Main Street, the approachableness he had cultivated with some effort,
+combined with the subtle suggestion that he would not permit a liberty;
+a characteristic that every true man respects; his reputation for being
+"dead straight," and his insistence upon receiving his just dues--"all
+that was coming to him"--in spite of the easy terms he made with several
+to whom he sold land; all this, in addition to the dignity of being the
+largest rancher in the county, and a law partner of Judge Leslie, had
+quickly made him a marked as well as a popular figure. Even his accent
+was unnoted in that State of many accents.
+
+He had thought out for himself all that Mr. Wheaton had suggested, and
+if he still had his moments of depression and disgust, and even of
+revolt, much of his old confidence was returning; although he sometimes
+reflected, with a sort of whimsical bitterness, upon the difficulty of
+sustaining an impression of innate greatness unaided by an occasional
+demonstration. But he had, at least, learned to see people merely as
+human beings without taking their shells into account; and he also
+realized that in those storms of spirit, which, at the time, he had
+deprecated as ebullitions from a too mercurial nature, he had developed
+more rapidly and precisely than many a man does by the exterior
+catastrophe. And impersonally his admiration for the land of one set of
+forefathers grew, although personally he remained cold. But he
+cultivated all sorts and conditions of men, and hopefully trained
+himself for the enthusiastic moment.
+
+There were even times when, surrounded by his Rosewater friends, with
+their lapses into quaint American speech and their intense localism, the
+old Otis blood stirred in him very strongly; he caught himself using
+phrases and figures that no doubt were an inheritance with his brain
+cells. When the walls and furnishings of his room were obscured by
+smoke, and there were half a dozen pairs of boots against his stove, it
+was not difficult to fancy himself back in the old corner grocery on a
+winter's night: his companions drinking apple cider, instead of rye
+whiskey, and the orator of the moment sitting, by preference, on a
+barrel, and munching crackers.
+
+In San Francisco, which he visited twice a week on his return from
+Berkeley, when alone in the long sloping streets swept with the
+wind-driven rain, when the gutters roared and the houses looked as
+deserted as their huddled beaten gardens, stories Isabel had told him of
+the days of the Argonauts rose like ghosts in his brain, and he would
+suddenly experience an overwhelming sensation of being at home. His
+mother promptly dispelled these visions.
+
+On the whole his time was too fully occupied to leave him more than
+stray moments for the subtler mood; but as day after day, finally week
+after week passed, with no prospect of fair weather, the monotony and
+confinement affected his nerves, he tired of the unrelieved
+companionship of men, and wished that Isabel would move in to Rosewater
+for the winter months. He rang her up, when this brilliant idea occurred
+to him, but was informed by Chuma that she was not in the house. On the
+following day he telephoned again, and learned that she slept, on the
+third that she was engaged in the delicate operation of extracting some
+deleterious substance from the crop of a valuable hen. Whereupon he
+swore vigorously, and vowed that he would forget her until the skies
+cleared. But "the skies they were ashen and sober," and he caught
+himself dreaming over his "Torts," or during one of Mr. Boutts's
+ecstatic visions of Rosewater with a great hotel in the style of the old
+Missions, and an electric railway. (Mr. Boutts, by-the-way, never
+elevated his feet to the railing of the stove, but always sat on the
+edge of his chair, a hand on either knee.) He took the train impulsively
+to San Francisco, one afternoon, and talked of reinforced concrete with
+his contractor, and San Francisco politics with Hofer. He even called
+upon several young ladies, who interested him less than ever, and
+returned to Rosewater at the end of four days with a sense of duties
+neglected and a slip in his self-mastery. This put him in such a bad
+humor that he directed his Asiatic to refuse him to the members of his
+informal Club, and wished he were back in San Francisco doing the town
+with Stone.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+He was glowering into the open door of the stove and wondering why on
+earth he had not remained in town over Sunday at least, when he became
+aware that his noiseless Jap was standing at his elbow.
+
+"What is it?" he demanded, testily. "I wish you would get a pair of
+creaky boots."
+
+"A gentleman," replied the impervious Oriental.
+
+"I told you I would not see anybody."
+
+"But he has a card." It was not often that the cool even tones of Imura
+Kisabura Hinomoto fluctuated, but Gwynne detected a faint accent of
+respect. Somewhat surprised himself, he glanced at the card. It bore the
+name of one of the judges of one of the benches provided for by the
+constitutions of both nation and State. He had a summer home on the
+mountain opposite and relatives in Rosewater, so there was nothing
+remarkable in his being in the little town on a rainy winter Sunday.
+Nevertheless, Gwynne's instinct of caution, more active than usual
+during the past year, stirred sharply.
+
+"Show him in," he said. "And bring the whiskey--both Rye and Scotch."
+
+This was the most perfect specimen of the bluff, hearty, breezy, almost
+ingenuous Westerner that Gwynne had encountered. The judge, who had been
+relieved of his hat and overcoat by the admirable Imura, advanced with
+both hands outstretched, and Gwynne could do no less than surrender
+his, although he had never fancied any one less. The judge was a big man
+with a round jolly face, set with a sensual mouth, a pendulous nose, and
+merry twinkling eyes. Although possibly no more than fifty-five years of
+age, the baldness of his head had amplified the common noble domelike
+American brow: behind which Gwynne had so often groped and found
+nothing. This man was indubitably clever, and to a less educated eye
+than Gwynne's his face would appeal and fascinate. His magnetism was
+superlative.
+
+"My dear Mr. Gwynne!" he exclaimed. "Believe me when I say that this is
+one of the most satisfactory moments of my life. I was forced to come to
+this God-forsaken hole last night, and had it not been for you I should
+have taken the morning train back to the city. But when I heard that you
+were in town--you were pointed out to me as we both left the train--I
+knew that my opportunity had come. And--my dear young gentleman--I throw
+away no opportunities; I throw away no opportunities."
+
+By this time Gwynne had steered him into the largest of the chairs, and
+offered him his choice of the whiskies. The judge, after an instant's
+hesitation, accepted the Scotch; and Gwynne felt that he had a tactful
+and dangerous man to deal with.
+
+"Excellent!" exclaimed the judge, and he smacked his lips. He inhaled
+the aroma of the cigar voluptuously. "But my dear old friend, Judge
+Leslie, whom I ran in to see for a few moments this morning, told
+me--with his customary humor--that you were as remarkable for the
+superior quality of your whiskey and tobacco as for the many personal
+qualities that have so rapidly endeared you to the citizens of
+Rosewater."
+
+"Thanks," said Gwynne.
+
+The judge changed his tactics instantly. "I cannot beat about in the
+dark and merely turn myself loose in pleasant generalities, Mr. Gwynne,"
+he said, gravely. "I am going to tell you at once that I am positive you
+are Elton Gwynne. Judge Leslie would give me no satisfaction this
+morning, but I needed none. I happened to be employed in old Colton's
+bank in my younger days--as secretary--and although that was a long time
+ago--a long time ago!--it came back to me, when I began to hear so much
+about our new rancher, that his full name was John Elton Cecil Gwynne,
+and that he was the only son of his mother. Or--if impressions are
+confused after so long an interval--I may have gathered the last fact
+from James Otis, whom I knew very well. He and Hi, indeed, I may
+honestly say, were among my few intimate friends, despite some disparity
+in years. So, I have a double interest and, I modestly hope, claim upon
+you. The former at least has been accentuated since yesterday, when your
+likeness to Hi struck me very painfully. You are a vast improvement, I
+grant, for Hi was as ugly as mud and as cross as two sticks, but the
+resemblance is acute, odd as it may appear. Those things are very
+subtle, very subtle."
+
+Gwynne had heard the keys of his secret weakness tinkle for a full bar,
+but while it improved his humor it did not cloud his judgment, and he
+applied himself to finding out the purpose of the man's visit.
+
+"I regret very much that I have come too late to know any of my male
+relatives," he said, affably. "Hiram Otis, from all I hear, was an able
+man, if somewhat soured, and his unfortunate brother one of the most
+brilliant lawyers of his day. Terrible thing, this reckless drinking in
+San Francisco. I was told yesterday that when--a few years ago--an
+editor was sent out from New York to assume charge of one of your most
+flourishing dailies, he made the entire staff go down to Los Gatos and
+take the Keeley cure. Then, for a time, he had _relays_ of sober men, at
+least, but until then he had felt himself a lonely Philistine--besides
+taking a hand in every department of the 'shop,' even setting type at
+times. But it's a fascinating old town, all the same. Too fascinating, I
+fear." And he managed to fetch a remorseful sigh.
+
+The judge, who had laughed heartily at the anecdote, dismissed his
+twinkle for a moment, and looked at the young man with concern.
+
+"For God's sake," he said, softly, "don't tell me that you have
+inherited that microbe."
+
+"Oh no, indeed!" said Gwynne, cheerfully. "I never could take to drink
+now--a man's character is pretty well formed at thirty-two, I fancy, and
+I scarcely ever touch spirits when alone--prefer the lighter wines.
+Only, as San Francisco is so convivial, one naturally imbibes a good
+deal, especially with friends addicted to the 'cocktail route'--and I am
+afraid I shall have to give up the city for the present and stick to
+work."
+
+"The judge tells me that your legal powers are really amazing--that you
+have accumulated more law in four months--"
+
+"Tut! Tut!" cried Gwynne, springing to his feet and reaching the table
+in a stride. "Have some more whiskey, judge. And don't flatter me any
+more. I am afraid that vanity is my besetting weakness--"
+
+"Thank God it is not the other!" said the older man, fervently. "And
+vanity keeps the heart younger than anything I know of. Lose the power
+of being tickled by a compliment and inflated by success, and you lose
+the salt of life. But I am delighted that you have taken to the law. I
+know your English career like a book, and although I do not pretend even
+to guess at the motives which induced you to fling aside not only the
+most promising career in England, but one of the noblest of her titles,
+I may say, sir--and I may speak for my fellow-citizens, the whole
+million of them--I am deeply flattered, and gratified, that, whatever
+your motive, which could only be an honorable one, you have chosen this
+fair State as the theatre of your future triumphs. I hope I shall see
+you beside me on the bench--unless, to be sure, you have higher
+ambitions than the mere practice of law."
+
+"The first men in the country have been lawyers," said Gwynne, politely.
+"Why aspire higher?"
+
+"Why, indeed? But I think you will. The law frequently leads either to
+one of the benches or into the more active field of politics. And
+you--with your enormous energies--you will never be content with the
+law, pure and simple, no matter how brilliant a reputation you might
+achieve."
+
+"But honest lawyers are so rare!" exclaimed Gwynne, boyishly. "I do
+believe I should be an honest one. That, at least, is the intention I
+have set beside my ambition. I am ambitious, judge, as no doubt you have
+divined, and the prospect of being shelved among the lords sickened me.
+I wanted to make a career for myself, so cut the whole business and came
+here where my American properties were. Besides, as it happened, I
+inherited practically nothing with which to keep up my English estates.
+There! You have my reasons, judge, and you are welcome to them. Titles
+without money are mere embarrassments. Still, I really should have left,
+had it been otherwise--I am certain I should. I never could stand the
+inaction of the Upper House. Nor do I care for those compensatory honors
+that my position and family influence might have secured for me. And now
+I feel more the American every day. I have even grown keen on making
+money--which I rather disdained at home; for the matter of that, thought
+little about it. You may not know that I am--in partnership, as it were,
+with my mother and cousin--putting up a large Class A building in San
+Francisco?"
+
+He inferred that there was little about him the judge did not know, but
+accepted the interested "Ah!" and rhapsodized over his new interests.
+The Judge listened with a benignant smile and a twinkling eye, every
+once in a while giving the tip of his long fleshy nose an abrupt shove,
+as if it impeded his breathing.
+
+"Just so!" he exclaimed. "Just so! It is the Otis blood. No better
+pioneer blood in the State. Jim was the wild one. The others were as
+steady as rocks. Their father and grandfather--your ancestors,
+sir--helped to make this great State what it is. Their names will always
+be honored in the annals of California. Terrible pity Jim and Hi got
+away with so much. If they'd hung on as your mother and her mother did,
+Miss Isabel would be one of the heiresses. But she seems able to take
+care of herself, and with that face and form, I guess she can redeem her
+fortunes any way she chooses. I hear that young Harry Hofer can't talk
+of anything else."
+
+Gwynne wondered if this were what the judge had come for, but
+exonerated him, concluding that he was merely rambling on in the hope of
+an opening.
+
+"No doubt!" he said, heartily. "Miss Otis could marry any one she
+pleased. One of the best titles in England was hers for the asking,
+by-the-way. But like myself she is too good an American--shall I say
+Californian?--to live anywhere but here. She is immensely successful
+with her chickens, and we shall all make money on this new deal--I am
+certain of that."
+
+"No doubt, no doubt. Things are booming in San Francisco. You'll get a
+huge rent from a building of that size--in time. Pity it has to be
+divided among three of you. And there will be a big mortgage to pay off
+first, I suppose; and it is in a very precarious district, a very
+precarious district." And once more the twinkle retired and he gazed
+dreamily at the fire.
+
+"Oh, even golden apples have to ripen. And I have taken every precaution
+against fires. Have some more whiskey, Judge."
+
+"Don't care if I do." Gwynne knew that the Scotch scalded a throat
+caressed these many years with the oily rye, and put as little seltzer
+in it as he dared. But the judge sipped it heroically. Suddenly the
+twinkle danced back to his eye as he turned it upon Gwynne.
+
+"You can't delude me!" he cried. "You can't, sir. I know you intend to
+go in for politics. Nothing else would ever satisfy your genius. Own up,
+now."
+
+"Well," said Gwynne, modestly. "I have thought of it. After my five
+years are up, of course--makes one feel rather like a convict. Meanwhile
+I can make some headway with the law: or, shall I say, build up a
+reputation that may be useful to me when I am able to run for office."
+
+"Ah! Just so! Great pity you were ever discharged from your American
+indigenate. Then one year in California would settle the matter. Which
+of our parties makes the strongest appeal to you?"
+
+Gwynne's eyes had contracted and he was staring at the stove. But his
+abstraction was too brief to be noticed, and he answered in a
+confidential tone, "Well, Judge, to tell you the truth--" And then he
+stopped and laughed.
+
+"I see. You think one is about as bad as the other."
+
+"Well, I am afraid that is it."
+
+"Oh, my boy, they're not nearly as bad as they are made out to be--our
+American politics. Judge Leslie is dotty on that subject, and so are a
+good many of the other old fossils of Rosewater. I don't say but that
+San Francisco would be the better for a good spring cleaning, but the
+State's not nearly so bad as it's painted, not nearly so bad as it's
+painted."
+
+He delivered his repeated phrases with an unctuous indulgent roll that
+made Gwynne long to grind his teeth. But the prospective American merely
+raised an interrogative eyebrow. "I don't hear much good in any
+direction," he murmured.
+
+"Of course, I can understand that you have seen through Tom Colton, and
+that he has appalled you as much as the fossils. He's in a hurry, and if
+he isn't mighty careful the machine will throw him down. For all his
+affected simplicity he's too fond of the limelight: loves to see his
+name in print; and when he makes a donation to a charity or an
+improvement scheme he uses up all the fireworks in the State."
+
+"I was under the impression that he was in high favor with the district
+Boss--"
+
+"The district Boss is getting old, and Tom, one way or another, has
+acquired a great influence over him; but I happen to know that he
+doesn't stand any too well with the State Democratic Boss."
+
+"If Tom were really earnest in his reforms, really had the interest of
+the common people at heart--although I never saw common people so well
+off in my life--but the point is that if Tom were really sincere he
+might form an independent party."
+
+"Well, he can. It won't do him any good. It wouldn't do even you any
+good to work up a reform party, and your abilities are to his as a
+thousand to one. In fact a man like yourself would have far less chance.
+They would let Tom amuse himself, but they would find you really
+dangerous, and the upshot would be that the two parties would unite and
+crush you. Crush you flat. You might be a George Washington, Alexander
+Hamilton, and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one, and you would emerge from
+the swift and simultaneous impact of those two cast-iron walls flatter
+than the sole of your boot. Even if you made a good running on a reform
+wave, so much the worse. Reform waves merely serve the purpose of making
+some poor devil conspicuous and recklessly optimistic, then subside and
+leave him high and dry--at the mercy of the ever-recuperating machine.
+It's enough to make a man wish he'd never been born. I've seen it more
+than once. There's only one of two results. They are either so disgusted
+with politics that they stay out of them for the rest of their lives, or
+they pick themselves up and make a bolt for the machine they think most
+likely to give them a career. Look at some of our most illustrious
+incumbents. Great bluff on the outside--which the machine don't mind
+one little bit--and the best sort of a party man inside; walking a
+chalked line with no rebellious wings on his feet. Wings don't grow on
+clay. But they are right, Mr. Gwynne, and not because they are wrong,
+either. In this great country organization is absolutely essential, and
+in all vast complicated organizations some chicanery will creep in. But
+take them all in all, American politics are not half as bad as they are
+painted, not half as bad as they are painted."
+
+"Well, that is a relief. You certainly should know. But what of the
+great corporations that rule this State--as well as the country? The
+State Democratic or Republican Boss is president or treasurer of one of
+them, is he not? I haven't taken the trouble to be very specific as yet.
+My time is so far off. Of course I do not need to be told that
+organizations, trusts, or whatever you like to call them, are
+inevitable--because they are in the line of progress; and unabused, they
+would be as much to the advancement of the individual as of the country.
+But they have been abused, from all I can make out--quite shockingly. I
+am taking the course on 'The Law of Corporations' at the University,
+partly because I want to understand so vital a question as thoroughly as
+possible--and partly--well--at least, I fancied I should--for a
+time--for what money there might be in it--But really!"
+
+"Oh, I don't say that some trusts are not reprehensible, and the sooner
+they are exposed the better. But they are sensational cases. The
+majority of the great complex aggregations of capital are monuments to
+American genius and progress; I am sure that if you waste any time on
+the yellow press you know how to discount it. Some of even the best of
+the trusts may have swollen to a size that renders them practically
+unmanageable, as well as injudiciously provocative of much jealousy and
+unrest. But the principle is sound, as you have admitted, and the great
+law of adjustment will correct all that is undesirable, and in a very
+few years. Meanwhile, get rich yourself, Mr. Gwynne. I'm delighted to
+learn that corporation law has appealed to you so strongly, for the
+money is there. I'm glad I came. I'd like to do one of your blood a good
+turn, to say nothing of yourself. Perfect yourself in corporation law
+and Leslie says you accumulate more rapidly than any hundred ordinarily
+well-equipped men one might name--and I can put you in the way of
+clearing a hundred thousand a year."
+
+"_Could_ you?"
+
+"Yes, sir. What the great corporations want, and want badly, even with
+all the good legal talent they've got, is an attorney of extraordinary
+abilities, and this you have. I understand that the legal luminary of
+that reform set in San Francisco has offered to take you into his
+office. That's about as great a compliment as even you could have, but
+there's nothing in it. They're playing a losing game. They ought to win,
+but they won't. The San Francisco Boss may be what we elegantly term a
+shyster lawyer, but there never was as clever a one; and there's no
+trick he doesn't know. He'll beat them at every turn. You'd only make
+one more of that estimable Don Quixote band. Don't waste your youth.
+Study corporation law with all your might and main, and _I'll_ place you
+where you'll make a big income from the start--and it'll grow bigger
+every year. Then when your turn comes to vote and run for office--why,
+the whole field will be open to you to pick and choose from.
+Corporations are not ungrateful, and with a mighty one behind you, I
+guess you wouldn't whistle for anything, long."
+
+Gwynne regarded the thin sole of his house shoe with so rueful a
+countenance that the judge laughed outright. "Have you really had
+thoughts of working up a reform party?" he cried, the dancing imps in
+his eyes almost escaping.
+
+"Well, I may have dreamed a bit that way. You see, I come of a family of
+reformers." And he gave the judge a rapid sketch of the part his English
+forefathers had played in the great reform acts of their country. The
+judge nodded sympathetically.
+
+"Just so. I understand your point of view perfectly. Perfectly. But
+those great movements in England are matched here by spasms only. This
+country is too big and too heterogeneous. Don't set yourself between two
+cast-iron walls, Mr. Gwynne, because when they do get a concerted move
+on, they fly like hell. Join either of the parties, and you will find
+not only that it is not half as bad as it is painted, but that it
+accomplishes far more good than harm, many real reforms, that are
+systematically ignored by the press."
+
+"I thought you said that reforms were impossible in this country."
+
+"Oh, bless my soul, no. That would mean that we were going straight to
+the dogs. Reforms are going on every minute. The country is more
+tolerable and civilized every decade. What I mean is that no reform can
+be accomplished until the time is ripe for it. That is the reason why
+our spasms amount to nothing. They are always premature. But if you
+really want to do this country a service throw in your lot with the
+regulars. You would always be an influence for good, and when you saw
+the first opening for the correction of some crying abuse, you would
+have powerful machinery at hand to work with. What you want to do, Mr.
+Gwynne, is to become a powerful factor in the machine, not waste your
+time on windmills."
+
+"Which machine?" asked Gwynne, ingenuously. "I don't fancy I could ever
+make up my mind. They seem precisely alike to me."
+
+"Well," said the judge, slowly, although he brushed the tip of his nose
+aside with more violence than usual. "I don't like advising,
+particularly a young man of your distinguished abilities and
+achievements. But I really think I am better able to advise you than
+Leslie, and certainly every man of us should feel a sense of
+responsibility to the old Otis--and Adams!--blood. I will say frankly
+that in your place I should join the party that owns this State--and
+shows no signs of letting go; in other words, the Republican. I can well
+understand, that having been a Liberal--and to the extent of renouncing
+your titles!--the Democratic would appeal to you. But don't waste your
+time, Mr. Gwynne. You are thirty-two. You don't want to throw away the
+next ten years on a losing game, and then, tired out, arrive nowhere.
+You would fight so hard that all your energies would be second-rate by
+that time. You want to begin right now and swim with the tide. Nurse
+your great energies for the exactions of the victorious career. You'll
+need them. And need them fresh."
+
+"That sounds like good advice, but the whole political game appals me
+when I consider that it will be six years before I can even run for the
+House of Representatives--"
+
+"True! True! Pity your parents didn't lose you. But everything turns
+out for the best. Meanwhile, you can make name and fortune as a
+corporation lawyer. And you can't have too much money in this world,
+sir. You can't have too much money in this world."
+
+It was on the tip of Gwynne's tongue to ask him bluntly what corporation
+he had in mind, but not only did his already boiling humor recoil from
+the indignity of a deliberately worded bribe, but he doubted if it would
+be proffered so early in the game. He had a very clever man to deal
+with; it was not likely he would make the mistake of a direct approach.
+Gwynne flattered himself that he looked as ingenuous as Tom Colton, but
+as he had seen through the complacent judge, it was possible that the
+judge might entertain suspicions of a man with his reputation. He was
+glad he had not spoken when his visitor rose abruptly to his feet.
+
+"Bless my soul!" he exclaimed. "I shall miss my train if I don't hurry.
+And heaven forbid that I spend another night in this mud-hole. My
+address is on my card--when do you come down again?"
+
+"There is a lecture at Berkeley on Wednesday--"
+
+"Good! Now, you will dine with me next Wednesday night--and I hope on
+many other nights. We must have several long talks--and all about your
+future, young man. I am too old to talk about my own, but I remember
+what I was at your age. Tactful, hey? But no," dropping his voice
+gravely. "I want to help you. And I can. Whatever branch of the law you
+specialize upon, you must leave Rosewater and come to San Francisco. I
+can place you in an office--even should you decide upon general
+practice--that will carry you swifter and further than our reform friend
+can, because he is playing a losing game--a losing game, sir. But we'll
+talk of all that later. I must hasten."
+
+Gwynne escorted him to the head of the staircase, where he resisted an
+impulse to kick him down, then, after a hasty glance into the
+dictionary, encased himself in rubber and went up the hill to the home
+of Judge Leslie. He was to dine there, and it was but a quarter-past
+four, but what he had to say and ask would not keep for an hour and
+three-quarters.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+On his way to the house he decided that he could not confide even to
+Judge Leslie that he had been singled out as likely spoil by the
+"grafters." No doubt that in a way it was a compliment to his abilities,
+this early-conceived determination to whisk him out of the reform field
+and engross his abilities, killing two birds with one stone. Probably he
+would be approached in a similar manner very often, until he became a
+definite quantity, and in time would grow accustomed to it; and callous.
+But at present he was hot and sickened, the more so as he felt that he
+had received a new impulse to believe in himself. These vast
+corporations--the railroad, street railways, lighting, and telephone
+companies, were the ones that dictated to San Francisco, and were
+supposed to have debauched the Board of Supervisors, all of them small
+laborers, elevated by the Boss to serve his ends--counted their capital
+by the millions; in one case, at least, by the hundred million. They had
+already bought much of the best talent in the country, and they wasted
+no time on the second-rate. Gwynne could easily guess in whose teeming
+and orderly brain the scheme to seduce and attach himself had been
+shaped, and, with the American contempt for the perspicacity of any
+foreigner, had selected this judge, with his breezy direct tactful
+manner, as certain to edge the newcomer into the fold. To Gwynne the
+only saving grace in the whole interview was that he had not been
+tempted. Had he been he should have felt utterly demoralized, disposed
+to take himself at the valuation of the business-like unsentimental
+brains in power.
+
+He found his judge awakening from a nap before his library fire and
+dusting the crumbs from his beard.
+
+"This is an unexpected pleasure," the old gentleman began, then stopped
+short. "What is the matter?" he asked, anxiously. "Sit down."
+
+"What does indigenate mean?"
+
+"Why--a purely technical term for citizenship."
+
+"A friend of yours called upon me to-day, on the strength of having
+known the Otises, and remarked that it was a pity I was ever discharged
+from my American indigenate."
+
+"That you renounced American citizenship upon coming of age. It is a
+pity."
+
+"But I remember doing no such thing. I did no such thing. I certainly
+should remember it."
+
+"You mean that you made no formal act of renunciation of your American
+birthright, obtained no certificate of British nationality?"
+
+"I did nothing of the sort. It is possible that my father did it for
+me--"
+
+"Your father could do nothing." Judge Leslie was staring at him.
+Suddenly he laughed. "You _are_ British! I am almost inclined to believe
+you hopeless. How did I get the impression that you had formally
+expatriated yourself? From Isabel, who, no doubt, woman-like, jumped at
+the conclusion--having known you when you were more British still. And
+you never brought up the subject--"
+
+"Don't regard me as wholly an idiot. I read the Constitution of the
+United States half a dozen times while making up my mind to come here,
+and it is not likely that Article XIV.--'All persons born in the United
+States, etc., are citizens of the United States, etc.'--escaped me. I
+consulted my solicitor, and he read me from some chapter on
+Expatriation, as plainly as may be, that the forfeiture of native
+citizenship was accomplished not only by a formal act of renunciation,
+but followed a long severance with the relations of the government under
+which the person was born, or--acceptance of service under a foreign
+government. Considering that I had left the United States when I was
+five weeks old, and had fought and bled for Great Britain, besides
+serving in her Parliament--where, of course I took my oath of
+allegiance--and that I had been an Englishman to every possible intent
+and purpose, even wearing my titles for some weeks, it seemed to me--and
+to my solicitor--that I would have rather a hard time obtaining an
+American passport."
+
+The judge nodded. "Quite right. All the same, I can't understand why
+your father did not bring the question up when you attained your
+majority, or why you, an ardent Britisher, did not think of it
+yourself."
+
+"You would understand if you lived among us for a few years. In the
+first place my being born in the United States was such a mere incident
+that it was rarely mentioned, and then in the most casual manner. I
+don't suppose my mother ever volunteered a piece of information in her
+life, and my father rarely gave a thought to any matter but sport. My
+grandfather probably disliked the idea--he detested America--at all
+events he never alluded to the subject, and was far too British to dream
+that the child of British parents could be other than British were he
+born in heaven itself. I don't think the matter had entered my mind for
+ten years, when the subject came up the first night of Isabel's visit to
+Capheaton--and I stupefied every one by announcing that I had been born
+in America; but otherwise it made no impression upon them. It is quite
+possible that had there been any prospect of my becoming the heir, when
+I reached my majority, some member of the family would have recalled the
+fact of my birthplace; but Zeal was well then, his wife was bearing
+children rapidly, there was every reason to suppose she would have half
+a dozen boys. Do you mean to say that I have never been an Englishman?"
+
+"Oh, you are all right as far as the British law goes. And you were a
+good and bona fide British subject for thirty years. Don't feel any
+discouragement on that score."
+
+"Then am I an American citizen? Is there to be no long period of waiting
+and of comparative inaction?"
+
+"I am not so sure. There is no provision of the Constitution so open to
+various construction. And none has been so variously construed. I could
+cite a hundred instances--that is, I could read them to you to-morrow.
+But I recall two, and they are fair samples. One child, born in the
+United States, of French parents, returned to France, and after serving
+his term in the French army wished to become an American citizen, and
+obtained his passport without difficulty. A full-grown American citizen
+went to Mexico and fought for Maximilian, and lost not only his own
+citizenship, but that of his children, who had been born in the United
+States. There you are, and there you are again, as dear old Dickens
+would say. But I must think a minute." He transferred his gaze to the
+coals, and was silent for a few moments.
+
+"There is a pretty strong case on both sides," he resumed, in a musing
+tone. "You left this country when an infant, you practically forgot it,
+you entered the service of Great Britain heart and soul, and achieved
+high distinction. You inherited a title and wore it as a matter of
+course. For thirty years you never set foot on American soil, nor at any
+time demanded the protection of the United States, as you might easily
+have done in your foreign wanderings. There is hardly a doubt that if
+England had gone to war with us at any time during the last ten years
+and needed your services you would have given them. However, that
+contingency did not arise, so let it pass. But with an unsympathetic
+State Department and an active enemy or two, all the other points cited
+would make up as clear a case of voluntary expatriation as any on
+record. But there is a pretty good balance on the other side. You _were_
+born in the United States, you _did not_ renounce at any time your
+allegiance, you have the blood of two Presidents in your veins,
+and--here is the important point: you have been one of the heaviest
+tax-payers in California for thirty-two years. Now, as I have intimated,
+these expatriation cases have all been decided on their individual
+merits. I should advise you to go at once to Washington, and enlist the
+influence of the British Ambassador to get you personal and private
+interviews with the powers that be. Then plead your own case. One of two
+things will happen. Either there will be much hemming and hawing, and
+much virtuous and judicial weighing of your peculiar case, article by
+article, or the President himself will decide one way or another
+off-hand--he being what he is. For that reason I think it would be well
+to approach him by degrees, let him digest it a bit. He may be delighted
+that you have thrown over your titles and your brilliant and promising
+career to become an American citizen, invite you to take the oath of
+allegiance forthwith, and order the State Department to issue a
+passport. On the other hand he may fly off at a tangent and be
+righteously indignant that a man with the blood of the Otises and
+Adamses in him, who had the good-fortune to be born on American soil,
+hesitated a moment after reaching man's estate--more particularly that
+he never gave the matter a thought. Nothing could be more problematical.
+I wouldn't bet a twenty-dollar gold piece either way. But, I repeat, you
+must go yourself. Otherwise the affair would hang on interminably.
+Moreover, you must tell no one the object of your journey. Tom Colton
+would pull every wire within his reach, and he is no mean rival, to
+postpone your admission to citizenship, and so, I fancy, would others."
+
+He shot a keen glance at Gwynne. "I think I know who your visitor was,
+to-day, and what he came to Rosewater for. That speech of yours, and its
+effect on the crowd, never escaped the attention of the party bosses,
+and of course you are a marked man in this small community--to say
+nothing of your intimacy with the reform set in town. The judge, who
+started somewhere in this neighborhood as a poor boy, rose from various
+minor situations to be the secretary of Colton's bank, saved his dimes
+and studied law. So far so good; the average self-made American. The law
+leads a good many of us into politics and it wasn't long leading him. He
+was an invaluable party man, with that bluff honest exterior, that
+superabundant magnetism, and that twinkling eye. The world always
+associates a fine upright nature with a twinkling eye. I have one myself
+and I believe that is the main reason why I have always been afraid to
+do wrong. Well, our friend got the bench when he wanted it, and he has
+been a mighty good friend to the corporation that put him there. And it
+has done well by him. He owns a fine house in San Francisco, entertains,
+goes into the best society, has visited Europe several times, and,
+although he is now rising sixty, continues to fool all but a few. He
+might climb higher and become a United States Senator, but the
+corporation finds him too useful here. He rather resents that, but they
+make the sacrifice worth his while. I can well conceive they have
+spotted you, and you may be sure there is little about you they don't
+know. Of course they have made up their minds you are erratic, and have
+not the least doubt that they can manipulate that loose screw. They have
+bought thousands, these ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
+---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- (it was not often the judge swore, but
+when he did he took some time). Grafters, that are debauching the
+country and will soon make it impossible for an honest man to live; and
+although they will no doubt have the grace to approach you with less
+brutal directness than commonly, I knew that was what they were after
+the moment that old rascal began to talk to me this morning. He never
+fooled me. Well, we'll fool him. You go to Washington and get your
+passport, and if you can't hasten matters don't let an outsider know
+what you are after. Plunge into society and let them think you need a
+change from California. Of course you will give your real name. Cat's
+out, anyhow. Perhaps they will think you are on your way home to
+England. Flirt with the girls and be a frivolous young blood. The judge
+asked you to dinner, I suppose? I thought so. You would meet more than
+the judge; if not the first time, then the second and third. Write him a
+note, telling him you are obliged to go south to take a look at your
+mother's ranch. Then obey a sudden impulse and go East by the southern
+route. In Washington be seen as much with your ambassador as possible. I
+don't think these rascals will suspect, for they take for granted that
+you were duly 'discharged from your American indigenate'--I can hear
+him! If they did there would be the devil to pay, but I don't think they
+will. However, don't waste any time."
+
+Gwynne was staring at the fire, his inner being chaos, but he replied in
+a moment that he would start for Washington on the following day.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+There had been no stormier night during the winter. Isabel's old house
+creaked and rattled and groaned like a ship in a whole gale, and the
+wind sent great waves of rain along the veranda. A northern window had
+been blown in and hastily patched. Although but nine o'clock the sky was
+as black as midnight. For several days there had been merely a quiet
+steady fall, but during the afternoon the northern rain belt had sent
+down another great storm and it had been rising ever since.
+
+Isabel, unable to go out, had washed her hair, and was still sitting on
+the hearth-rug, drying it, when she heard a shout outside, then the slam
+of a door at the back of the house, and voices in the kitchen. She was
+too warm and comfortable to be interested. If it were a tramp he was
+welcome to the shelter of the house; if a burglar there were two men to
+dispose of him, and her jewels were in a safe-deposit box in San
+Francisco. She loved a storm and had given herself up to one of those
+moods of pure delight in the present moment, although she had been in
+anything but a good-humor of late, and solitude had palled. But a raging
+storm, the sense of the absolute dominance of nature and the littleness
+of man, always exalted her. She knew that the old house was secure on
+its foundations, and, but that she loved comfort and warmth, she would
+have liked to be out on the marsh in a boat; tense with the
+difficulties of keeping the channel and avoiding the shoals and
+mud-banks obliterated by the risen waters. It amused her to imagine
+herself out there, while dwelling pleasurably, in a doubled
+consciousness, upon the warm red tints of her room. Her dreams were
+barely disturbed by the unknown interloper, but they were shattered a
+moment later by Gwynne's voice and rapid step in the hall.
+
+She had intended to greet him with a cool hauteur after his neglect of
+nearly a month, but she could not rise in time; and, enveloped in a mass
+of hair, spread over a yard of the floor, it was impossible to be
+dignified. So she resolved to be charming.
+
+"I had to come in the back way like a tramp and leave my oil-skins in
+the kitchen," he announced, abruptly, as he entered. "Don't get up. I
+have always wanted to see your hair down. So did Jimmy, I remember. Did
+he?"
+
+"Certainly not. Neither would you if you had not chosen such an
+extraordinary time to call. I am delighted to see you once more after
+all these years, but--what on earth possessed you?" His eyes were
+glittering, although he had dropped his lids, and he did not sit down,
+but moved restlessly about the room.
+
+"Your mother is much better," said Isabel, tentatively.
+
+"Oh yes, and she is looking forward to her motor trip, and telephoned
+this morning that her room was a mass of flowers. I fancy she is a bit
+touched by so much kindness, for she has not been half decent to any one
+but the Trennahans."
+
+"Does she say anything about returning to England? She had it in
+mind--just after the earthquake."
+
+"She has made one or two casual allusions to her return, but she never
+plans far ahead--does what takes her fancy at the moment. But this life
+will never suit her. I imagine she will go before long. London is in her
+blood. Now that she can live properly--will have all she can, or ought
+to want, when the building is paying, there is no object in her
+remaining here."
+
+"How goes the building?"
+
+"How can anything go in this infernal weather? The old shanties are
+down, and the contractor had a sort of tent erected and has done some
+work on the foundations. I should have come directly to California if I
+had had any idea of the money to be made by selling off my superfluous
+land and putting up that building. It might be finished, by this time.
+Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"I am only remodelling my own brain on business lines by slow degrees,
+and no echo of this building fever reached me in Europe. You will
+remember that I did write, while you were wandering about America, that
+Mr. Colton suggested it for both of us. If I did not dwell on the
+subject it was because I had a feminine horror of the mortgage--and no
+idea that you were so keen on making money."
+
+"I am thinking principally of my mother. When a woman has always had the
+world I doubt if she can live long out of it. San Francisco is all very
+well for the young and adventurous, and for those with a strong sense of
+the picturesque, but I can imagine that to a woman of her age and
+experience----Do you know--" he burst out. "I don't know where I am.
+What an extraordinary thing heredity is! I doubt if most people,
+although they would call that a platitude, realize that heredity is
+anything more than a telling word. There are times when I am sitting at
+my stove, surrounded by all those typical American men, who seldom
+mention a subject but politics and farming--for I tabû chickens--or the
+intensely local interests, more or less affected by politics,--there are
+times when I actually feel the nameless ambitious young fellow--not born
+in a log-cabin, perhaps, but next door to it--and endowed with that keen
+compact pioneer determination to stride straight to my goal, whether it
+is the White House or--well--the Presidency of a Trust Company. I
+forget--good God!--_Are_ those years behind me in England? I have caught
+myself wishing that I had kept a scrap-book like other idiots. It
+escapes my memory altogether at times, that I have but to take a steamer
+out of New York to reach the top of civilization again in less than a
+week."
+
+"Perhaps it suggests itself when you remember that with the income you
+can command before long, life in England will be more worth while."
+
+"That was as nasty a one as you ever gave me! No one knows better than
+yourself what brought me to America, and that those conditions cannot be
+altered by money. Could I not have had Julia Kaye's fortune? You need
+not be nasty again! You forget that not only was I in love with her--or
+thought I was--but could have given her the equivalent. She would be the
+last to claim that she was to pay too high a price, even with me thrown
+in. If you don't beg my pardon I'll leave the house."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Isabel, hastily. She was thrilled with
+curiosity; she had never seen him so nearly excited, with the exception
+of one memorable and painful moment. She fancied that she could see one
+of the barriers between them sway.
+
+"It may be that this sudden prospect of wealth, or rather of a goodish
+income that would enable me to keep up a decent establishment in town,
+and a bit of a place somewhere in the hunting country, has upset my
+equilibrium, but it occurred to me this morning as I was splashing
+through the mud--I had to go out to the ranch--in fact it came over me
+with such a rush that I felt like Don Quixote, and every landmark looked
+like a windmill--what is England to-day but the very apex of
+civilization? The Mecca, the reward, of every man and woman with the
+breeding and the intelligence to appreciate it? The best of everything
+goes there, you have but to turn round to help yourself to an infinite
+variety--to be found piecemeal everywhere else on earth. And the very
+best is mine, by inheritance and personal effort. Why in thunder am I
+out here on this ragged edge of civilization struggling with almost
+primitive conditions?--elemental badness, sure enough! What is my
+object? Merely to bring about a set of conditions that exists in England
+to-day. I have them there. Why am I wading into filth up to my knees,
+for the sake of an alien race, when they are mine already?"
+
+"But you had too full a measure. That was the reason you emptied the cup
+and turned your back. You wanted hard work--to use your gifts."
+
+"What does it all amount to? Suppose I insidiously work up a reform
+movement in this State, and am shot into Congress over the head of the
+machine? Suppose my gifts are as extraordinary as I have been led to
+suppose--ordinarily a man feels damned commonplace--and by force of
+those gifts I hold my own against the formidable organizations I shall
+encounter there at every turn? Suppose this reform spirit in the United
+States grows and strengthens, and I come along in time to benefit by it,
+and am landed in Washington--even in the White House? What of it? I had
+a thousand times rather be prime-minister in England--in other words the
+real head of eleven million square miles of the earth's surface,
+dictator to a good part of the world, for that matter. Your public men
+are servants--or ought to be, according to your Constitution. In England
+we render service by courtesy, and rule the roost. In this country every
+man in public life is not only at the mercy of his constituents, but in
+daily terror of having his head cut off by the man above him. Even the
+President has to be a politician above all things."
+
+"You used to talk in England--as if you were not wholly swayed by
+personal ambition."
+
+"It is not so difficult over there to conceive high and mighty
+ideals--fool yourself, if you like. But I'll be hanged if I can see
+myself baring my breast for poisoned arrows, with a seraphic smile on my
+lips, over here! It is all so crude! I want to be a main instrument in
+reform as much as ever--Oh yes! But I am not sure that one motive is
+not to make the life and the game more tolerable. And the everlasting
+machine! There won't be a day, inside or out of it, that I won't run up
+against every damnable meanness that human nature is capable of. I must
+handle these men, placate them--or get out. History has not yet failed
+to repeat itself. If I succeed, in favoring conditions, in forming a new
+party, I may end as a boss myself! Exalted ideal! Inspiring thought!
+Better go home and live like a gentleman. I could have some sort of a
+career, and I have seen enough in this country to drive me towards the
+conclusion that there are worse things in life than curbing one's
+youthful ambitions a bit."
+
+He was still striding up and down the room, his expressive hands as
+restless as his feet. The color was in his face and his eyes were
+blazing. There was a curious magnetism about him that Isabel had never
+been sensible of before, although she had heard much of it in England.
+It was as if his spirit were fully awake; at other times he appeared to
+live with his cool critical brain only, while his inner self, with its
+intense slow passions, slept. She wisely made no comment, and after
+shoving the books violently about the table he went on:
+
+"You may argue that if public men were elected directly by the people
+and the President held office for one term of ten or fifteen years only,
+that a long stride would be made towards the millennium. But it is
+doubtful if even then, forty or fifty different tribes--for that is what
+your State and territory lines effect--could be managed without
+machinery, and machinery develops the lowest attributes in human nature.
+I saw enough of that in the few rotten boroughs we have left in England,
+but my imagination never worked towards the full and original
+development in this country. We have other faults; the serenest optimist
+would never deny them; but, faults or no faults, we crown civilization
+to-day. The richest man in America has not the least idea what it means
+to live like a gentleman in our sense. And there is no flaw in my
+appreciation of your country. In many respects it is the most
+marvellous the world has known--but--I sometimes wonder if the pioneer
+blood in my veins is red enough to stand it. No matter what the most
+successful reformers accomplish, there will be no high civilization here
+in our time--no background. Unconsciously, or otherwise, I shall always
+have the goal of England in my mind--and if that is the case, why am I
+here? Isn't civilization the highest that man is capable of
+accomplishing, the best that Earth has to offer any of us? What sense is
+there in going back to the beginnings and plodding or fighting towards a
+goal you were born to? It's more than once I've felt like Don Quixote.
+The whole infernal country is a windmill--and a large percentage of its
+inhabitants are windbags."
+
+"Of course you have a streak of Don Quixote in you. All men of genius
+have, I suppose. You felt that you had a mission--to pack a great deal
+into a convenient phrase. You could do nothing in England but sit down
+and sup with the elect. You would have choked very quickly. And if you
+went back you would not stay. You would not only be bored, but you know
+now how badly this country needs one disinterested man of genius."
+
+"I am not disinterested. I never felt more selfish in my life."
+
+"You have an immense capacity for disinterested statesmanship. Of course
+all motives, especially with the highly gifted, are complex. You have
+said yourself they would be fanatics otherwise. And you are far more
+American than you know, although you have just confessed that you do
+know it well enough at times. All your American ancestors may be living
+again in you. It was your own instinct, no influence of mine, that sent
+you out here, filled with mixed but high ambitions. No full-blooded
+Englishman would ever do what you have done. Insanity and inebriety skip
+a generation. Why not Americanism? Heaven knows there is nothing
+American about your mother. And when the political cleanup comes, as it
+is bound to--"
+
+"Oh, I am sick of this everlasting optimism: 'Everything is bound to
+come out all right,' 'God's own country,' and all the rest of it. I can
+understand it well enough out here, though. It is a wonder to me that
+any Californian has energy enough to care. Life is easy at the worst.
+The scoundrels batten unnoticed--although they are sending up the price
+of everything; and the most ungrateful and rapacious labor class on
+earth never get their deserts. The labor class hasn't a leg to stand on,
+so far as bare justice goes. Pity they can't have a taste of Eastern
+factories and wages and climate for a while. If it were not for its bay
+and the tremendous significance of its position opposite the Orient,
+California would be what it ought to be, the pleasure gardens of the
+world. No politics, no labor-unions, merely a succession of estates, big
+and little, where a man could live a happy animal existence for
+one-third of the year, after working the other two-thirds--that is a
+sane division. But if I stay here I work. And for what ultimate object?
+England, as sure as fate."
+
+"You cannot possibly tell how you will feel twenty years hence--"
+
+"Twenty years! That is a fair estimate, no doubt! I believe that the
+real secret of discontent has been the prospect of this cursed period of
+inaction. Nice substitute--coruscating as a blooming barrister; and it's
+mighty difficult to travel along for four years without showing your
+hand. It requires a tact that I may or may not have. If I have it, there
+may be other depths of hideous guile, as yet undiscovered. I have had
+glimpses of them already. All these farmers that I am nursing? What if
+my beneficent virus works too quickly--before I can represent them? Some
+other fellow reaps the benefit; and when my turn comes, likely as not
+there will be a reaction. I've to keep and increase my hold on these men
+of every nationality under the sun, as well as upon the seasoned old
+Americans, lest they should break away from me. Nice job I've cut out."
+He hesitated a moment, but added: "Beastly idea to subject all to the
+same law. It should be ten years for immigrants, and one for the
+man-of-the-world anxious to take the oath of allegiance--not that I am
+frantic to take it."
+
+"I never knew any one so keen for obstacles; and now that you have found
+more than you bargained for--"
+
+"It's not the obstacles that daunt me. If I were only sure of
+accomplishing any result worth while, if I had the materials to work
+on--if I were sure I cared! The American is an unhatched Englishman, but
+he won't be hatched out in my time----I even long for the close compact
+drama of English life. Everything is spread over such a vast loose
+surface here. These four years through which I may--must stumble along
+with my hands tied, are a fair example. And it seems to me that I never
+go to bed without seeing a face on the dark trying to enunciate: 'What
+for?' 'Why?'"
+
+He sat down suddenly on a chair in front of her and took his head in his
+hands. "Do you ever ask yourself those questions?" he demanded,
+abruptly.
+
+Isabel nodded. He noted absently that she looked like an elf with her
+face half-hidden by her hair, and that he could see but one little black
+mole, but a narrow ring of blue about the dilated pupils of her eyes,
+the tiny dimple at the corner of her mouth. She wore a loose blue
+wrapper, and the wood fire leaped in high flames behind her. The storm
+was terrific. He suddenly realized that this was the only homelike room
+he knew outside of England. He felt as if nothing would ever give him
+peace again, but he was suddenly and overwhelmingly glad to be
+there--and comfortably alone with Isabel on this raging night. He stared
+at her until his own pupils dilated, but she replied more tranquilly
+than she felt.
+
+"_Cui bono_ is the motto on Earth's coat of arms. The only thing that
+saves us is that we don't see it all the time. There are long intervals
+in which we eat and sleep and dance and love and play at politics and
+enjoy the storm--and our best companions."
+
+"We certainly are not here to spend our lives preparing for another
+world. Otherwise there would be no sense in the complexities of
+civilizations. A man could do that much in a cave. It is merely the
+diabolism of instinct that prompts the young to believe that the race is
+all. Certainly love is not the only source of happiness. I have been
+ecstatically happy when writing--thinking, in the fever of composition
+that I was dashing out the finest thing in literature. I have been happy
+under fire, or excited enough to think so. And I have felt enough
+exultation with exaltation to make happiness when I have been on a
+platform and carried a hostile crowd off its head and to my feet. If two
+people were indescribably mated--I don't know--"
+
+"Why not deliberately accept the doctrine that there is a purpose, even
+if you are not permitted to read the riddle of life--"
+
+"All very well, but what have politics to do with it? You may answer
+that a man should lay up all the credits he can, and that he can
+possibly get more by cleaning out the political trough than in any other
+way. If those are my lines I suppose I shall work along them, but my
+higher faculties whisper that to live this life on the intellectual
+plane, fighting for your country when necessary, is the rational
+existence for those that have the luck to be born to the good things of
+the old civilizations. Here they don't know any better, or if they do
+they can't help themselves. If that plane isn't meant to live on, why is
+it there? Has a man the right deliberately to step off the high plane
+upon which a long succession of circumstances have planted him--pull up
+his roots and plant them in a virgin soil?"
+
+"Perhaps it is his duty to go where he is most needed--where his riper
+instincts and experience--"
+
+"Your arguments are always good, otherwise I should not be here arguing
+with you. What do you really think of love?"
+
+She jumped with the suddeness of the attack, and then drew backward a
+little, for he was leaning towards her and she felt his masculine
+magnetism as she had never done before. It pulled and repelled her,
+fascinated and filled her with resentment. And she was fully alive to
+the romantic conditions, the wild night, the isolation, the vibrating
+atmosphere. But she replied, soberly:
+
+"I don't think about it. I buried all that--"
+
+"Chuck it on the dust-heap! It served its purpose: women should have
+some such experience in their first youth as men have others. You are
+the better for it, because you worked off on the poor devil all the
+morbid and ultra-romantic tendencies that were spoiling your life. But
+let it go at that. It was no more love than my first Byronic madness for
+one of my mother's friends when I was sixteen--"
+
+"You were thirty when you were in love with Mrs. Kaye. And she was not
+even your second--nor your tenth, no doubt."
+
+"Quite right. I do not understand and shall waste no time on the effort.
+All men run pretty much the same gamut. That attack was the most
+commonplace sort of passion, no madness in it, no idealization, no sense
+of mating--"
+
+"And how, may I ask, do you expect to know when you really do fall in
+love--"
+
+"I'll know, all right. I wish you would put up your hair. You look
+uncanny, not like a woman at all. You have too many sides. I like you
+when you are human and normal."
+
+"If you think my hair in its proper place will accomplish that
+result--my hair-pins are up-stairs on my dressing-table--"
+
+He disappeared instantly. When he returned she was standing and coiling
+her hair about her head. Her sleeves were loose and the attitude bared
+her arms. As Gwynne handed her the pins, one by one, he stared,
+fascinated; but when she had finished and shaken down her sleeves,
+returning his stare with two polar stars, he turned his back suddenly
+and resumed his tramp of the room.
+
+"I have changed my mind," he said, abruptly. "I had intended to marry
+you on any terms, merely because you suited my critical taste. But I
+believe that if I married you in that way I should beat you or kill
+you--or you would kill me. You are capable of anything. Love would
+square matters with us--nothing else."
+
+"Then is the engagement broken?" asked Isabel, placidly. She did not sit
+down, but stood with a foot on the fender.
+
+He relieved his feelings by kicking a stool across the room, then came
+and stood in front of her.
+
+"Could you love me?" he demanded.
+
+"I am not the village prophet."
+
+"Have you made up your mind you will not marry me?"
+
+"Oh yes--that."
+
+"Because you couldn't love me, or because you are determined not to
+marry?"
+
+"I won't feel and suffer and have my life torn to tatters when I can
+keep it whole! I had rather marry you without love, if I believed myself
+indispensable to your success in life."
+
+"Much you know about it. I won't have you on any such terms."
+
+"You are in no imminent danger. Heavens, what a wind! You must stay here
+to-night. If the spare room is too cold you can sleep on this divan."
+
+"If that is a polite hint, I am ready to take it. I have been here long
+enough."
+
+"Oh, but I mean it. I will not hear of you riding back in this pitch
+darkness. You would be more likely to go into the marsh than not. You
+can return to Rosewater so late to-morrow that Sister Ann will infer you
+have made a morning call."
+
+"I shall return to-night. It was as dark when I came, and I am not
+altogether a fool. Neither is my horse."
+
+"But you are not so familiar with the road," murmured Isabel,
+irrepressibly.
+
+"That is the one decent thing you have said to me to-night. It is these
+sudden lapses into the wholly feminine that save me from despair. What a
+night for romance, and you and I sparring like two prize-fighters! That
+is as far as we have ever got. If you would ever let me know
+you--sometimes I have an odd fancy that I can see a lamp burning in your
+breast, and that if ever I got at it, and searched all the nooks and
+crannies of your strange nature by its light, I should love you as
+profoundly as it is possible for a man to love a woman."
+
+"I am afraid it is only a taper in a cup of oil. At all events it is not
+a search-light, even to myself. I fancy people only seem complicated to
+others when they do not wholly understand themselves."
+
+"Do you understand yourself?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Are you perfectly satisfied that you never could love me?"
+
+She reddened and her sensitive mouth moved, but she brought her teeth
+together. "That has nothing to do with it."
+
+"Everything!"
+
+"Nothing!"
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that you are literally contented with your life
+as it is?--living out here alone with nothing to do but read and look
+after those confounded chickens? You have the most romantic temperament
+I have ever met, and the way you gratify it would make an elephant
+laugh."
+
+"I dream and think of the future."
+
+"Future? You saw what that amounted to when you were in town--"
+
+"I have shaken off the impression. It must have been that I had too much
+at once--and the purely frivolous, which offended my puritanical
+streak--"
+
+"You don't like the Bohemian crowd any better."
+
+"There are plenty of others. When I am ready I shall make the plunge and
+forbid myself to shrink from realities--"
+
+"And the only people that will interest you will be those deep in public
+affairs. A woman to be a political power must be married. Otherwise she
+becomes the worst sort of feminine intriguer."
+
+"I am interested in the women that are interested in the improvement of
+all things."
+
+"And what is their ultimate aim, for heaven's sake? The franchise. Do
+you mean to tell me that you intend to become a Club woman? I had sooner
+you wrote a book."
+
+"I have no intention of doing either--"
+
+"In other words you are a plain dreamer, and a selfish one at that--"
+
+"I try not to be selfish. I visit no ill-humor on any one--but you!--and
+I do good where I can. I should be more selfish if I ran the risk of
+making--some man unhappy in matrimony."
+
+"Well, I'm sick of the subject. I came to say good-bye for a time. I'm
+off to the south to-morrow, and then east on business. I don't know when
+I shall be back--Oh, you can turn white--I can make you turn white!"
+
+"What do you expect when you fire such a piece of news at me? What is
+behind this?"
+
+"I have told you enough."
+
+"Don't you trust me?"
+
+"Oh, you can keep a secret. I don't know that I want to tell you."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"Oh, well, it would be beastly ungrateful in me not to. I have had a
+hint that, not having de-Americanized myself formally when I came of
+age, I may still be an American citizen. Judge Leslie has advised me to
+go to Washington and find out, and I am going. Are you really so
+interested?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Isabel, softly. "I am interested! I have been afraid you
+might become discouraged and disgusted. Four more years would be a long
+time. Are you glad?"
+
+"I don't know whether I am or not. When it comes to taking the oath of
+allegiance to the United States--if that is sprung on me in
+Washington--I shall feel more like taking the next steamer for England
+and making my oaths there. It is a little too sudden."
+
+"All this hesitation and doubt are natural enough until you are settled
+down, and become too accustomed to the country to think of anything
+else--"
+
+"I accept the balm. But I have less hesitation than you
+imagine--whatever the doubt and disgust. And I really believe the secret
+of my unrest is you! Good heavens! _Do_ I love you--_already_--that
+would be the last straw!"
+
+He was staring at her, and something in his face blinded her. She turned
+cold from head to foot; but she moved her glance to the baskets on the
+mantel-shelf, and replied, quietly:
+
+"It will take some time for you to know whether you are in love again
+or not. You have seen me too constantly--barring the last month. I have
+become in many ways necessary to you. When you move to San Francisco, as
+I am convinced you will, and have many other resources----propinquity
+is all there is to ninth-tenths of what we call love----and then a
+little more kills it! Even if I were under the same delusion as you are
+I should not yield to it."
+
+"I do love you," he said, as slowly and clearly as he was capable of
+enunciating. But his voice was hoarse, and she was sensible, without
+turning her head, that he was rigid. "It is different--quite different.
+I am willing to wait, however. I understand your hesitation. When I
+return--"
+
+"Doubt of the reality of your--well--"
+
+"Love," said Gwynne, grimly.
+
+But Isabel could not bring herself to utter the word. "One way or the
+other, it does not alter my determination not to marry."
+
+"Let that rest for a while. What I want to know is, could you--do you
+love me?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know! I only know I don't want to. You have a tremendous
+influence--you have made every one else seem commonplace and
+uninteresting--I have resented very much your neglect this last month. I
+am willing to tell you all this--also, that I have dreamed, imagined
+myself in love with you. But I am convinced that if you let me alone I
+shall get over it."
+
+"I have no intention of letting you alone."
+
+She moved backward suddenly, and he laughed. "I wouldn't touch you with
+a forty-foot pole," he said, roughly, "unless you wanted me. That,
+perhaps, shows how far gone I am. But precious little you know about
+men. Or yourself. If I kissed you this minute you would succumb--"
+
+He turned suddenly and was down the hall and had slammed the kitchen
+door behind him before she realized that she was actually alone, that he
+meant to leave the house. For a moment she clutched the edge of the
+mantel-piece in a passion of relief and regret. Then her femininity was
+swept aside by her hospitable instinct and vehement fear. She ran down
+the hall and into the kitchen. But even his rain garments and boots were
+gone. She opened the back door and peered out into the inky darkness. A
+light was moving in the stable. The rain was falling in a flood and the
+wind almost drove her backward. But she gathered up her gown and ran as
+fast as she could make headway to the stable. He was alone, and
+tightening his horse's saddle-girths by the light of a dark lantern. He
+gave her a bare glance and went on with his work.
+
+"You must not go!" She was forced to scream. "You shall not. Why, you
+are mad. The marsh--such conventionality is ridiculous. I refuse to
+recognize it."
+
+He rose to his feet and led his horse outside. But before he could vault
+to the saddle she caught his arm and dragged him backward. "You shall
+not go! You shall not!" She could hardly hear the sound of her voice.
+But she heard his, and there was nothing in either storm or darkness to
+blunt the sense of touch. For a moment she felt as if the whole had
+never been halved, as if they two were youth incarnate; and his arm was
+like vibrating iron along her back. She thought he was going to kiss her
+and dazedly moved her head towards him. But he cried into her ear
+instead:
+
+"I stay if you marry me to-morrow."
+
+"No, no, no!" Her will sprang through her lips, and before it was beaten
+down again she saw a spark of light engulfed in the dark, and stood
+alone in the storm, wondering if the world had turned over.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+     "_Monday Morning._
+
+     "This is merely to announce that I survived the marsh, and that
+     upon my return we will resume where we left off last night. E. G."
+
+Isabel received this note early in the morning. That night she had
+accepted an invitation of some weeks' standing, and was established in
+the old Yorba mansion on Nob Hill. She anathematized her cowardice, but
+solitude was beyond her endurance for the moment. She had made up her
+mind that she would not think of Gwynne at all, much less give herself
+opportunities to miss and desire him; and her will, reinforced by
+conditions, was strong enough at times to persuade her that she hated
+him.
+
+And there was nothing in the Trennahan household to try her nerves,
+everything to soothe them. Although the old buff walls and terrible
+carpets of Mrs. Yorba's day had gone long since and the house had been
+completely refurnished, it looked like a home, not a museum. Trennahan
+had taken his family to Europe many times, and they had brought back
+much that was rare and beautiful; but nothing stood out obtrusively, not
+even a color. They entertained constantly in a quiet way, and if
+Magdaléna was far too Spanish to seek out the clever of all sets, and
+Trennahan too indifferent, at least Isabel met daily such of the _haute
+noblesse_ as were not completely fossilized, and many men that
+interested her well enough. Moreover, as Mrs. Trennahan now had a
+grown-up daughter, she was obliged to take her to the cotillons and
+other routs given under the merciless supervision of the Leader. Isabel
+accompanied her as a matter of course, and when she declined an
+invitation her guest was at liberty to go with the ever faithful Mrs.
+Hofer.
+
+For three weeks Isabel did little thinking. She went to the ranch once a
+week for the day only, spent an occasional hour with Lady Victoria. Even
+then she was barely reminded of Gwynne. She was busy during every moment
+while in the country, and her relative was no more communicative than of
+yore. Only once did Victoria remark casually, that, by a sort of poetic
+justice, Gwynne was detained in the south with a sprained ankle, and was
+hurling maledictions at fate from the classic shades of Santa Barbara.
+Isabel grudgingly admired the restraint with which he denied himself the
+possible solace of correspondence with herself, and it crossed her mind
+once or twice that the young man might have the understanding of women
+that proceeded from instinct, if not from study. But she deliberately
+dismissed him, and although his name was frequently mentioned in her
+presence, she soon ceased to turn cold, and forced him to flit with a
+hundred others across the surface of her mind.
+
+For the first time in her life she flirted desperately, and with others
+besides young Hofer. She was quite wickedly indifferent to consequences,
+and was inspired to woo the fickle goddess of popularity. The peace and
+charm and intellectual relief of the Trennahan home did much to modify
+her shrinking from realities, and the effort to please, and the
+abandonment to the purely frivolous instincts of youth, were the only
+aides her beauty needed to achieve that popularity she had abstractly
+desired the night Gwynne brought her the stars. She no longer desired it
+at all, but she disguised this fact, and reaped the reward.
+
+Moreover, although her analytical faculty slept in the darkest wing of
+her brain, the mere fact that she was stormily loved and desired by a
+man to whom she was powerfully attracted, that for a moment she had been
+awake and eager in his embrace, had warmed her blood and given her an
+insolent magnetism that she had never possessed before.
+
+Through Mr. Colton she received a formal request from Gwynne to dedicate
+the Otis Building--named in honor of the creator of the family
+fortunes--on the day the last of the foundation-stones was laid. In
+company with half a hundred other young people in automobiles, she
+astonished South of Market Street, one beautiful spring day--the spring
+was making desperate assaults upon the lingering winter--and amidst much
+mock solemnity and many cheers, deposited into the chiselled crypt of
+one of the great concrete blocks upon which the building would rest, a
+strong-box containing three of Concha Argüello's Baja California pearls,
+several family daguerreotypes, and the original deed of sale which had
+transferred the property from the city to the first James Otis. When the
+ceremony was over the contractor shook hands with her approvingly.
+
+"That's as good a place as any for a deed of sale in this here town," he
+remarked. "For no shake will ever budge them concrete pillars. They're
+down to bed-rock. And no fire'll ever crack them, neither. We'll begin
+on the steel frame to-morrow, and you must come down occasionally and
+cheer us up. It'll be worth it. The Otis's goin' to be the cock o' the
+walk. Better make up your mind to have them terra-cotta facings."
+
+"Oh, they would not raise the rents, and would hardly be appreciated by
+their present neighbors," said Isabel, lightly. "I am going to send you
+a bottle of champagne to-night, and you must drink to the health of The
+Otis."
+
+The man promised fervently that he would, and then after ordering beer
+from a neighboring saloon for the workmen, Isabel and her party motored
+out to the beach beyond the Cliff House, where a number of old
+street-cars had been converted into bath-houses, and disported
+themselves in the waves until it was time to rush home and make ready
+for the Mardi Gras ball.
+
+This yearly function was given in the Institute of Art on Nob Hill, the
+wooden Gothic mansion with bow-windows, erected in the Eighties by a
+railroad millionaire who had barely survived his nimble victorious
+assault upon Fortune. His widow had presented his "monument" to Art, and
+now its graceful flimsy walls housed much that was valuable in canvas
+and marble, and more that was worthless. Once a year, on the eve of
+Lent, Society gave a Mardi Gras ball, and such of the artists as were
+known to the elect decorated the rooms, and contributed certain
+surprises. This year, partly out of compliment to the Leader and Miss
+Otis, partly because the old Spanish spirit had been roaming through its
+ancient haunts of late, the interior of the mansion was hung with red
+and yellow. Isabel, in full Spanish costume, led the grand march with
+young Hofer, who was dressed as a toreador, and supported the jeers of
+his friends in the gallery with what fortitude he could summon: he was
+plump and pink and golden. The great room, surrounded with boxes draped
+with the colors of Spain and filled with women splendidly dressed and
+jewelled, was very gay and inspiring, and the masques flung confetti and
+had a squib for everybody with a salient characteristic. When the march
+finished, Isabel, who wore a half-mask of black satin, and her hair in
+two long braids plaited with gold tinsel, danced a Spanish dance by
+herself, alternating tambourine and castanets. She had practised it
+during the past week with a professional, and she gave it with all the
+graceful sexless abandon of those California girls, who, a hundred years
+before that night, were dancing out at the Presidio and Mission. She was
+the success of the evening as she had purposed to be, and went home with
+two proposals to her credit, and as gratified a vanity as ever
+titillated the nerves of an ambitious and heartless young flirt. It was
+not the first time that Isabel had deliberately elected to play a rôle
+and achieved so signal a triumph that she was beset with the doubt if
+she had not but just discovered herself. As she fell asleep in the dawn
+of Lent it was with the somewhat cynical reflection that perhaps she
+could make quite as great a success of the rôle of the statesman's wife
+were she to essay it.
+
+The roads were still in too muddy and broken a condition for the
+long-projected automobile trip, and the Trennahans had decided to hire a
+special car and journey to Mexico, spending some time in Southern
+California. They urged Isabel to go with them, but she was sure that she
+had had all the respite she needed, nor would she neglect her chickens
+any longer. In truth she said good-bye to the party, which included not
+only Lady Victoria, but several other congenial spirits, with a
+considerable equanimity. She was suddenly tired of them all and glad to
+go back to her solitudes.
+
+Although she did not return with that exuberance of joy, which, upon
+former occasions had made her feel like a long-prisoned nymph restored
+to her native woodland, still she was more than content to be at home
+again, and sat on her veranda until darkness closed the long evening.
+Every trace of the winter's madness had vanished. The marsh was high and
+red above the fallen waters, the hills were green, the trees budding,
+wild flowers were beginning to show their heads. The scene, until the
+last ray of twilight had gone, leaving that dark formlessness of a
+California night with its horrid suggestion, was almost as peaceful as
+England.
+
+For several days Isabel, from reaction after weeks of incessant gayety,
+and the heaviness of early spring, was too languid to find even her
+Leghorns interesting. She slept late, yawned through the day; and never
+had her hammock--swung on the porch at the beginning of
+spring--possessed so recurrent an attraction. At the same time she was
+conscious, under the physical inertia which had brought her mind to a
+standstill, that she avoided Rosewater lest she should be forced to talk
+of Gwynne. He was still in Santa Barbara, and it was likely that he
+would be persuaded to go with the Trennahans to Mexico. There was time
+enough to seek his passport, and Isabel could well imagine that his
+impatience was not uncontrollable. No doubt he understood by this time
+that he could expect no change in her, if indeed he had not dismissed
+the matter from his mind.
+
+She was rudely shaken out of her apathy by a long telegram from him,
+dated at El Paso:
+
+     "I have come this far with the Trennahans. Go on to Washington
+     to-day. Expect me any time now. But should I be detained will you
+     go over to the ranch occasionally? Use old power of attorney should
+     occasion arise. Glad you made the running you wanted at last.
+     Better order terra-cotta facings for The Otis. Am told that two
+     other buildings will go up shortly in neighborhood. Quite fit
+     again. E. G."
+
+The delight and relief this telegram induced, the subtle sensation of
+hope and flattery, not only routed torpidity, but lashed her into such a
+state of fury that she ran up to her bedroom and indulged in an attack
+of nerves. When it was over she faced the truth with the unshrinking
+clarity of vision she could summon at will. But if she was not as
+astonished as she thought she ought to be, she was no less angry, not
+only with herself, but with life for playing her such a trick. Less than
+ever did she want to marry, and cease to be wholly herself, to run the
+risk of disillusionment and weariness, and that ultimate philosophy
+which was no compensation for the atrophy and death of imagination. But
+no less did she turn appalled from the thought of a future without
+Gwynne. All her old vague plans were suddenly formless, and she felt
+that if she even faced the prospect of regarding the shifting beauties
+of the Rosewater marsh for the rest of her life, she would hate nature
+as much as she now hated her treacherous self. And none could divine
+better than she, that, present or dismissed, when a man has conquered a
+woman's invisible and indefensible part she might as well give him the
+rest. He is in control. She has lost her freedom for ever. So strong was
+the feeling of mental possession that Isabel glanced uneasily about the
+room, half-expecting to see the soul of Gwynne; wondering inconsequently
+if it would descend to notice that her eyes were red. But she vowed
+passionately that she would not marry him. If she had to be unhappy, far
+better unhappy alone and free, with some of her illusions undispelled.
+She had seen no married happiness that she envied, even where there was
+a fine measure of love and philosophy. Even Anabel had come to her one
+day in town, looking rather strained and worn, and, in the seclusion of
+Isabel's bedroom, had confessed that the constant exactions of a
+husband, three children, and migratory servants "got on her nerves," and
+made her long for a change of any sort. "And there are so many little
+odd jobs, in a house full of children," she had added, with a sigh. "And
+they recur every day. You can no more get away from them than from your
+three meals; I never really have a moment I can call my own. Of course I
+am perfectly happy, but I do wish Tom were not in politics and would
+take me to Europe for a few years."
+
+And if Anabel was not happy--wholly happy--with her supreme capacity for
+the domestic life, how could she hope to endure the yoke? She with her
+impossible ideals and theories? Not that they were impossible; but to
+anticipate, in this world, the plane upon which the more highly endowed
+natures dared to hope they were to dwell in the next, absolute freedom
+was necessary. Isabel's theory of life--for women of her make--had not
+altered a whit, but the beckoning finger had lost its vigor. That left
+her with no material out of which to model a future for this
+plane--which, of course, was another triumph to the credit of the race.
+
+She knew that Gwynne had conquered, that she had really loved him, as
+soon as he had ceased to play upon her maternal instincts. She had
+casually assumed at the time that her interest in him was decreasing,
+but in this day of retrospect, she realized keenly that it had marked
+the opening of a new chapter. This was, perhaps, the most signal of
+Gwynne's victories, for the maternal tenderness for man means maternal
+dominance, a cool sense of superiority. Isabel was so conscious of
+Gwynne's mastery that she longed to kick him as she blushed to recall
+she had done once before. She rubbed her arms instinctively, as if she
+still felt the furious pressure of his fingers, and when the memory of
+another sort of pressure abruptly presented itself she hurriedly bathed
+her eyes and went out on her horse.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+For a week she was so moody and irascible that Abraham twice gave
+warning, Old Mac artfully took to his bed with rheumatism, and only the
+inexcitable Chuma was unconcerned. She rode her horse nearly to death,
+snubbed Anabel--whose children were down with the measles--over the
+telephone, and even boxed the ears of a dilatory hen. At the end of the
+week a sudden appreciation of her likeness to a cross old maid
+frightened her, and time and the weather completed the cure. Her
+ill-humor, which had scourged through every avenue of her being, took
+itself off so completely that it seemed to announce it had had enough of
+her and would return no more.
+
+And the spring came with a rush. The hills burst into buttercups, "blue
+eyes," yellow and purple lupins, the heavy pungent gold-red poppy. The
+young green of weeping willows and pepper-trees looked indescribably
+delicate against the hard blue sky. Rosewater was a great park, all her
+little squares and gardens, and long rambling streets, set thick with
+camellias, roses, orange-trees heavy with fruit, immense acacia-trees
+loaded with fragrant yellow powdery blossoms. Main Street was clean
+again, and so were the farmers and their teams at the hitching-rails;
+the girls were beginning to wear white at church on Sunday, and to walk
+about without their hats. The great valley was as green as the hills,
+save where the earth had been turned, and one or two almond orchards
+were so pink they could be seen a mile away. It was spring in all its
+glory, without a taint of summer's heat, or a lingering chill of winter.
+
+In Isabel's garden were many old Castilian rose bushes, that for fifty
+years had covered themselves pink with the uninterrupted lustiness of
+youth; and their penetrating, yet chaste and elusive fragrance, combined
+with the rich heavy perfume of the acacia-tree beside the house, would
+have inspired a distiller and blender of scents. The birds sang as if
+possessed of a new message; and several of Isabel's prize roosters,
+tired of their old harems, flew over the wire-fences and strutted off in
+search of adventure, proclaiming their route by loud and boastful
+clamor. When they were captured by the unsympathetic Abe and restored to
+their excited ladies, they flew at and smacked them soundly, then tossed
+back their red combs and crowed with all their might: a pæan to the ever
+conquering male.
+
+There were other flowers besides Castilian roses in Isabel's garden,
+haphazardly set out and cared for, but the more riotous and luxuriant
+for that. And all around her, save on the Leghorns' hills, was the gay
+delicate tapestry of the wild flowers. The marsh glittered like bronze
+in the sunlight. In the late afternoon it was as violet as the hills. In
+the evening afterglows it swam in as many colors as the Roman Campagna.
+At this hour the sky was often as pink as the almond orchards, melting
+above into a blue light but intense; while everything in its glow, the
+tall trees on the distant mountains, and the picturesque irregularities
+of the marsh-lands, seemed to lift up their heads and drink in the
+beauty until Isabel expected to see them reel.
+
+And the pagan intoxication of spring took as complete a possession of
+her. She sat under the long drooping yellow sprays of her acacia-tree,
+her lap full of the pink Castilian roses, and dreamed. No one could help
+being in love in the spring, she concluded, given a concrete
+inspiration; and far be it from any creature so close to nature as
+herself to attempt to stem that insidious musical scented tide. It was
+possible that Gwynne would not return, or returning, would flout her;
+she hardly cared. In fact so steeped was she in the pleasures of merely
+loving, in a sweet if somewhat halcyon passion, that she had no wish
+that the mood should be dispelled; and felt that she could ask nothing
+more than to spend the rest of her mortal life with a beautiful
+memory--like the aunt whose dust lay over the mountain in the convent
+yard. She knew that if Gwynne returned and demanded her, she should be
+tempted to marry him--she never went so far as to promise either him or
+herself the rounded chapter; but one of the strongest instincts of her
+nature was to squeeze the passing moment dry, jealously drink every drop
+of its juice. She had no intention of tormenting herself with
+problematical futures. Futures took care of themselves, anyhow.
+
+She was subconciously aware that she could conceive and portray a more
+extreme phase of emotion than this present evolution, but she
+deliberately avoided the phantasm. She was utterly, ideally, absurdly
+happy. Not for a moment did she desire the raw material, the concrete
+substance, to which all dreams owe their being. The wild pagan gladness
+of the wood-nymph, rejoicing in her freedom from the worries of common
+mortals, and in the vision of an undefined but absolute happiness, was
+enough for her. Sometimes, when walking in the early morning, far into
+the hills, and away from human eyes, she let the light electric breezes
+intoxicate her, and danced as she walked, or sang; nor, indeed, was she
+above whistling. She often spent the evening hours on the marsh, those
+long twilights that are so like England's; remaining, sometimes, as late
+into the night as the tide would permit, enjoying the contrast of the
+lonely desolate menacing landscape with the utter beauty of the day. She
+avoided San Francisco and Rosewater, but the extraordinary effervescence
+within her demanded an outlet of a sort, and she was so radiant to her
+small staff that they looked upon her with awe. She had actually a
+fortnight of bliss, and hoped that nothing might happen to disturb it
+for ever and ever. But no one's world has ever yet stood still.
+
+One day Tom Colton's hoarse voice over the telephone begged her to "come
+at once." She was on her horse in ten minutes, in Rosewater in half an
+hour. There were groups of people in the street near the younger
+Coltons' house, the front door was open, several members of the family
+were passing in and out. As she entered the garden she saw one of them
+tie a knot of white ribbon to the bell knob.
+
+Her first impulse was to run. She felt that rather would she hear of
+Gwynne's death than face Anabel in her maternal agony. But she set her
+teeth and went on, far more frightened than sympathetic. The people that
+overflowed the hall and parlor were all crying, but nodded to her, and
+Tom Colton, haggard and white, appeared at the head of the stair and
+beckoned. He pointed to the door of his wife's bedroom, as she ascended,
+and she went forward hastily and entered without knocking. Anabel was
+standing on the threshold of the door that led into the nursery. Her
+face was white and wild, but she had not been crying.
+
+"Isabel!" she exclaimed, in loud astonished voice, "my baby is dead! My
+baby is dead!"
+
+Then Isabel, greatly to her own surprise, dropped into a chair and burst
+into vehement tears. For the moment the child was hers, she suffered
+pangs of maternal bereavement that seemed to tear her breast and twist
+her heart. But there was a terrible silence in those two rooms, and in a
+few moments it chilled and calmed her. She looked up to see Anabel
+staring at her with blank expanded eyes.
+
+"What are you crying for? You?" demanded the young mother. "I never saw
+you cry before. And it's not your baby."
+
+"I know it," said Isabel, humbly. "I suppose it is because I am so sorry
+for you. I am--terribly."
+
+"I never thought you had that much feeling," said Anabel, dully. "You
+were always the strong one. Come and see my baby."
+
+Isabel rose, trembling and unnerved, but no longer shrinking, and
+followed Anabel into the nursery, where the child, looking like a little
+wax-work, lay in its crib.
+
+"She is dead!" said Anabel, in the same astonished indignant voice. "My
+baby!" She caught Isabel's arm and shook it violently. "It isn't true,"
+she commanded. "Say it is not. How can it be? She spoke and laughed only
+two hours ago. The relapse was nothing. The doctor said so. That is not
+my baby." And then her brain stopped for a moment, and Isabel carried
+her into the other room.
+
+She remained with her until after the funeral. Anabel, when she
+recovered her senses, cried hopelessly for hours, but gradually
+controlled herself and rose and went about her affairs with a stern
+calm. It was her first trouble, but not for nothing had she been given a
+square jaw and a sturdy little figure. She was filled with dumb protest,
+and laid away her bright careless youth in the child's coffin, but she
+accepted the inevitable.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Leslie were in the south when the baby died, but arrived
+for the funeral. Until then Anabel clung to her friend, and so did young
+Colton, who was far more demoralized than his wife. He did not brush his
+hair, nor go to bed, but wandered about the house like a bewildered
+spirit, occasionally smiting his hands together, or embracing the other
+two children convulsively. He had no support to offer his wife, and
+Isabel was glad to stay with the brave stricken little creature; but
+when Mrs. Leslie arrived she felt herself superfluous and returned home.
+
+She had had little time to think of Gwynne, but it had crossed her mind
+that she would accept this heartrending episode, in which she had been
+called upon to play an intimate part, as but another warning; one,
+moreover, that would stand its ground did she attempt to force it aside.
+But Gwynne entered and filled her dispossessed mind the moment she sat
+down under her acacia-tree, which was perhaps an hour after her return
+home. But this time her dreams did not flow upon a smooth golden scented
+tide. She searched the accumulated newspapers for mention of him in the
+despatches, wept stormily at his neglect, tormented herself with the
+belief that Julia Kaye was in Washington; at all events that he had
+discovered that his love for herself was but one more passing fancy,
+born of propinquity.
+
+She saw mention of him. Twice he had dined at the White House, and his
+name was frequently in the list of guests at other dinners and
+functions. He was not visiting at the British Embassy, and Isabel drew
+her only comfort from the fact: he might be enjoying himself too much to
+think of her, but his purpose was unaltered, or he certainly would be
+the guest of a man whom she knew to be his friend: Gwynne was the last
+man to embarrass anybody, and if the ambassador had enemies they would
+find his connivance at the Americanization of a useful British peer
+vastly to his own discredit.
+
+Isabel enjoyed no further peace of mind. The flames of uncertainty
+devoured her. The worst she could endure, but suspense spurred her
+always ardent imagination to such appalling feats that she barely ate or
+slept. But she was far too high-handed to suffer actively for long. She
+buried her pride in one of her many crypts, summoned her feminine craft,
+and wrote Gwynne a letter. It began in the brief and business-like
+manner the iniquities of their builders demanded--they were on
+strike--and her facile pen flowed on with various other items of
+information, more or less unpleasant. Mr. Clink, the lessee of Mountain
+House, had absconded with all the furniture, including the doors and
+windows, and she hesitated to refurnish, not knowing if Gwynne would
+return in time for the salmon-fishing. Nor had she been able to find
+another tenant, although she had spent two days in the mountains. She
+thought it might be a good place for a sanitarium, if he were inclined
+to form a company. Some sulphur springs had recently bubbled out of the
+ground near the house, which would add to the value of the property; but
+she must confess that they ruined the place for her. She distrusted the
+sudden advent of mineral waters; one never knew what was coming next.
+Then, after more cheering, but equally practical information, she
+rambled off into gossip, told the sad story of the Coltons' bereavement,
+and asked him a few friendly questions about himself. Of course he had
+not succeeded in getting his passport or he would be home--unless, to be
+sure, the Britisher was too strong in him after all, and he would not
+return. This alternative she contemplated with a lively regret, for she
+had had no one to talk to since he left, and so much business sat
+heavily on her shoulders. Then she announced herself his affectionate
+cousin; and it was not until the letter was gone, and quite a day of
+self-gratulation at her own adroitness, that it suddenly occurred to her
+that Gwynne had made up his mind that the first letter should come from
+her. For a few moments she was furious, then concluded that she did not
+care; she wanted to hear from him on any terms. She counted the days,
+intending finally to count the hours and minutes; but this agreeably
+breathless task came to an abrupt end at the close of the sixth day.
+Gwynne answered by telegraph. He thanked her for her interesting and
+more than welcome letter. He was well, and bored, and hoping daily to
+settle his affairs and start for home. In any case he should have
+returned to California: he was surprised at her doubts. She was not to
+bother further about his affairs out there. He had telegraphed to the
+contractor that he could wait as long as the strikers. He added that he
+longed for California.
+
+Isabel wondered if he had not dared to trust himself in a letter,
+finally concluded that this was the secret of the long telegram,
+dismissed her apprehensions, and, with a soothed but by no means
+tranquil imagination, yielded herself up again to dreams and the
+spring.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+It was close upon the middle of April when Gwynne left the train a mile
+from Lumalitas, and, being unheralded, walked across the fields to his
+house. He had intended to get off at Rosewater, hire the fastest horse
+in town, and ride out to Old Inn; but he had been seized with doubt and
+diffidence, and while he was still turning hot and cold the train moved
+out of the station. It was now nearly ten weeks since he had seen
+Isabel, and during that time he had received one letter from her. This
+letter he had read and reread until its contents were meaningless; and
+he was still in doubt as to what might lurk between the lines. He was
+reasonably sure that he had forced her to write, but whether mere pique
+and curiosity had been his aides, he was far from being able to
+determine. She had been right in assuming that he dared not trust
+himself to the tempting privacy of the letter. He had no idea how he
+stood, and would not run the risk of making a fool of himself; not until
+he was face to face with her could he pretend to decide upon any course
+of action. But he had been tormented for ten weeks as he had never
+expected to be tormented by any woman. Although he still assured himself
+that he intended to marry her, the riot in his mind and blood bred
+distrust of himself and evoked terrible images of Isabel at the altar
+with another. He should hate to the day of his death the beautiful old
+town of Santa Barbara, where he had been without any sort of refuge
+from his thoughts; and in Washington, although he had managed to occupy
+his mind and time profitably, there were still hours which he must spend
+alone, and he had dreaded them.
+
+And he was beset by other doubts than those of the mere lover. He was
+conscious that in these weeks of absence and longing, he had idealized
+Isabel, until the being he dwelt with in fancy was more goddess than
+woman. He knew many sides of her, but much had eluded him, even after he
+began to study her. That she was gifted in large measure with what the
+Americans so aptly termed cussedness he had good reason to know; and
+whether this very definite characteristic so far controlled her nature
+as to hold her nobler qualities in durance----or were there nobler
+qualities? She had brain and common-sense; both attributes had compelled
+his respect long since. And she had character and pride--loyalty and
+independence. He had had glimpses of what he would unhesitatingly have
+accepted as heart and passion had he not known himself to be dazzled by
+her beauty and wilful powers of fascination. That she was wholly
+feminine, at least, he was convinced; she was too often absurdly so to
+keep up, with any one that saw her constantly, the fiction of the
+sexless philosopher. The very devil in her was of the unmistakable
+feminine kidney. All this gave him hope, and he knew, that when caprice
+permitted, she would be unrivalled as a companion. Intellectually, at
+least, there was no thought of his she could not share and appreciate;
+and her sense of humor and her feminine perversities would always
+delight him. If only there were depths beneath. The longings of the
+spirit are always formless, vaguely worded, a little shamefaced. Gwynne
+hardly knew what was the great extreme he wanted in his wife, but he
+knew that if he did not find it he should be miserable. He was by no
+means the young man that had fallen blindly in love with Julia Kaye. He
+had had little time for introspection, for intimate knowledge of
+himself, in those days.
+
+The spring was invented to remind men what mere mortals they are. Gwynne
+would have felt restless and disinclined for law and politics this
+morning had he never seen Isabel Otis. Every lark in the great valley
+was singing madly. Blue birds, yellow birds, sat on the fences and
+carolled at each other as if the world were always May. The very earth
+seemed to have sprouted into color. He had never imagined wild flowers
+by the billion, nor such a harmonious variety of color. The fields were
+green, the cherries, black and red and white, glistening and luscious,
+were ready for picking in his orchards. As he approached his house, he
+saw that all the white oaks, bare in winter, were in leaf; large soft
+young green leaves, that almost hid the pendent sad green moss. The air
+was warm and light, the sky so blue it seemed to laugh with a promise of
+eternal good things. The whole land breathed hope, and youth, and
+allurement to every delight, of which she alone possessed the store. He
+was soon to learn what a liar she was, but although it was many a long
+day before he took note of any phase of nature again, save her weather,
+he had an elusive presentiment that he should never cease to be grateful
+for that moment of quick unreasoning exultation in his youth and
+manhood, and in the mere joy of life.
+
+He was not surprised, as he turned the corner of the veranda, to find
+Imura Kisaburo Hinamoto sitting with his feet on the railing, a
+cigarette in his mouth, and a volume, issued by the United States Coast
+and Geodetic Survey, on his knee. But as the servant saw the master he
+rose promptly to his feet, extinguished the cigarette with his fingers,
+and stood in an attitude of extreme respect. He even smiled, but not
+propitiatingly; it was almost patent that the return of his chance
+superior was welcome.
+
+Gwynne nodded. "Glad to see that you still improve your mind," he
+observed. "Tell Carlos to hitch up and go for my luggage: I left it at
+the station." He looked at his watch. It was half-past eleven. He
+hesitated a moment, then decided to postpone his visit to Isabel again.
+He did not feel in the mood to sit down and eat with her. "My horse at
+two o'clock," he added. And the Jap disappeared.
+
+Gwynne went into the kitchen, and Mariana, who was peeling onions for an
+_olla podrida_, screamed and embraced him.
+
+"No could help," she said, philosophically. "Very glad, señor, very
+glad."
+
+Gwynne was not in the humor to repulse anybody, and assured her that she
+really made him feel that he had returned to his home. Several of her
+tribe were in the kitchen and looked expectant. He informed them that he
+had a box of New York sweets in his trunk, and retreated.
+
+On the veranda he sat down facing his mountain, which like the rest of
+the world was a mass of delicate color, where it was not merely green,
+and seemed to move gently under the pink shimmering haze. Beyond was the
+blue crouching mass of the old volcano. "The eternal hills" was a phrase
+that never occurred to him when he watched these mountains, always
+veiled under a colored and moving haze. They looked far more likely to
+pull up their feet and walk off. But Gwynne, although the border
+beneath his veranda was full of sweet scents, and the roses on the
+pillars hung about him, and the air was a soft caressing tide, was no
+longer concerned with nature. He was nervous and full of doubt, of
+uneasy anticipation that he would not appear to advantage at three
+o'clock that afternoon. He knew that if he were really panic-stricken
+and attempted to carry it off in the masterful manner, she would laugh
+in his face. If he could work himself up to the attitude, well and good.
+At the same time he was vaguely conscious that this period of alternate
+hope and fear, of cold fits and hot, would one day be sweet in the
+retrospect, and regretted with some sadness; an episode in the lover's
+progress gone beyond recall.
+
+There was a sound of wheels on the county road, then on his own
+property. He wondered at the unusual dispatch of his Carlos, but
+realized in a moment that a buggy was approaching, not a wagon. Then
+there was a light slouching step on the veranda, and he rose to greet
+Tom Colton.
+
+"By Jove, old chap, I'm glad to see you," he began, and thankful that he
+had written his condolences; but he paused abruptly. Colton ignored the
+outstretched hand.
+
+"So you've got your passport?" he said. And his ingenuous blue eyes were
+full of a hard antagonism.
+
+"Yes," said Gwynne. "I should have told you in a day or two. How did you
+find out?" he added, curiously. "I took my oath before the passport
+clerk in the innermost recess of the State Department."
+
+"There's not much I don't find out. Only, I got wind of this a little
+too late. So did some others, or you might have hung round Washington
+for the next four years. Do you call it square not to have told me of
+this before you left?"
+
+"I saw no obligation to take you into my confidence. In the first place
+the result of my pilgrimage was very doubtful, and in the second you
+would have done all you could to balk me. When have I given you reason
+to write me down an ass?"
+
+"You are too damned clever," muttered Colton. "Too clever by half. Much
+better for you if you had stayed where you were. You had no enemies when
+you left, but now, let me tell you, you've got a bunch that it will take
+more than your cleverness to handle."
+
+"They can do their worst. I thought that all I needed was hard work, but
+I fancy that what I missed most was the stimulus of enemies."
+
+"Well, you've got it all right."
+
+Somewhat to the host's surprise he suddenly seated himself and tipped
+back his chair. Gwynne remained standing, leaning against a pillar, his
+hands in his pockets. Colton surveyed him frankly. His eyes were still
+hard and he was very angry, but he saw no reason why he should be
+uncomfortable, and although he could disguise his feelings when he
+chose, he knew that here it was safe to allow himself the luxury of
+frankness. He was the more annoyed, as what friendship he was capable of
+he had given to Gwynne. That would not have stayed hand or foot a
+moment, were his path in the least obstructed, but he regretted that
+they had come to an issue so early in the game. Indeed, he had hoped to
+manipulate Gwynne's destinies so subtly that they would be politically
+bound for life, with himself always a length ahead. It was true that
+once or twice he had felt a misgiving that the Englishman, with all his
+aristocratic disdain for devious ways, might match him and win, but the
+shock of this early outwitting had been none the less severe.
+
+"Did you have a hard time getting it?" he demanded.
+
+"Rather. Never heard so much palaver in my life."
+
+"Well, I wish there had been more. I think I have at least the right to
+ask what you intend to do next."
+
+"Return to Judge Leslie's office to-morrow--for the matter of that, I
+have read a good deal since I left. In September I shall have been a
+year in the State, and of course I can vote. I am not so sure that I
+shall."
+
+"Yes! That is all, I suppose?"
+
+"For the present. You are too good a politician to fancy that American
+citizenship has invested me with a halo. Except to a hundred odd
+farmers, Rosewater, a small group in San Francisco, and a party boss or
+two, I am unknown. No doubt I shall be several years achieving
+sufficient prominence either to run for office, or to accomplish
+anything whatever--outside of Rosewater. So far as I can see, this
+immediate citizenship has effected two results only: I am now in a
+position to take advantage of any political change that may develop,
+instead of sowing for another to reap--and--"
+
+He hesitated, and Colton shot him a keen glance. "It has made a change
+in you, I guess. I noticed that the minute I laid eyes on you. If
+anything was needed to make me madder, it was that."
+
+"Yes--I am changed. That is to say, I am poised. In spite of the
+determination to absorb Americanism with every pore, there was always
+the lurking doubt that it wouldn't do; that some day I should make a
+bolt for England. Now the matter is settled forever. I not only am an
+American but always have been. The highest legal opinion in the country
+was called in, and that was what finally decided the question. I
+accepted it as literally as the others did, and in so doing I relegated
+my English life to the episodical backwaters: among my adventures in
+India and Africa. I fancy that if England came to a death struggle in my
+time, and every man counted, I should fight for her. I certainly never
+should fight against her. But it is a profound relief to me that I am
+not throwing her over, that we have no legitimate right to each other. I
+fancy that that, too, demoralized me a bit."
+
+"How did you feel when you took that oath?" asked Colton, more and more
+curious, almost forgetting his grievance. "It's a kind of solemn oath.
+I've had a sort of chill when I've heard it taken once or twice."
+
+"There could hardly be a more solemn oath. I don't know that it gave me
+a chill, but I certainly read it over several times before I took it.
+And I took it without any reservations."
+
+"Did you feel an American the moment you took it?"
+
+"Yes--I did. That is to say I felt a certain buoyancy. The die was cast.
+There could be no more hesitation and doubt. My new life had actually
+begun."
+
+"It's begun, all right. Jiminy, but you'll have a tough time. They're
+onto you now. You haven't the ghost of a chance to make a move they
+won't see before your hand is off the board."
+
+Gwynne replied with even more than his usual fluency.
+
+"Yes," replied Colton, with a sigh. "I guess that's where we'll all
+bring up. But meanwhile? Are you going to throw me over?"
+
+"It will depend upon yourself. I have no objection to confide to you
+such plans as I have been able to formulate. Judge Leslie advised me to
+play about in society, in Washington, but I was in no humor for anything
+of the sort. I had uncommon opportunities to study men and conditions,
+and I took full advantage of them. I doubt if I shall vote until the
+next Presidential election. Then, if an independent party of consequence
+has not been formed, and I see no prospect of working up one in this
+State, I shall vote the Democratic ticket. As things stand at present,
+it is the less of two evils, and would at least accomplish a reduction
+of the tariff, and something towards a redistribution of wealth. I
+haven't the least doubt that the Democrats, if they get in--unless they
+have a really good man up their sleeve--will abuse their power quite as
+much as the Republicans have done; but that will take some time; and
+meanwhile a new party is sure to grow up, for the best men in the
+country are thoroughly roused. There's no doubt on that point--and it is
+a point you would do well to remember. There have been chapters before
+in the world's history when right has paid."
+
+"For a while," said Colton, dubiously. "The point is now that you are
+likely to join the Democrats."
+
+"To vote with them. Theirs are the soundest principles. I stick to that
+point."
+
+"I don't question it. I only wish elections weren't two years off; I'd
+like to get to work." He took a bag of peanuts from his pocket and began
+to munch thoughtfully. "But you are turning me off. What do you mean
+exactly?"
+
+"I shall have nothing to do with the machine. I shall speak and make
+propaganda, that is all. My object is not so much to get the Democrats
+in as the Republicans out. I shall do nothing to split the Democratic
+party--and play a losing game--unless a really great movement should
+rise, gather strength, and sweep the country. It is on the cards that
+there will be such a movement, and I throw myself into it the moment I
+am persuaded the split will not work to the advantage of the
+Republicans."
+
+"How much enthusiasm have you pumped up?"
+
+"Enthusiasm!" Gwynne's eyes roved over his "fair domain." Isabel, at
+least, was not far from its borders! "I cannot say that I am at
+boiling-point, but I don't fancy that matters much. I have my work cut
+out and I shall do it. Perhaps I shall work more disinterestedly without
+enthusiasm. Certainly I shall be more clear-sighted. If ever there was a
+time in the history of a country to sink individual ambition, it is
+now."
+
+"Gwynne!" said Colton, abruptly. "What in thunder does it all amount to,
+anyhow? What difference does it make--will it make a thousand years
+hence--that you and I are sitting here on the very edge of creation,
+solemnly discussing the rottenest subject of our little time--American
+politics? What's the use of the socialists frothing, and nations trying
+to overturn one another? I had rather die on the spot than that the
+United States should be conquered for five minutes by Japan or any other
+Asiatic power, although I could endure the victory of a people that I
+recognized as our equals. Why are instincts planted so strongly? There
+may be a reason for a few years; but that's just it, a few mean little
+years and it is all over. What difference does anything really make, so
+long as we are comfortable? Everything else, every other instinct, is
+artificial. My wife is a religious little body and believes in reward
+and punishment hereafter, that we must spend at least a certain part of
+our time in this life preparing for the next. I'd like to believe the
+same, not only to please her, but because I could look forward to
+meeting my child again; but, somehow, I can't. The present has always
+been about as much as I could tackle. And I fancy that when I'm through
+with it, I won't want any more. But although the present whirls so fast
+that I don't have time for the sort of thinking intellectual people like
+you and Isabel do, still it does sometimes dash across my mind--that
+question: 'What is it all for? And why do we sweat through life for what
+amounts to exactly nothing in the end?'"
+
+"You cannot be sure it amounts to nothing. Sometimes I have the fancy
+that the entire round globe has just one inhabitant, of which we merely
+appear to be individual manifestations: that we are, in fact, a part of
+the earth herself, and she absorbs and casts us forth again, as she
+rushes along to her own destiny as sentient as ourselves. All the
+planets are alive in the same way, and they are all racing to see which
+will make the greatest showing on what we call down here the Judgment
+Day--that is to say, which shall have produced the most balanced and
+perfected being; which shall have whirled away the most original sin and
+sifted out a man, great and good without self-righteousness--to my mind
+the worst of mortal failings because its correlative, injustice, is the
+source of most of the unhappiness. That will be the millennium, and
+having no windmills and evils left to fight, we minute visibilities will
+welcome deindividualization. Then, no doubt, there will be a grand final
+battle between the great body of good thus formed, and the evil cast
+out, but roaming space and joining forces. If we do our best here we
+shall win, and be happy ever after. There is no question, that if you
+follow your higher instincts you are happier in the long run than if you
+fall a slave to your base and mean; and that, to my mind, is the proof
+that the highest instincts are meant to be followed to some greater
+end."
+
+"Hm. I have heard a good many theories, first and last, and that sounds
+as plausible as any."
+
+"All this is very casually related to American politics, except that we
+had better clean up when the opportunity is vouchsafed us; for nothing
+degrades human nature nor retards civilization so much as politics gone
+altogether wrong. As far as you are concerned, although it was
+understood that the compact was to end with my citizenship, I have no
+thought of ending it unless the conditions I hope for shall crystallize
+meanwhile. If it seems best to keep the Democratic party unsplit I shall
+do your canvassing and speaking, for it will make me known, and give me
+the opportunity to inculcate the principles I purpose to advocate. If
+you ignore them when you are in office, so much the worse for you, and
+better for me; for, as I have told you more than once, the moment I am
+in power I shall devote my energies to pulling you and your like down
+and out. But I should advise you to join the third party if it arises."
+
+"No doubt I might, if it were strong enough," said Colton, frankly. "I
+don't propose to play any losing game, and if the Democratic party goes
+by the board, T. R. Colton doesn't follow. And if a third party came in
+to stay it would have to have a boss--"
+
+"Not your sort."
+
+"Oh, well, time enough." Colton's ill-humor was now somnolent under some
+two pounds of peanuts. He rose and shook hands with Gwynne. "Glad to see
+you looking so well--you're some heavier than when you came to
+California, by-the-way, and it suits you first rate. Be sure you call on
+my wife the first time you come to town."
+
+He declined Gwynne's invitation to dinner, and drove off, looking
+slothful and amiable once more. But what went on behind that mask,
+within that long ill-built cranium, Gwynne had never pretended to guess.
+Nor, to-day, did he care.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At three o'clock he gave his horse to Abe, was told that the lady of the
+manor was out walking, and went into the house. He had a fancy to meet
+her again in the room that harbored the sweetest of his California
+memories. It was dark and cool. Only one window, looking upon the
+garden, was open. Beside it was a comfortable chair which he took
+possession of and looked out into the wild old garden so different from
+the excessively cultivated plots of Rosewater and his own meagre strips.
+There was no veranda on this side of the house, and the great
+acacia-tree, with its weight of fragrant gold, was but a few feet from
+the window. The entire garden was enclosed by a hedge of the Castilian
+roses of which he had heard so much, rare as they now were in
+California. The dull green leaves and tight little buds could hardly be
+seen for the mass of wide fluted roses of a deep old-fashioned pink. And
+there were large irregular borders covered with the luxuriant green and
+the blue stars of the periwinkle, beds of marguerites and violets,
+bushes of lilac and honeysuckles, roses and jasmine. The blended
+perfumes were overpowering, however delicious; Gwynne had sat up half
+the night before talking to his mother after a long hot journey; he fell
+asleep.
+
+Perhaps it was his late conversation, perhaps something more subtle, but
+he felt himself transported to a void. In a moment he realized that the
+void was not space as he knew it, but rigid invisible substance. He
+slipped along through rocky strata, hearing strange echoes and inhaling
+the disagreeable odors of healing waters. Suddenly he found himself in a
+vast hollowed space, empty but for many pillars. His vision grew keener.
+In the very centre of the hall he saw two pillars of a colossal size,
+and standing between them a being almost as large. This unthinkable
+giant had an arm about each pillar and strained as Samson had strained
+at the pillars of the temple. Then a new and powerful force drew him
+upward once more, and he awoke.
+
+He turned his head towards the dim interior of the room and for a dazed
+moment thought that he beheld Spring herself. She wore white and had
+dropped a mass of wild flowers at her feet; she looked as if rising out
+of them. Her hat was covered with poppies and wild azalea, and she had a
+sheaf of buttercups and "blue eyes" in her belt.
+
+"I haven't changed my ideas one bit," she said, with a shrug, as Gwynne
+rose and came towards her. "But I can't help it!"
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Isabel rose as usual at five, but, instead of dressing at once, stood at
+her window idly and looked out over the marsh. Thirteen hours before she
+had made a decision on the instant, or so it seemed to her, and in that
+instant changed her life so completely that she was still a little
+dizzy, and the future as yet had taken on no coherent form. She had even
+told Gwynne she was positive she could _stand_ him for ever, and this,
+with her varied if incomplete knowledge of his sex, she took to be even
+more significant and hopeful than the uncompromising sense of loving
+him. No doubt there would be many interesting battles before two such
+developed personalities became more or less one, but at least he had
+none of the petty and selfish and altogether detestable qualities of her
+father, her uncle, and Lyster Stone; and he was entirely human. And he
+was young and she was young. It all seemed very wonderful; wonderful to
+be so happy, and yet to feel that she had relinquished nothing, or at
+least not the tenth of what she would have lost if she had married
+Prestage--or any other man. If she had not met Gwynne she knew that she
+never should have married at all, and, not having had the best within
+her ken, been happy enough.
+
+And yet she was a little sad, and it was by no means the gentle
+melancholy of reaction. She had reason, and felt a disposition to box
+her own ears. She knew that Gwynne, triumphant and happy as he was, had
+ridden away vaguely dissatisfied. He had turned and given her a keen
+questioning glance as he mounted, and had not turned again. She had
+laughed, and waved her hand, and felt a new desire to tantalize him.
+
+She had abandoned herself to sheer happiness the day before, to the mere
+pagan delight in an ardent lover come in her own ardent youth, to the
+sense of an unbroken circle of companionship, and to so wild a triumph
+in having brought Gwynne to her feet, made him quite mad about her, that
+she had fairly danced about the room, and tormented him as far as she
+dared.
+
+This was Wednesday. They were to be married on Saturday, that Lady
+Victoria, who was leaving for England in the evening, might nod them a
+blessing. Then, no doubt, Gwynne would have his way in most things, and
+she already felt the stirrings of mere female ductility. But meanwhile
+she should exercise and enjoy her own power to the full. And she had
+good reason to believe that no woman had ever been more charming,
+distracting, provocative. If Gwynne had been in love when he came, he
+had kissed her very feet when he left, and had been as bewitched as
+anyone so clear-brained could be. Moreover, she had promised him
+everything he wished, agreed without demur to the hasty marriage, and
+even, when he asked her whether she would prefer to live in her house or
+his, had sweetly left it to him to decide. They were to spend the
+honeymoon in the house on Russian Hill. She was incapable of looking
+beyond that. There had been at least twenty bewildering hints that when
+his time came one rein, at least, should be his--in all matters of great
+moment, two--and although no doubt she would break away very often,
+what more delightful than to recapture and subdue? What more could a man
+want than the most fascinating woman in the world, whom only his own
+passion could shock from mere existence into the fulness of life? But
+Gwynne, in the depths of his swimming brain, had wanted something more,
+and Isabel knew that if he had slept as ill as herself, the doubt had
+more than once assailed him if she were anything more than a charming
+beautiful and clever creature, save perverse and egotistical; who would
+keep him distractedly in love with her, but leave the best part of him
+unsatisfied.
+
+Her perversity had gone with him, and during a more or less wakeful
+night she had repented, and even wept at the thought that something
+might occur to exterminate him before ten o'clock on the following
+morning--when they were to meet again--and he would depart unconsoled by
+the knowledge that it was the greater needs in his own nature that had
+called to hers. At least she hoped this was so, and, in an excess of
+humility, wondered if she really had enough to give--the power to insure
+their complete happiness. She had lived in a sort of fool's paradise,
+and no doubt imagined herself a far more rounded being than she was.
+Well, she could grow, and finally she had curled down into her pillow
+and fallen asleep.
+
+This morning she was rather tired, and although still repentant,
+suspicious that when he returned her femininity would fly up with her
+spirits, and she would be more than content to fascinate and bewilder
+him. Like all women in love and fumbling blindly through the outer
+mysteries, she was eagerly psychological, discovering once for all her
+sex and herself.
+
+Her eyes had been fixed dreamily upon Tamalpais, but suddenly they were
+drawn irresistibly upward by the pricking consciousness of something
+strange. It was a moment before she realized that she had never seen a
+sky just like that before. Her back was to the east, and although the
+sun was rising it was still low; at this stage of the dawn the sky was
+generally gray. This morning it was a ghastly electric blue. And then,
+while her eyes were still staring, and something in her brain moving
+towards expression, she heard a noise that sounded like the roar of
+artillery charging across the world. She fancied it rushing through the
+Golden Gate and up the bays and marsh, before it hurled itself with a
+vicious and personal violence against the wall beneath her window. She
+braced herself against the sash as the house shook in the strongest
+earthquake she had ever felt. It appeared to be brief, however, and she
+was turning away to dress herself, when it commenced again with a fury
+and violence of which she had never dreamed the modern earth to be
+capable. She threw herself on her knees the better to grip the
+window-ledge, but her only sensations were surprise and an intense
+expectation. Electric flames, as blue and ghastly as the reeling sky,
+were playing all over the marsh, she saw the long bare line of Tamalpais
+charge down and up like a colossal seesaw; and in that terrific plunging
+and dancing, that abrupt leaping from one point of the compass to the
+opposite, or towards all at once, that hysterical shaking and struggling
+as if two planets had rushed from their orbits and were fighting for
+life in midspace, Isabel expected the entire globe to stand on end, and
+was convinced that the finish of California, at least, had come. She had
+read of earthquakes that lasted for hours, and even days, and no doubt
+this one was merely getting up steam, for it increased in violence and
+momentum every second. The house rattled like a big dice-box. She
+expected it to leap down the slope into the shivering marsh. Pieces of
+rock fell down the face of the cliff opposite, but so great was the roar
+of the earthquake, so close the sound of creaking and straining timbers,
+of falling chimneys, and china, and even plaster, that she could not
+hear the impact as they struck the ground and bounded high in air.
+
+Then, there was a bulge of the earth upward, a twist that seemed to
+wrench the house from its foundations, and the earthquake ceased as
+suddenly as it had come. Isabel waited a few moments for it to return,
+incredulous that the mighty forces beneath could compose themselves so
+abruptly; then rose and began to dress herself.
+
+Human blades of a fine temper meet a sudden and terrific onslaught of
+Nature in one of two spirits: utter cowardice, or an attitude of
+impersonal curiosity. It is not a matter of heroism but of nerves. The
+bravest may become abject, if their will has been weakened by some drain
+on the nervous system; others, that would run from a mouse or prove
+unequal to the long-heralded danger, rise, in the intense concentrated
+excitement and surprise of the moment, to a state of absolute and even
+cynical indifference. One of the unwritten laws that has descended from
+father to son in California is that an earthquake, no matter how severe,
+is a mere joke, and should incite prompt and facetious comment. Isabel
+being both heroic and hardy, paid the California tradition the tribute
+of a smile and a shrug, and regretted that she had not been in San
+Francisco; she "liked being in the midst of things." Sentiment,
+psychology, egoism, had literally been bounced out of her. She knew that
+Gwynne might easily have been killed, but although she intended to find
+out in the least possible time, to feel merely human in the face of such
+a stupendous exhibition of what nature could do when she chose, was a
+descent of which she, at least, felt herself incapable.
+
+She hurried on her riding-clothes, dropped her braid under her jacket,
+and ran down the stairs. Chuma, trim and spotless, was sweeping the
+hall, white with fallen plaster. He gave her his usual good-morning grin
+and went on with his work. She paused and regarded him curiously.
+
+"What do you think of our earthquakes?" she demanded.
+
+"Oh, very big shake," he said, cheerfully. "Very big shake."
+
+Vaguely nettled she took her hat from the rack and went out by the back
+way. Mac had knocked on her door immediately after the earthquake, and
+was now with Abe in the colony on the hills. He came running down when
+he saw her, and it was patent that his rheumatism, for once, was
+forgotten. His old red face with its prominent bones set in thick sandy
+gray hair was more animated than Isabel had ever seen it.
+
+"Glory be!" he exclaimed, as he reached her. "That was about the worst!
+I was just tellin' Abe that I felt the great earthquake of '68 in this
+very house, in that very room, by gum, although I was up and dressed,
+for it was eight o'clock, and I'd gone back for my pipe. So, I know what
+I'm talkin' about, Miss Isabel, when I say that this was about four
+times as bad--"
+
+"Please saddle my horse."
+
+"Yes, marm. Wisht I could have got out of bed. I'd like to have seen if
+the earth rose and fell in a long wave like the shake of '68. Land's
+sakes, but those chickens did squawk." And although he saddled Kaiser
+rapidly, he never paused in his reminiscence of the last Northern
+California earthquake to pass into history. "But this one! By Jiminy!
+Well, I guess we take the cake in everything out here, earthquakes
+included."
+
+Isabel patted the still shaking horse. "Get the launch ready," she said,
+as she mounted; and Mac nodded. It was characteristic that neither
+thought of the danger of sudden shoals, of the always possible tidal
+wave, or of some new and diabolical trick of nature. The nerves were
+still keyed too high for anything so shabby as prudence.
+
+Kaiser, no doubt glad to put himself into motion, bounded forward as his
+mistress lifted the bridle, and although Isabel did give an occasional
+glance ahead, to make sure the earth was not yawning, she never drew
+rein, and the horse galloped with all his might towards Rosewater. As
+the marsh narrowed she saw that the town was still there, and that there
+were no fires. As she approached the great iron bridge that connected
+Rosewater with the continuation of the county road, a horseman entered
+at its other end and galloped across, regardless of the law or a graver
+danger still. The next moment Isabel and Gwynne had shaken hands
+casually, and were riding towards Old Inn.
+
+His eyes were shining and almost black. "I saw the mountains rock!" he
+exclaimed. "Rock? Dance. Then I thought they would plunge down into the
+earth and disappear. And St. Peter is flat. All the business district,
+including the four hotels, are down, and everybody in them buried in the
+ruins. A man dashed up as I was mounting, and I told all the men on the
+place to go to the rescue. The news came just in time to prevent the
+murder of Imura by Carlos, for not admitting that we had had the
+greatest earthquake in the history of the world. It was the first
+symptom of patriotic fire I ever saw in Imura, but he stoutly maintained
+that in the matter of earthquakes Japan could do as well as California."
+
+"That is all very well, but I have read a lot about Japanese
+earthquakes, and never of such an _extraordinary_ one as this. Has
+anything terrible happened in Rosewater?"
+
+"I saw a few chimneys down, but no buildings except the old brick
+school-house. Mrs. Haight was sitting on the curb-stone in her
+night-gown, wailing like a banshee, but although all the rest of the
+town appeared to be in the streets, and similarly attired, they were
+quiet enough. As I passed the cemetery I gave it a hasty side glance,
+half-afraid of what I might see. All the monuments are down and pointing
+in every direction. What gyrations! Do you suppose they've had it in San
+Francisco?"
+
+"Do I suppose--much you know about our earthquakes! San Francisco always
+gets the worst of it, or seems to, there is so much more to shake. Your
+mother is probably in hysterics, although up on the hills one is safe
+enough. It is the sandy valley and the made ground down by the
+ferries--up to Montgomery Street, in fact--that get the worst of it. I
+have ordered the launch."
+
+"Good. I wish my mother had gone east from El Paso, as she had half a
+mind to do. But she wanted to see her doctor again. I am afraid she
+won't look at this as we do. I never was so interested in my life. Was
+sure we were going to smash, but that it was worth while in anything so
+stupendous. I suppose it is too early to telephone."
+
+Isabel pointed to the wires. They were sagging, and two of the telegraph
+poles were down. "Doubtless the tracks are twisted, too. We are
+fortunate to have the launch."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Mac, so swollen with the prideful experience which enabled him to
+compare two great earthquakes, and his accumulations of practical data
+bearing thereon, appeared ten years younger, and, as Gwynne and Isabel
+rode up, was lording it over his fellow-hirelings. He had forbidden
+Chuma to make a fire in the kitchen stove until the chimney, what was
+left of it, had been repaired, directed him to bring down-stairs the
+oil-stove Isabel had bought for the old rheumatic's comfort, and cook
+breakfast upon it. As even the stovepipe in the out-building, used for
+preparing the elaborate repasts of the Leghorn, was twisted, Abe had
+been ordered to drag the great stove into the open, build a screen about
+it, and "do the best he could, and be thankful he was alive." Poor Abe,
+who had not been extant in 1868, and had even missed the considerable
+earthquakes of the Nineties, was in a somewhat demoralized state, and
+wondering audibly what people supposed he cared about chickens, anyhow.
+
+Isabel and Gwynne sat down in the dining-room and ate their
+breakfast--on fragments--calmly and methodically, talking constantly of
+the earthquake, it is true, but instinct with that curious casuistry
+that a certain safety lay in following the ordinary routine of life;
+perhaps--who knows?--so great is the egoism of the human spirit--that
+the unswerving march of man in his groove might restore the balance of
+nature.
+
+After breakfast Isabel went up to her room and dressed hastily and
+mechanically in a short walking-suit, as mechanically expecting the same
+earthquake to return to the spot associated with it. Gwynne wore his
+khaki riding-clothes, but it was doubtful if any one would be critical
+in San Francisco that morning. Nothing, as it happened, could have
+suited his purpose better, and it was long before he took them off.
+
+When the launch was under way Isabel told Gwynne of the blue flames that
+had danced over the marsh during the convulsion. "If electricity is not
+a cause of earthquakes, it certainly is let loose by them," she added.
+"I expected every moment that we would blow up and fly off into space."
+
+"I saw something of the same sort on the hills, and expected to see St.
+Helena spout flames."
+
+In a few moments they were sensible that the constant artificial
+vibration of the boat was the most grateful sensation they had ever
+known, and of the wish that they could leave it only for a train, to be
+transferred at the end of a long journey to another train, and still
+another. But these sentiments were not exchanged, and their conversation
+was purely extrinsic. Here and there along the shore an old shanty lay
+on its side, or had tumbled forward to its knees; but for the most part
+dilapidated chimneys and fallen poles were the only visible symbols of
+the tumult beneath the smiling beautiful earth. Never had Earth looked
+so green, so velvety, its flowers so gay and voluptuous. Even the sky,
+now its normal deep blue, had this same velvety quality, the very
+atmosphere seemed to breathe the same rich satisfaction. But no birds
+were singing, and there was nothing normal in the groups of people,
+gathered wherever there were habitations: they wore bath-robes,
+blankets, overcoats, anything, apparently, they had found at hand, and
+had not re-entered their treacherous habitations. No trains were
+running, but the drawbridge that separated the marsh from San Pablo Bay
+opened as usual.
+
+Gwynne steered the launch, and his conversation and Isabel's drifted to
+speculations as to what had happened in the city.
+
+"Thank heaven I had the foundations of that old house replaced," she
+said, "or I am afraid your mother would have shot right down to the
+Hofers' doorstep. I am fairly at ease about The Otis, for in spite of
+the old drifting sand-lots that district is built on, its foundations go
+down to bed-rock, and thanks to the strikers there is nothing to fall
+off the steel frame. But I am rather worried about the islands. San
+Francisco Bay is supposed to have been a valley some two hundred years
+ago, and if it dropped once it might again. Those islands are only
+hilltops."
+
+The islands, however, looked as serene as the rest of nature, although
+most of the chimneys were fallen or twisted, and there were the same
+groups of people in the open, awaiting another throe. These, however,
+had had time to recover their balance and clothe themselves. The launch,
+which had a new engine, had been driven at top speed, and it was not yet
+seven o'clock, barely the beginning of day to these luxurious people,
+but a day that would doubtless be remembered as the longest of their
+lives. On the military islands, routine, apparently, had received no
+dislocation, and on the steep romantic slopes of Belvedere the villas
+might have sunken their talons to the very vitals of the rock. The most
+precariously perched had paid no toll but the chimney.
+
+As the launch bounded past the long eastern side of Angel Island, Gwynne
+contracted his eyelids. "Have you noticed that black cloud over the
+city?" he asked. "At first it did not strike me particularly--but--it
+looks as if there might be a big fire."
+
+Isabel, who faced him, turned her head. "There are always fires in San
+Francisco after an earthquake," she said, indifferently. "And about
+seven a day at any time. There are none on the hills, so your mother is
+not having a second fright. Poor thing! I am afraid she is terribly
+upset. I wish she had gone."
+
+She sat about, to observe the city more critically. Already its sky-line
+was changed, for every chimney, smokestack, and steeple, commonly
+visible, was shattered or down. The smoke cloud, which looked like a
+great ostrich plume bent at the tip, was as stationary as the hills, and
+had a confident permanent air that they would lack for some time. And
+fixed as it was it seemed to grow larger.
+
+"Steer to the east of Alcatraz," said Isabel, suddenly; "and towards
+Yerba Buena. I should like to see where the fires are."
+
+When the launch was well off the point of Telegraph Hill, they saw
+several large fires on the western side of East Street, the wide roadway
+that divided the city from the water-front and Ferry Building. Far down,
+in the South of Market Street district there appeared to be other large
+fires.
+
+"Warehouses, probably," said Isabel. "What a sight!" She indicated the
+collapsed sheds about the moles, and the twisted and toppling
+appearance of the tower on the Ferry Building, which stood on the edge
+of the made ground. It was an immense structure of great weight, and
+only an uncommon honesty--and vigilance--in building had saved it from
+destruction. Had the piles been hollow, or too short to reach bed-rock,
+it would either have sunken or tumbled.
+
+And then they noticed that the bay was silent and deserted. It was a
+moment before they realized that of the several lines of ferry-boats
+none appeared to be running. "That means that the tracks are out of
+working order," said Isabel, grimly. "We may have had the best of it,
+bad as it was. Ah!" One of the Oakland ferry-boats pushed out of its San
+Francisco mole. It was black with people. Isabel stared with wonder. "It
+looks as if people were running away from the city. Or perhaps a good
+many that live across the bay came over on the same mission as
+ourselves, and have been turned back. That would mean that all East
+Street was on fire and they could not get into the city. Well, let us
+hurry. Even although the fires are so far off they may terrify your
+mother. I remember she told me once in England that she had never seen a
+fire. I have a queer sensation in my knees."
+
+Gwynne laughed. "I should think you might be used to fires by this time.
+And you have a celebrated fire department. I fancy you are just feeling
+the reaction."
+
+"I was not a bit frightened during the earthquake!" said
+Isabel, indignantly. "But there is nothing _phenomenal_ in fire to brace
+one up--and those had a sinister determined look--and that boat-load of
+people! I only hope your mother has not run away--under the impression
+that San Francisco alone was shaken. We wouldn't find her for a week."
+
+"My mother's nerves are not what they were, but I am positive she will
+not run. She is certain to wait for us at the house."
+
+A few moments later they ran the launch up to the landing at the foot of
+Russian Hill. There were a few tumbled shanties on the slope, but none
+of the well-built houses had been dislodged, and the great buildings on
+this water-front were in good condition. Mr. Clatt was not visible, but
+left his cottage at Isabel's call, and gave them something more than his
+usual surly greeting.
+
+"Glad to see you are all right," he said. "Been expectin' you. Jest
+stepped in to git my pipe."
+
+"Much damage done?" asked Gwynne.
+
+"Considerable, but I guess the shake'll take a back seat. City's on
+fire."
+
+"There are always fires after earthquakes," said Isabel, angrily.
+
+"City's on fire. Thirty broke out s'multaneous. Water main's bust. Chief
+of Fire Department killed in his bed, or as good as killed. There's
+plenty left to fight the fire but nothin' to fight it with. Guess the
+old town'll go up in smoke this time."
+
+"My knees feel rather weak, too," said Gwynne. He turned to the
+wharfinger, who was pulling leisurely at his pipe. "We--my mother and
+Miss Otis, at least, may need this launch to leave the city with," he
+said. "Can I rely on you? You shall have a hundred dollars if you let no
+one steal it; and if the fire should reach this side, you are welcome to
+a refuge on my ranch."
+
+"I'll see daylight through any one that looks at it," said Mr. Clatt.
+"This ain't no time to stand on ceremony. The army's called out already
+to help the police keep order--the lootin' was disgraceful for about an
+hour. Every rat tumbled out of his hole, and of course they went for the
+saloons. I'm well enough known along here to be let alone when I show my
+teeth. Your house is all right, miss."
+
+This side of the hill was almost deserted; nearly every one seemed to be
+watching the fires from the crest; but occasionally Gwynne and Isabel
+passed a solitary person clinging to his possessions, or a small group;
+and invariably were greeted with the same remark: "City's on fire. Water
+mains were broken by the earthquake."
+
+As they passed through the crowd on the hill-top, they received similar
+information, although many added confidently that "something would be
+done. The wind was sure to change to the west."
+
+And so far, at least, the picture from the heights was by no means
+appalling. There were a number of fires in the south, and a wall of
+flame and smoke along the water-front near the Ferry Building. Had the
+earthquake spared the mains they would merely have been spectacular.
+
+Gwynne and Isabel, as they made the slight descent to the Belmont House,
+saw two of their Japs sitting on the roof throwing down the bricks of
+the fallen chimneys. Then they turned the corner and found Lady
+Victoria, an opera-cloak thrown over her night-clothes, pacing up and
+down the veranda.
+
+"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed. "I did not dare to wonder if you were dead
+or alive. Why did we ever come to this God-forsaken country?" She did
+not offer to embrace them, but her eyes were brilliant, and there was a
+color in her cheeks. And no one had ever heard her talk so fast. "Was
+it as dreadful with you? Did you get out of the house? I was awake when
+I heard that awful roar. Somehow, I knew what it meant, and before the
+earthquake was well begun I was out here. I never ran so fast in my
+life, although I was flung against the walls. And I almost wished I had
+stayed in the house. Such a sight! That awful reeling city! Just imagine
+thousands of buildings plunging, and leaping, and dancing, and toppling.
+Towers bowing to you so solemnly that I almost disgraced myself and had
+hysterics. And steeples pitching off, or huddling down like corpses. And
+that awful loud deep steady roar and crash of a thousand walls and
+chimneys falling. And the dust that seemed to swallow the city. For a
+moment I thought it had gone, and expected the hills to follow. Then it
+rose and everybody on earth seemed to be in those streets--and in white.
+They looked like Isabel's Leghorns. Such pigmies from up here. Pigmies!
+That is what we all are. And Angélique, the wretch, has run away."
+
+"Well, she cannot go far, as all the railroads but one seem to be
+injured," said Gwynne, soothingly. "Better go in and dress and we'll
+walk down and take a look at things. That will divert your mind."
+
+But it was not until Isabel had assured her that the worst force of an
+earth movement in California spent itself in the first great shock, and
+offered to help her dress, that Victoria could be persuaded to enter the
+house. Gwynne fetched Isabel's field-glass and studied the scene below,
+picking out the more disastrous work of the earthquake. All the new
+solid buildings, and most of the old, appeared to be unharmed, and the
+residence district, built of wood on stone foundations, for the most
+part, was much as usual, save for its altered sky-line: every chimney
+and skylight had disappeared. But tall slender factory chimneys had
+broken raggedly in half, and the great tower of the City Hall, standing
+high against the blue sky and advancing smoke, seemed to shriek like a
+man whose flesh had been torn off with hot pincers until only the shamed
+skeleton was left. Nothing but the steel cage that had supported the
+bricks remained: eloquent of the millions that a dishonest city
+government and its confederates had stolen.
+
+Gwynne, as his eyes travelled more precisely, picked out more and more
+evidences of the power of the earthquake. Steeples were gone, walls
+fallen outward, roofs caved in, or yawning where a heavy chimney had
+gone through, old houses were on their knees, or had fallen into their
+cellars. Great cracks and rifts in walls and asphalt, fallen cornices
+and shattered windows detached themselves from the general picture of
+the half-ruined but oddly indifferent city. Almost immediately, through
+the smoke in the southeast, he had caught a glimpse of The Otis, an
+immense skeleton of steel, that had defied the earth, and offered
+nothing to the fire. But although he experienced a passing gratitude
+that he should lose nothing by the disaster, he forgot the incident in a
+moment: he felt wholly impersonal.
+
+Everybody in the city, apparently, was out-of-doors. The squares were
+black with people, quiet crowds, it would seem, moving slowly where they
+moved at all. He saw mounted officers and parading soldiers, and groups
+of firemen standing impotently by their hose and engines. In the burning
+South of Market Street district rivers of people were pouring towards
+the great central highway, their arms and shoulders burdened; fleeing no
+doubt with their household goods. Then Gwynne began to study the fires,
+and it dawned upon him that he was looking down not upon a mere
+conflagration but a burning city. It was more than likely that the fires
+would not cross Market Street, and that those near the water-front would
+be extinguished by water pumped from the bay; but "South of Market
+Street" was a city in itself, and not only did he feel a certain pity
+for all those terrified black pigmies down there, but a pang for the
+extinction of a region so identified with the early history of San
+Francisco. Rincon Hill was obliterated by the smoke, but no doubt she
+would go; with all her pretty old-fashioned houses, so unlike the
+horrors on the plateau below him--and South Park with its tragic
+memories. Moreover, if all the factories and warehouses, and the blocks
+devoted to the wholesale business, were destroyed, the city would be
+poorer by many millions.
+
+He shifted his glass away from the fires. More and more details arrested
+his eye. Inert forms were being carried out of houses where chimneys or
+skylights had gone through the roof. Automobiles were flying about,
+hundreds of them. Mounted orderlies were dashing at breakneck speed
+between the Presidio and the city. For a moment he wondered, then
+remembered that General Funston lived on Nob Hill. He inferred that the
+Mechanics' Fair Building, down in the western section of the valley, had
+been turned into a hospital, for automobiles were constantly dashing up
+and delivering limp and helpless burdens. The old Mission Church,
+Dolores, was unharmed, but not far away, and in that crowded district
+built upon the filled-in lake, or lagoon, of the Spanish era, he saw
+that a large building, doubtless a cheap and flimsy hotel, had sunken
+to its upper story, and that people were digging frantically about it.
+Every house in the immediate neighborhood had dropped into its cellar or
+lurched off its foundations. But it was all like some horrid picture by
+Doré: the smoky darkening atmosphere, the jets, the bouquets, the square
+masses of flame, each seeming to embrace a block if not more, the dark
+slowly rolling clouds not far overhead, the tides of humanity dwarfed by
+the distance, the broken dislocated houses, the great haughty defiant
+buildings, with the superb conflagration behind them.
+
+One of the neighbors, who lived on the crest, returning from a
+reconnoitring expedition, paused and informed him that the mayor had
+been persuaded to call a meeting of the more prominent citizens, to
+decide, if possible, what might be done to save the city, and to keep
+the people from falling into a panic. Mr. Phelan, the "Reform Mayor"--of
+the city's last period of municipal decency--had suggested sending to
+the military islands for dynamite enough to blow up a wide zone beyond
+the fire; but property-owners were already protesting. Many felt sure
+the fire would not cross Market Street, others were as certain that the
+whole city would go. A corps of marines had been despatched from Mare
+Island immediately after the earthquake and would undoubtedly save the
+Ferry Building and the docks, but if the fire ran over from Market
+Street a few blocks higher up, nothing could save all that great
+business, shopping, and hotel district; to say nothing of Chinatown, and
+possibly these hills. All South of Market Street was in motion, making
+for the ferries or the bare western hills, the Presidio and Park; they
+must answer for many of the fires, as they had not given a thought to
+cracked chimneys when they wanted their breakfast; but of course crossed
+wires and the overhead trolley system were responsible for as many more.
+Then he advised Gwynne to order that all the bath-tubs in the house
+should be filled with what water was left in the pipes, and that a stock
+of provisions from the neighboring grocer and butcher should be laid in.
+"Personally I don't believe the fire will ever come as far as this," he
+said. "But there'll be a famine, no doubt of that. The wires are all
+down, scarcely a train is running, the country may be as hard hit as
+ourselves--and all that crowd down there to feed!"
+
+Gwynne thanked him and replied that the launch was in waiting; but when
+the man had gone he called the Japs, gave them money, and ordered them
+to follow his neighbor's suggestion. He realized that he had no desire
+to leave this city where life was suddenly keyed to its highest pitch,
+and retire to the security and inaction of the country. Moreover, he
+recalled the promise he had given Hofer and his other friends on the
+night of the ball: this might be the emergency, and what services he
+could render should be given freely enough.
+
+Lady Victoria and Isabel came forth, and they all made their way rapidly
+down to Nob Hill. The stair was more rickety than ever, and many of the
+older houses they passed looked badly shaken within, if not
+without--every door was open. The floors were covered with plaster; more
+often than not the furniture and ornaments, and even mantels, were
+massed in an indistinguishable heap. The Hofers' door, like the rest,
+was open, and they saw that the spiral marble stair was a pile of
+glittering splinters and that the pictures had been turned completely
+round or flung across the hall. Mrs. Hofer had been too eager to reign
+on Nob Hill to wait for a new foundation. Several of the servants were
+sitting on the steps, and informed Gwynne that all the family, including
+the children, had gone out in two automobiles an hour before, to see the
+city.
+
+They walked down the hill, stopped many times by returning citizens
+anxious to impart information. The Italians on Telegraph Hill were mad
+with terror: "they were no Californians," in accents of bitter contempt.
+Portsmouth Square was full of Chinamen laughing at the women that had
+run there from the hotels without shoes on their feet, and only an opera
+or automobile cloak over their night-clothes. Even more amused were
+those Oriental philosophers at the white scared faces of the prisoners
+clinging to the bars of the jail. Nobody could tell how many people had
+been killed by falling roofs and walls, although the wildest stories
+were current, but so far there were more doctors and nurses attending to
+business than patients to care for. Down in the Mechanics' Fair
+Building, which had been converted into an emergency hospital, they were
+working as methodically, with book and pencil, as well as with bandage
+and instrument, as if earthquake and fire were a part of the daily
+routine. "Almost everybody was quiet, but there were sights down there,
+Oh, Lord, there were sights!" One man button-holed Gwynne, as he had
+button-holed others on his ascent, and informed him that he had "got
+down there" just in time to see two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
+go up in smoke. "Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and it has
+taken me twenty years to make it!" he reiterated, with an excited
+bitterness that was almost hilarious. He did not ask Gwynne if he had
+lost anything, but passed on to button-hole the next man and pour out
+his tale of individual protest; upon him the earthquake and fire had
+made a personal attack.
+
+"How strange it seems to be in the midst of so much _life_--mere
+physical life," said Lady Victoria. "A whole city tense and helpless! I
+wonder that man could think of himself. We are all mere fragments of one
+great whole."
+
+Her eyes were still restless and bright, her mask had fallen, and with
+it, curiously, many of her years. For a time, at least, the heavy burden
+of self had slipped from her tired spirit.
+
+Few stood in the doorways, or even gardens; nearly every one not
+exploring the city was in the middle of the street. In the
+boarding-house district, half-way down the hill, the corners were
+crowded with people watching the fires, although as many more had gone
+to the heights to command a better view. Some were still dazed and white
+with terror, a few looked distraught; more than one man was as nervous
+as his wife. But the majority were calm, although they wore an
+expression of being ready for anything. A few, mindful of the California
+tradition, were joking and relating the absurdities of their experience.
+There was no question that the shock had been far greater in the city
+than in and about Rosewater, and both Isabel and Gwynne, to Lady
+Victoria's disgust, expressed a regret that they "had missed anything."
+But it was possible that the convulsion had been even worse elsewhere.
+St. Peter was built over a known fault, and San Francisco was not; and
+indeed news was already coming into the city of coast hamlets that had
+literally been torn to pieces. Other wild rumors were flying about. New
+York had disappeared. Chicago had been swept by a tidal wave. As the
+telegraph wires were all down no one attempted to account for these
+items of news, but so much had already happened that if the eastern
+hemisphere had dropped to the level of Atlantis, no one would have
+stared.
+
+When they reached Union Square they found it so crowded that they hardly
+could make their way. Not only the guests of the St. Francis Hotel, that
+flanked it, had taken refuge in the open, but those of many other
+hotels. A few of the men were still in pyjamas, and of the women in
+dressing-gown or opera-cloak, caught up as they fled. But the majority
+had ventured back and dressed themselves, so that the "sights" were not
+what they may have been an hour earlier. But no one seemed to care for
+shelter; at all events they liked companionship in misery, although few
+besides the foreign members of the Grand Opera Company were voluble.
+Gwynne and Victoria and Isabel saw many of their acquaintance, not all
+recognizable at first, for even those that had returned to their rooms
+to dress themselves had taken little pains with their hair. One woman of
+great beauty, however, whose husband's hat surmounted her flowing locks,
+was just informing Isabel that she had reached that frame of mind where
+vanity was pressing apprehension to the wall, when there was an
+explosive sound, another as of rushing wings, the crowd stumbled against
+one another, and the large buildings about the square rocked. Again
+there was an exodus, and some clutching and gasping; but only a few of
+the refugees from the burning district, sitting on the furniture they
+had dragged with them, screamed. It was over in a few seconds, and then
+Gwynne pressed his women gently out of the crowd and down, through the
+tide of refugees, to Market Street. They walked in the middle of the
+street, for the sidewalks in this business district, where many of the
+buildings were of brick or stone, were littered with the débris of
+fallen cornice and shattered windows and chimneys. Market Street was
+kept open for automobiles, and the crossing refugees; the spectators
+stood on the edge of the northern pavement only, and in some cases on
+the top of bricks that represented an outer wall. A number of the
+refugees were marching towards the ferries, although a curtain of smoke
+bounded the lower end of Market Street. Others were moving stolidly
+towards the western hills. All were burdened with pillow-cases packed
+with clothing, or dragged trunks, cribs, baby-carriages, in which was a
+strange assortment of utensils, children, and household pets. The
+scrape, scrape of these unwieldy objects could be heard in a monotonous
+reiteration above the distant roar and crackling of the flames. Behind
+the tide of humanity rolling in from the burning district, at the end of
+every street, was a vista of flame and smoke. And the dark clouds were
+mounting higher and higher, lit with a million golden sparks. The
+temperature was tropical.
+
+People were already beginning to talk in phrases: The doomed city. The
+fire zone. Razed to the ground. Brains were not active, and any one
+energetic enough to put a few expressive words together was sure of
+disciples. Here, more than elsewhere, it was apparent that the army was
+in possession of the city. Mounted officers rode slowly up and down, and
+at the mouth of each of those dusky and menacing avenues was a guard
+with drawn bayonets. They permitted the unfortunate to emerge, but few
+to enter. In spite of the audible energy of the fire, the slow tramp of
+the refugees, the scraping of their furniture on the ill-paved streets,
+the city was extraordinarily silent. People scarcely spoke above a
+mutter. There was no shouting of orders. Even the children were not
+whimpering, the tawdry women were not hysterical, not a parrot raised
+his voice nor a dog whined. Faces were dazed, blank, imprinted with a
+stolid determination to get to a place of safety and keep families and
+belongings together. The present moment was as much as they could grasp,
+and truth to tell there was a good deal in it.
+
+Some of the sightseers speculated mildly--those that owned no property
+in this district--as to what would happen if the wind drove the fire
+much farther north. The opposite side of the street was lined with some
+of the greatest business houses in the city. The Palace Hotel looked
+like the rock of Gibraltar. Not a vase in its court had been overturned,
+some one said. The other buildings were of stone, brick, concrete. They
+had stood the earthquake; even the great square tower of the Call
+Building, unsupported by other buildings, had barely lost a cornice. Was
+it possible that the fire would take them? But the fire was rolling
+nearer every moment, for it met little to resist it but wood. Down by
+East Street several of the Market Street buildings were blazing. But no
+doubt the marines would extinguish those, and surely that sea of flame
+would break and retreat before the wall of rock opposite; and behind it
+were other structures of stone and brick and concrete. Now and then a
+refugee, permitting his attention to be drawn from his own little
+affairs, told that the back windows of these buildings were already hung
+with wet blankets, and that people stood by the cisterns on the roofs,
+hose in hand. But the South of Market Street fraternity shook a united
+head, and when the new phrase, The doomed city, was wafted into its dull
+ears, it adopted it promptly, and marched on muttering it over and
+over.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Already a number of automobiles had flown by, some filled with people
+anxious to leave town before it might be too late, but most of them
+containing surgeons and their assistants, or relays of firemen, alone
+permitted to enter the burning district; or prominent men bound for the
+citizens' meeting to be held in the cellar of the old jail in Portsmouth
+Square, a site upon which their ancestors had gambled and Jenny Lind had
+sung. Gwynne, who was already beginning to chafe at inaction, to feel
+the excited blood shake his pulses, was revolving excuses to send his
+mother and Isabel home, when an automobile came charging down Market
+Street at a terrific rate of speed. From some distance he recognized
+Hofer sitting beside the chauffeur. Not in the least considering his
+act, he stepped in front of the crowd and made a signal. Hofer responded
+with a shout, the automobile slowed slightly, two men stood up and
+clutched Gwynne, dragging him into the machine. Gwynne's long legs flew
+backward as if he were plunging head first over an embankment, and he
+had only time to right himself, turn and shout "Go home," before the
+automobile had regained its speed and was out of sight.
+
+Victoria turned to Isabel with wide eyes. "It looked like kidnapping!"
+she exclaimed.
+
+"I fancy they merely want him at the citizens' meeting. No doubt they
+want every steady clear brain they can muster. I think I had better go
+out and see what has become of Paula and the children. Will you come?"
+
+Victoria shook her head. "This is all too interesting," she said. "I
+must see more of it, and I am no longer afraid. When I am tired I will
+go home. Shall we agree to meet there for luncheon?"
+
+Isabel nodded and started up Stockton Street alone, intending to take
+the first car that led in her sister's direction. Some of the trolley
+wires were down, but no doubt others were uninjured, and the cable-cars
+had always seemed to her as fixed as fate. She could no more conceive of
+their system being dislocated for more than an hour at a time than of
+the city burning. So far she was merely interested, and although sorry
+for the unfortunate poor, felt that the fates had conspired to do the
+city a service in cleaning out so objectionable a quarter. Of the
+millions invested in that district she did not think, but sighed as she
+thought of South Park and Rincon Hill. Still, they would have been
+obliterated in the course of events and before long; and as for the fire
+itself it would be stopped by the great walls of masonry on and near
+Market Street. She looked eastward down the deserted streets towards the
+bay, and although the vista there also was closed with flame and smoke,
+the fires were far away, and the marines were fighting it.
+
+She passed many people ascending and descending, some with pressed lips,
+others arguing with a certain fettered excitement against the
+pessimistic attitude. After she left the business blocks the sidewalks
+again were free of débris, although she could see the ruin within. The
+disreputable section of this street, known as the "Red light district,"
+was crowded with women, to whose rescue or comfort no man would seem to
+have come. Isabel looked at them with an irresistible curiosity, but no
+sense of repulsion; she even stopped and answered their eager questions
+as best she could. She was possessed with the idea that there was but
+one person in San Francisco that day, no matter what the optical
+delusion. She was not at all dazed, but utterly impersonal.
+
+Even in the blazing sunshine most of these women were handsome, and
+young. But all assurance was gone; when not strained and haggard from
+the recent and the menacing terror, they looked indescribably forlorn.
+But they were very quiet. Isabel heard but one excited cry, and
+something of its thrill ran along her own nerves. "My God! The wind is
+blowing from the southeast and it's blowing strong!"
+
+Isabel glanced back. It seemed to her that the great suspended waves of
+smoke, red-lined, were rolling with more energy, and they certainly were
+inclining west as well as north. She wondered, with some irritation, why
+the wind blew from the southeast when the first of the trades should be
+roaring in from the Pacific. A strong steady west wind and the fire
+would be blown towards the bay, where it could be extinguished from the
+marine boats. Every time a gust ruffled her hair she shook her head
+irritably, wondering that she had ever loved the wind.
+
+She reached California Street. The cars were not running. Far down where
+they should have started she saw nothing but smoke. Nor was there the
+usual rumble indicating that the cable was at work, a sound which was
+among the first of her memories. She turned west and climbed the almost
+perpendicular blocks to the summit of Nob Hill. The beautiful massive
+pile of white stone, to be known when finished as Fairmont Hotel, and
+which had already done so much to redeem the city from its architectural
+madness, looked as serene and unravaged as if it crowned a hill of
+ancient Athens; but so, for that matter, did its neighbors, two as
+faultless in their way; the others appearing even more outrageous than
+usual, inasmuch as they had had their opportunity to disappear and
+failed to take advantage of it.
+
+From the summit of the hill Isabel gave a hasty glance southward, then
+walked rapidly west; the fires seemed to cover far more ground than when
+she had first looked at them from Russian Hill, an hour ago.
+
+After she had tripped over two large paving-stones that had met in an
+upward bulge, she took more note of detail. Some of the houses had
+private cisterns, and their roofs and walls were still quite wet.
+Pretentious garden walls, and stone pillars supporting façades, had
+fallen, while next door an apparently more delicate structure was
+intact. It seemed to be a matter of foundation. And everywhere there
+were groups of silent people watching the fire. Even when the Red Cross
+men and women carried out the injured, Isabel did not hear a groan. And
+all were losing their dazed and frightened expressions. The careless
+philosophy of the city was reasserting itself, although in a more
+dignified phase.
+
+At Van Ness Avenue, the wide street that runs through the residence part
+of the city from north to south, Isabel shuddered for the first time,
+and, as she was ashamed to run across, stood and stared with a new sense
+of fascination at the inexplicable old earth. The street lay in a narrow
+valley, what would have been a mere cañon in the mountains, and the soil
+was loose and sandy, although the great houses sat upon most of the
+brief level and held it firm. But the stone blocks in low garden walls
+were bulging and broken, and the street itself was horribly torn. Here
+and there it had sunken, and looked as if a wave had passed over it and
+left an impress. A large stone church had fallen, one tower into the
+street and another upon the neighboring house. The stone walls of houses
+were cracked; one of the "mansions" had a zigzag crevice from top to
+bottom.
+
+And the proudest had brought forth chairs and were sitting in their
+gardens or on the pavement. Isabel recognized a girl who had been one of
+the belles of Mrs. Hofer's ball, clad in a bath-gown and a pair of
+socks, and another, noted for her gowns, passed in a wagon, a
+handkerchief tied about her head and a half-filled pillow-case on her
+lap. Isabel knew that both had lived in one of the beautiful private
+hotels on the avenue, and she had already heard that it was so badly
+wrecked that the guests had been thankful to get out alive and had not
+ventured to return for their clothes. The stately building had been run
+up in a night, its feet set in sand, and the wonder was it was not lying
+across the avenue.
+
+Many of the refugees had already reached this third and last wide street
+of refuge, and although the greater number were still down at the
+southern end, others had pushed on, intending to walk to the Presidio,
+where they were likely to be fed. They were resting on their cumbrous
+belongings, strange groups, unkempt and half dressed. Many of the
+householders had sent within for food, and one wealthy dame, whose maid
+had had time to build her coiffure and groom her properly, sat with a
+dirty frowsy baby on her lap and was coaxing it to take milk from a
+spoon, its bottle having been overlooked in the flight. The mother was
+sitting on the bureau her husband had rescued, by no means abashed, nor
+even surprised.
+
+Isabel crossed the street and ascended and descended again, traversed
+several blocks to the north, and finally approached the house in which
+the Stones had their apartment. Although high-perched, it was uninjured,
+and as Isabel climbed the hill she saw Paula and her children seated,
+with many others, on the long flight of steps. Paula waved her hand and
+walked down composedly to meet her sister. She was dressed, laced, and
+painted. A sufficient time had elapsed since the earthquake to permit
+her ruling passion to regain its throne.
+
+"Well, I am glad to see you!" She greeted Isabel with something of the
+grand air. She felt almost pompous with the sense of playing her part in
+a great event, fancied herself, perhaps, its central figure. "Of course,
+I knew you were all right up there, especially as we came off fairly
+well. But you should have been here. You've missed it!"
+
+"I know," said Isabel, humbly. "But I am glad you were not hurt. And not
+frightened?"
+
+"Oh, fearfully. And being up so many flights of stairs made it seem so
+much worse. But Lyster and I managed to get out of bed and into the
+nursery before it was half over, and hold the children in the doorways.
+I didn't make a fool of myself like so many others, and run out in the
+street before I was dressed; my hair was up on pins. Lys was more
+frightened than I was--it's a wonder he has any nerves at all--and now
+that there are so many fires he is fearfully excited at the idea that
+all his favorite haunts may go. He has gone down-town to see what is
+happening--also," in a happy afterthought, "to try and borrow some
+money. He literally had not ten cents in his pocket. We have some in the
+bank for a wonder, but everybody says the banks will go, and also that
+there will be hard times."
+
+Isabel handed over her purse mechanically. "Victoria and Elton have
+plenty, I shall not need it," she said. But the desire to save Mrs.
+Stone's feelings was superfluous. The purse disappeared with a polite
+"Thanks, dear," and Paula hastily changed the subject, lest the luxury
+of a carriage for the return to Russian Hill should appeal to Isabel.
+"Of course you'll go back to the ranch where you can be comfortable,"
+she remarked.
+
+"I have no plan. The launch is ready for us, but it will depend upon the
+others. Should you care to go to the ranch? I don't suppose you are in
+any danger from fire, out here, but things may be very uncomfortable for
+a time."
+
+"Oh, I'll take the risk," said Paula, easily. "I should be bored to
+death up there, and here there are so many people to talk to. I have
+heard about fifty experiences this morning, and all fearfully
+interesting. I guess we'll make out. It will only be for a day or two
+anyhow, and everybody that has food in the house is offering to share
+with the rest. I never have much on hand, but Mrs. Brooks, who lives
+under me, always keeps her store-room filled, and has invited me to
+lunch. You had better stop, too."
+
+"I have promised Victoria to return. Just suppose the fire should come
+out here, what should you do?"
+
+"Oh, take a mattress or two out to the Presidio. It's not far, and would
+be a regular picnic. But it won't."
+
+"Well, I'll go, then. If you change your mind you can have the launch.
+Only come to me first. Mr. Clatt is standing over it with a
+six-shooter."
+
+"Thanks. Sorry you won't come in. Lys won't sit down for about a week,
+he's _that_ nervous, so you'll probably see him up on the Hill."
+
+Isabel started for home, and when she reached Fillmore Street discovered
+that she was tired. It was then that she regretted not having reserved a
+dollar or two; but no doubt Victoria was at home by this time. She found
+a livery-stable, and asked the proprietor, lounging in the entrance, if
+he could send her to the foot of her bluff.
+
+"Yes, for fifty dollars," he said, coolly. Fillmore Street was a
+prosperous slum, another brief level between two steep acclivities. It
+was not yet aware of the proud destiny that awaited it, that for the
+next year or more it was to be the teeming centre of the abbreviated
+city's life, but there never was a time when it was burdened with
+manners, or the grand point of view. When Isabel stared, the man
+continued: "Yes, ma'am! Fifty's the ticket. And two hours later it may
+be five hundred. Some people are getting mighty nervous, and I've let
+five hacks and buggies already, at my own figure, to them as wants to
+get out of town quick."
+
+Isabel turned her back on him, and climbed and descended again. Lower
+Van Ness Avenue was even more torn and lumpy than where she had crossed
+it at California Street, and hundreds of the South of Market Street
+refugees were sitting or lying in the middle of the street, worn out but
+stolid. Just beyond, she caught up with a teamster, who, noticing the
+fatigue in her eyes, stopped his horses and offered her a "lift,"
+provided she was "going his way."
+
+Isabel gratefully climbed to his high perch, after stating that she had
+no money, and being royally silenced.
+
+"Oh, shucks!" said the man. "I guess this is the time to do other folks
+a good turn. You'd do the same for me, I'll bet. What do you think of
+this business, anyhow?"
+
+Isabel replied hopefully, but he shook his head.
+
+"City's doomed. Far as Van Ness, anyhow. Nothin' ain't goin' to stop
+that fire but water, and water's just what they haven't got. Lord! to
+think of that bay on three sides of the city. Talk about the Ancient
+Mariner. I don't live in the city, but I'll be sorry to see it go. Lord!
+warn't that a shake? I was flung plumb out of bed and against the wall,
+and the house next to mine, or the one I war in, went plumb out into the
+middle of the street. Lord! what a yellin' there was inside! Nobody
+hurt, but one woman went plumb out'r her mind. They've got her tied to
+the bed-post now. And what a lootin' of saloons there was until the
+soldiers marched in! Now, I hear, that there mayor has issued an order,
+which is to be pasted up all over, that any man caught lootin' anything,
+saloons or otherwise, is to be shot dead and no questions asked. Good
+job, that. I guess we're in for high old times, miss. I'm makin' for
+Oakland, where I live. I brought in a load last evenin' and stopped
+over. Some of my friends live down by the ferry, and I'll pick them up,
+if they want to get out. Don't you want to come along? My wife and me'll
+be glad to put you up if you can't do any better."
+
+Isabel thanked him warmly, and assured him that she would be safe in any
+case, then discovered a loose half-dollar in the pocket of her jacket.
+The man accepted it philosophically.
+
+"You were welcome to the ride, but I'm not the one to say nay to a bit
+of silver so long as you say you're not hard up yourself. Guess it'll
+come in handy. Well, s'long. Good luck to you. I've enjoyed your society
+very much."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+The teamster had deposited her at Taylor and Jackson streets, and as she
+passed the Trennahans' door it occurred to her to ask how they fared.
+The house appeared to be uninjured, but the electric bell was useless,
+and it was not until she had knocked several times that an old Mexican
+servant answered the summons. Then she learned that the family had left
+for Menlo Park in their touring car immediately after the earthquake, as
+the boys were at the country-house with their tutor. The woman had been
+maid for many years to Mrs. Polk and had lived with Magdaléna since her
+aunt's death. She was a privileged character, and during Isabel's visit
+had accepted her relationship to the house of Yorba and waited on her
+personally.
+
+"So tired you look," she said. "Come in, no?" Then, as the invitation
+was declined, she leaned her stout shapeless figure against the
+door-frame and begged Isabel for an account of her experience. Isabel
+gave it briefly, and the old woman shook her head. "So terreeblay
+thing!" she sighed. "Seventy years I live in California and this the
+more bad earthquake I never feel. My mother she feel the great
+earthquake of 1812 in the south, when the padres plant a long straight
+branch in the middle of the square of San Gabriel, and it never stop
+shake for four months. Ay yi, California! I theenk we all go into the
+bay this morning, and I fall down twice when I run to see how little
+Señorita Inez she feeling. Ay yi!"
+
+"Why did you not go to the country?"
+
+"And who take care the house? The car come back bime-by for the other
+servants, but I no go. Si, I can go in the train--then--perhaps. But no
+in automobilia. Is devil, no less."
+
+"Well, if you should be frightened come up to me," and Isabel went on
+hurriedly to her own home, suddenly reminded of the uncertainty of her
+relative's nerves. But Victoria was standing on the porch staring
+outward with such an intensity of gaze that she took no notice of
+Isabel's approach. And when Isabel reached her side, she too stood
+silent for a time. _The Call_ Building was on fire. This square tower of
+seventeen stories and a dome, with some seventy windows on each side,
+had caught fire at the top, and as the flames devoured the contents of
+one floor as quickly as possible that they might dart down another
+flight and gorge themselves anew, in an incredibly short time the two
+hundred windows in sight, and no doubt those in the rear, were spouting
+flames like the mouths of so many cannon: each sharply defined, owing to
+the indestructible nature of the walls. Volumes of white smoke poured
+upward to be lost in the black clouds above. At times the fire and
+smoke, on either side, torn by the wind, seemed to dance and gyrate in a
+Bacchanalian revel, taking monstrous forms, that exploded in showers of
+sparks, glittering like the fabled California sands. Above the burning
+district the smoke clouds changed form constantly. Sometimes they reeled
+along like colossal water-spouts. The roar of the fire waxed louder as
+one listened to it: a deep persistent energetic roar, as of a sea
+climbing over a land its time had come to devour.
+
+Suddenly a curtain of smoke swept down and obliterated the scene,
+conveying a sense of respite, challenging the memory, although a moment
+later it was shot with a million sparks.
+
+Victoria announced briefly that they were to have lunch of a sort, but
+for her part she would prefer a bath.
+
+A bath, however, was out of the question, and, without washing the
+cinders from their faces and hands, they sat down to beefsteak fried on
+one of the oil-stoves used for heating the Mansard story, and canned
+vegetables. That much indulgence they might have permitted themselves,
+but human nature is prone to extremes, and they were tuned to a severe
+economy that might embrace more than water for some weeks to come.
+
+Isabel sent a plate of sandwiches and a bottle of beer down to Mr.
+Clatt, and the servant returned with the information that the faithful
+wharfinger was sitting on a chair in front of the launch, a pistol on
+his lap; and that already a small crowd was crouched like buzzards in
+front of him. Isabel asked Victoria if she cared to retreat, but the
+older woman shook her head.
+
+"Do you?" she asked.
+
+"Oh no. I shall remain until the last minute, certainly until I know
+what Elton's plans are. If the launch is seized we can go down to Fort
+Mason or out to the Presidio. Every one is in the same boat. I should
+hate being too comfortable. But I don't think you should sleep
+out-of-doors. It is always damp at night."
+
+"I can stand as much as you can. I am quite fit again. And this is the
+first time, for heaven knows how many years, that anything has
+interested me. I shall stay till the last minute; and surely no fire
+could climb this hill. Did I tell you that Mr. Trennahan came up at once
+and asked me to go to Menlo Park with them? Ungrateful--but I have not
+thought of it since."
+
+Isabel announced her intention to take a nap. "No one knows what may
+happen to-night," she said. "And I feel as if I had not slept for a
+week."
+
+She fell asleep at once. Lady Victoria awakened her by bursting
+unceremoniously into her room.
+
+"You must get up and look!" she cried. "The Palace Hotel and the other
+big newspaper buildings are on fire. The sight is something awful--and
+wonderful."
+
+Isabel ran to the window. All the valley was a rolling sea of flame, and
+all space seemed to be filled with enormous surging billows of smoke.
+From every window of the Palace Hotel, an immense square building of
+some seven stories, from the great newspaper buildings, and from other
+brick and stone structures near by, tongues of flame were leaping; the
+wooden buildings were mere shapeless furnaces. Again a volume of smoke
+descended, and for the moment nothing was to be seen but a red blur
+somewhere in the midst of rolling black.
+
+Victoria communicated to Isabel the information she had received from
+the neighbors, always coming and going. People were pouring out of the
+city, not only by the Southern Pacific boats to Oakland, and indirectly
+to Berkeley and Alameda, but by freight-boats and launches to the Marin
+towns. They were obliged to make a long detour round the base of the
+northern hills, as the water-front and the streets behind were a roaring
+furnace, although the fires had not crossed East Street. All houses in
+the towns across the bay had opened to the refugees, tents had been
+erected in the public squares, and emergency hospitals had been started
+before nine o'clock. The militia had been called out to assist the
+regulars, and also the Cadet Battalion of the State University. A
+Citizens' Patrol had been formed to protect the still unburned
+districts, each man provided with arms at the Presidio. People on the
+lower slopes were now in full flight towards the western parks and
+hills, as well as the Presidio, many being under the impression that the
+ferry-boats were not running. It was doubtful if a hotel or a
+boarding-house would harbor a soul that night; not east of Van Ness
+Avenue, at least, and many in that region were preparing to sleep in the
+Park and squares, lest the fire attack them from the south. Refugees,
+exhausted, were lying on the doorsteps and in the streets of the Western
+Addition.
+
+Victoria relapsed into silence and Isabel gazed down upon the beautiful
+terrible scene--the curtain had rolled upward again--at the enormous
+tongues of flame leaping from every window, the showers of golden
+sparks, the swooping and soaring clouds, many of them white, with
+convoluted edges, and faintly tinted like the day smoke of Vesuvius.
+These curled white masses rolled among the black waves towards the west,
+and the low deep roar waxed louder as one listened to it.
+
+All the wooden bow-windows of the Palace Hotel had been eaten off, but
+it would be hours before the stoutly built old hotel ceased to feed the
+flames. Sometimes sheets of fire seemed to drive from the apertures
+across the great width of Market Street, to be beaten back by a solid
+wall of flame. In the intense clear yellow light that bathed the street
+Isabel could see the twisted car tracks. More than once she fancied she
+saw a prostrate body, but it may have been an achievement of the
+shifting flames, and certainly nothing living moved down there. The
+mounted officers and their men were patrolling the blocks along all the
+northern front of the fire.
+
+"Are you not in the least worried about Elton?" asked Isabel, abruptly.
+
+"Not a bit. I never worried about him when he was a child. He was always
+the most agile and ready youngster I ever saw."
+
+"But he is very venturesome. He might be caught in one of those furnaces
+as well as another, or killed by falling bricks."
+
+"He is a man of destiny," said Victoria indifferently. "He will live to
+accomplish what he was born for."
+
+Isabel, in truth, found worry as impossible as any other common emotion,
+nevertheless thought it odd that he did not come to them for a moment or
+send a message. She could appreciate his wholly masculine mood, his
+temporary indifference to the charms of her sex, but he had an ingrained
+sense of responsibility, and was more considerate than the average man.
+
+Lady Victoria returned to her vantage-point on the veranda, and Isabel
+went down to the garden fence where the three Japs were standing, and
+asked them if they intended to remain--half the servants had already
+fled from the city. Two replied that later in the day they should go to
+Oakland where they had friends. Isabel told them that she should not
+part with what little money there was in the house, and they answered
+politely that they expected to wait for their wages. The oldest of the
+three, a respectable man of thirty, who looked like, and no doubt was,
+a student, announced his intention to remain.
+
+"I can cook," he added. "Not well, but perhaps well enough for a few
+days. And perhaps if we are driven out I may go to the country with you.
+I should be willing to work for anything you could pay me until things
+were restored to their normal condition--if you would be good enough to
+give me my evenings for study."
+
+Isabel promised him the protection of her ranch-house, and stood talking
+to him for some time. His English was unusually correct and his remarks
+were more intelligent than those of the average man of her acquaintance.
+He told her something of Japanese earthquakes, and was good enough to
+add that he had never felt quite so violent or so peculiar a series of
+earth movements as California had achieved that morning. He was curious
+to see the result as recorded on the seismograph, and to know at what
+hour it registered in Japan.
+
+"I think Professor Omori will come over," he said, modestly. "This
+earthquake will interest him very much. He will wish to study the
+ground."
+
+"Were you not frightened?" asked Isabel, curiously.
+
+"I appreciated the danger, but frightened--no, miss, I think I have
+never felt frightened. But I do not like fire. I have seen Tokio burn. I
+shall walk about constantly and see that it does not steal upon us from
+the north or west. Some silly person might make a fire, and all the
+chimneys must be cracked."
+
+"I feel much relieved to know that you will patrol," said Isabel,
+wondering if she were being gracious to a prince. "Would you mind going
+up to the top of the hill and asking some one if he knows whether all
+the injured were taken from the Mechanics' Pavilion? It is blazing like
+a wood pile."
+
+He went up the hill and returned with the information that all the
+patients, as well as the doctors and nurses, had been taken out, the
+last of them while the roof was blazing, and conveyed in automobiles to
+other emergency hospitals far away; and that the prisoners in the City
+Hall had been transported, manacled, to the army prisons in the same
+manner.
+
+"One of the gentlemen said he saw Mr. Gwynne running an automobile full
+of nurses and patients--one of Mr. Hofer's machines," he added. "And
+that he returned twice at least. All the young men that own machines are
+acting very well, they say, transporting the injured, and making
+themselves generally useful. Many are on the roofs of the greater
+buildings with the firemen fighting the fire with blankets, and hose
+attached to the cisterns. A few buildings have been saved in that way,
+but not many, and more or less of the water has to be turned on the men,
+who catch fire repeatedly from the sparks."
+
+Isabel went into the house and put on her hat. "I cannot keep still any
+longer," she said to Victoria, a moment later. "And now I am quite
+rested. I shall go down and see Mrs. Hofer, and reconnoitre for myself.
+If Elton should come, ask him to wait for me here--he must need a
+rest--or walk down Taylor Street."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+She found her lower neighbors still sitting on their doorsteps or
+standing in groups, but was told that many more had already gone out to
+the Western Addition with their valuables, fearing that the fire might
+come up the southern or eastern slopes before night. A large touring car
+was standing in front of the Hofers' door. The children and their nurses
+were in it, and Mr. Toole came out and took his place as Isabel reached
+the house. He greeted her for the first time since she had known him
+without a smile; and he looked very old and sad. Isabel heard Mrs.
+Hofer's light high rapid voice within. She was standing in the large
+drawing-room, giving orders to a group of servants. When she saw Isabel
+she cried out as if confronted with a ghost.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, but not kissing her as usual; her mind apparently
+was divided into many parts. "I am relieved to see that _you_ are all
+right. I didn't know what might have happened up State. Did you _ever_?
+Well!--Great old country this. Talk about living on the side of
+Vesuvius. And now everything is going, everything!"
+
+"I keep hoping for a change of wind."
+
+"Perhaps, but I've pretty well given it up. We are in disgrace to-day,
+sure enough. And anyhow Mr. Hofer has lost millions, millions!
+However--" She recovered herself with a bound. "He made them, so I
+guess he can make more. And do you know what he's thinking about
+already? He burst in here half an hour ago--as black as your hat--with
+orders that I should take the family down to Burlingame at once, and
+then began talking about the Burnham plans, and the opportunity to clean
+up the city politically. There's a raging idealist for you. And do you
+know what he and Mr. Gwynne are up to now? Carrying dynamite, no less,
+between Fort Mason and the fire line. The two of them are running an
+automobile apiece and have put themselves at the disposal of the
+authorities. Nice thing for me to be thinking of all night. Don't you
+want to come along?"
+
+Isabel shook her head.
+
+"Well, I'll move on then--before they change their minds and impress my
+car. So far I have a gracious permit to keep it. The servants have
+buried the silver and the pictures, but--" She glanced at the beautiful
+frieze, which, without its electric lights, looked a mere blur of blue
+and black, then shrugged her shoulders. "I just won't believe my house
+will go," she said, defiantly; "not till the last minute, anyhow. When
+the fire's over, or Mr. Hofer lets me, I'll come back and do something
+for those poor wretches that have been burned out. Gather up what food
+there is to be had in the country, and start an eating station or
+something. Mr. Hofer says food will come pouring in from every direction
+presently, and then they will need organizers. I'm good at that. Can I
+rely on you? It will be an experience, anyhow; and of course it's my
+place to do that sort of thing. Besides, I do feel terribly sorry for
+those poor things, and I won't be able to sit still for a month."
+
+"You can count on me. When this is over I shall find you somehow."
+
+"Oh, don't worry. The newspapers won't miss anything. They're burned
+out, but I hear that the editors are already over in Oakland scurrying
+round after a plant. Well, _adios_. If you say the word I'll send the
+car back for you--although I doubt if it would pass a squad without
+those children in it. I suppose it would hold several tons of dynamite!
+Heigh-ho, I suppose it is all in the day's work. What can you expect if
+you live in an earthquake country?" They had reached the pavement and
+she put her lips close to Isabel's ear. "I'd like to get out of the
+damned place and never see it again," she whispered. "I'll keep a stiff
+upper lip, but those are my sentiments and I guess I have company."
+
+She stepped lightly into the car, nodded with a grim gayety, and in
+another moment had disappeared round the corner of Taylor and California
+streets.
+
+Isabel started down the hill, and almost immediately met Anne
+Montgomery. She had not recognized her as they approached each other,
+for the glare was in her eyes; but Miss Montgomery ran forward and
+kissed her.
+
+"What on earth did you come to this God-forsaken place for, when you had
+the country to stay in?" she demanded. "Oh, Lady Victoria? I did not
+know she was here. Just come with me and look at a sight."
+
+She put her arm through Isabel's and led her rapidly for several blocks
+along California Street, then down Hyde towards moving columns of
+people. The fire was far south of these refugees as yet, but they looked
+down every cross street and saw it; and more than once during their slow
+flight they had seen the soldiers at the visible end of each long vista
+move a block farther north. "I tramped a long way with them," said Miss
+Montgomery, "carrying things for a woman I never saw before. Then a man
+took the burden over and I started up the hill to see how some friends
+were faring."
+
+From this point they could hear the roar and crackle of the fire and the
+crashing of walls; but even more formidable was that tramping of
+thousands of feet, the scraping of trunks and furniture on the tracks
+and stones. Isabel, still feeling like a palimpsest, lingered for an
+hour looking at these refugees. They were vastly different, in all but
+their impotence, from those of the early morning. Hundreds were from the
+"boarding-house district"; others were householders; a large number, no
+doubt, owned their carriages or automobiles, but those had been
+impressed long since. It was a well and a carefully dressed crowd, for
+by this time nearly every one had recovered from the shock of the
+earthquake; many forgotten it, no doubt, in the new horror. They had not
+the blank expression of the poor, dazed by the second calamity following
+so close upon the heels of the first, but their lips were pressed, eyes
+were straining towards the distant goal, and all would have been pale
+but for the glare of the fire. Fortunately for most of them, men as well
+as women, they had either children, pets, or even more cumbersome
+belongings to claim their immediate attention; no time for either
+thought or despair. They pushed trunks to which skates had been
+attached, or pulled them by ropes; they trundled sewing-machines and
+pieces of small furniture, laden with bundles. Many carried
+pillow-cases, into which they had stuffed a favorite dress and hat, an
+extra pair of boots and a change of underclothing, some valuable
+bibelot or bundle of documents; to say nothing of their jewels and what
+food they could lay hands on. Several women wore their furs, as an
+easier way of saving them, and children carried their dolls. Their state
+of mind was elemental. They lived acutely in the present moment and
+looked neither behind nor before--save to a goal of safety. Misfortune
+had descended upon them, and ruin no doubt would follow, but for the
+present they asked no more than to save what they could carry or propel,
+and to get far beyond that awful fire. The refinements of sentiment and
+all complexity were forgotten; they indulged in nothing so futile as
+complaint, nor even conversation. And the sense of the common calamity
+sustained them, no doubt, deindividualized them for the hour. Soon after
+they became their normal selves once more, and accepted the hard
+conditions of the following weeks with the philosophy that was to be
+expected of them. But underneath all the recovered gayety and defiant
+pride of the later time more than one spirit was sprained, haunted with
+a sense of dislocation, permanently saddened by the loss not of fortune
+but of personal treasures, of old homes full of life-long associations,
+never to be replaced nor regained. Many no doubt were better off for
+losing those old anchors that held them to the past and emphasized their
+years, besides keeping their sorrows green, but others had one reason
+less for living. Nevertheless the philosophy born of a lifetime in an
+earthquake country, of the electric climate, of their isolation, as well
+as the good Anglo-Saxon strain in so many of them, brought a genuine
+rebound to all physically capable of it, both old and young. But to-day
+they were primitive--and entirely human. They helped one another, the
+stronger carrying the weaker's burdens as a matter of course. The men
+were bent almost double with increasing properties.
+
+Isabel felt neither pity nor admiration for them; they were a mere unit,
+these thousands reduced to their primal component, the third fact in the
+great day of facts.
+
+Suddenly, however, she caught sight of Lyster Stone. He carried a baby
+on one arm and several rolls of painted canvas under the other. Beside
+him walked the mother pushing a loaded crib; and behind him the artist
+friend, to whose aid he had evidently gone, dragged a large canvas trunk
+bound with an ingenious system of ropes. Stone nodded gayly when he saw
+Isabel.
+
+"Hallo!" he cried. "I was going for you later on. We'll all sleep out
+to-night. Better come along." Then as Isabel only shook her head he
+said, hurriedly: "Awfully sorry I forgot--promised Gwynne I'd go up and
+tell you he was in for a long day's work--transporting hospital patients
+and hauling dynamite. He sent peremptory orders that you and his mother
+were to go to the country with the afternoon tide."
+
+The crowd bore him on and Isabel and Anne walked up the hill again,
+meeting other streams of refugees, but thinner, as most of them
+preferred the easier slopes. Isabel looked at Anne curiously. There was
+an unusual restlessness about her, nothing of the rudimentary expression
+of the crowd. Isabel was wondering if her apparent and unusual spirits
+might be due to the fact that her flat was in the Western Addition, and
+that she had hired a wagon at the first alarm of fire and carried her
+silver to the Presidio, when Anne suddenly began to explain herself.
+
+"Do you know," she broke out, "I have a wonderful sense of
+freedom!--of--of--hope. Something has happened at last. All the ruts
+have been ploughed over. Life will never be the same here, in my time at
+least. It will be like beginning all over again, with a hundred barely
+imagined possibilities and an equal chance for every one. It may be a
+reprehensible thing--to feel as if the destruction of your city had set
+your individual soul free--but I do, and that's the end of it. And I can
+tell you I've seen that _expression_ in the eyes of many a man in the
+last few hours. Not in those of the older men, perhaps, for they wear
+out early enough in this climate, anyhow, and those that are close upon
+sixty don't look as if they had much left to live for--although I've
+seen a few flying about as if they had dropped thirty years; its all a
+matter of temperament and physique. But for the rest of us! The still
+energetic men, and the women that have been cankered with the tedium
+vitæ, and have the brains and brawn to work. It will be the Fifties all
+over again--not only something more than a bare living in prospect, but
+a constant, exciting, interest in life. I saw a good many men, just
+after the earthquake, looking as if they had believed the end of the
+world had come, but they braced up directly the city was threatened by
+something they could pit themselves against. Every man worth his salt is
+fighting fire, rescuing the helpless, dragging mattresses out to the
+hills and Park, and helping the women down here save their belongings.
+All with automobiles and carriages are helping the authorities and
+hospitals. Political factions and personal enemies are working side by
+side, particularly down on the fire line. Even the mayor has won a day's
+respect from his fellow-citizens, although I'm told he's terribly torn
+between the Committee of Fifty and the military authorities on the one
+hand, who want to blow up a wide zone, and the property-holders who
+won't have their precious possessions sacrificed when the wind may
+change any minute. Meanwhile the fire has a headway that will give it
+the best part of the city. I never felt so alive in my life; so vividly
+in the present. Can you remember the name of a book you have read, that
+there is any world outside these seven square miles?"
+
+"Yesterday is a mere dream and to-morrow is only a bare possibility! The
+Fifties! I feel as if we were at the beginning of things on another
+planet. I shall never trouble my head with problems or psychology again.
+We are mere dancing midgets on the scalp of stupendous forces that we do
+not even dimly apprehend. Earth lets us play until her patience is
+exhausted with our pretentions as mere human beings, at our insane
+delusion that the intellectual are not only the equal but the superior
+of the physical forces; and then she merely shakes herself, and the
+wisest is as helpless as the idiot, the prince even worse off than the
+pauper because he has a bigger house to run out of. They all dance to
+her tune like so many wooden marionettes. Hofer is no better off than
+his blacksmith--whose savings are probably in the fireproof vault of
+some bank, while I happen to know that more than one millionaire has not
+insured his Class A buildings, thinking the expense unnecessary. No
+wonder you have a sense of freedom. So have I. We are dancing to the
+tune of the unseen forces. They will do the thinking. I wonder,
+by-the-way, if deep down in the brain of that fleeing ruined tide of
+elemental beings there is not a prick of gratified vanity that they are
+in the midst of a great and horrible experience? We have been reading so
+much lately of the horrors in Russia, we have read, all our lives, of
+horrors and atrocities somewhere, and this State has grinned at us so
+unintermittently. Now we, too, are actors in a great life-and-death
+drama. I don't fancy any one is doing even that much analysis, but I
+can't help thinking that the vague appreciation of the fact sustains
+them in a way--possibly gives them a calm sense of superiority to the
+rest of the world----Look at this."
+
+They had reached Jackson Street on the flat of Nob Hill. It was now
+evening and the exodus from Chinatown had begun. The Mongolians were
+streaming up from their threatened quarter, and, like the others,
+tramping silently out to the Presidio. The merchants had put on their
+fine clothes, and their families--exposed to the Occidental eye for the
+first time--wore gorgeous garments of bright silks covered with
+embroideries. The poor little respectable wives tottered along on their
+foolish feet, held up by their lords or their "big-footed"
+serving-women, while their children trudged along uncomplainingly and
+stared at the fire with big expressionless eyes. Mingling freely with
+the wealthy autocrats of Chinatown were the coolies, and the
+disreputable women with which the quarter swarmed. The Chinese rarely
+import their wives. The coolies wore their blue blouses and soft felt
+hats, and the women had painted their faces and built up their hair as
+usual, shining tower-like coiffures stuck with large-lobed pins, cheap
+or costly, according to their grade. All were as stolid as their own
+wooden gods. They would have looked like a solemn procession on a festa
+day had it not been for the bundles and strong-chests they carried.
+
+"Come up to dinner, such as it is," said Isabel, to Anne. "What are you
+going to do to-night?"
+
+"Camp down in the sand-lots by Fort Mason and see what I can do for
+those poor refugees. There will be great suffering, I am afraid. Many
+women should be in hospital with every attention; and with all this
+excitement who knows what may happen? I fancy either a tent-hospital
+will be erected, or the worst cases will be taken into the fort. I am a
+good nurse, and I told the Leader I should be there. There will be many
+children to look after, too. The parents, the best of them, won't be up
+to much."
+
+"Perhaps I will go down later. But I shall wait at the house until I
+have seen Mr. Gwynne--he may need food, or be hurt in any of a dozen
+ways. If you see him--and no doubt you will, if you are to be at the
+fort--tell him that I have not gone to the country and have no intention
+of going."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+They had passed members of the Citizens' Patrol on every block, and they
+found one pacing the plank walk on Russian Hill. He told them that the
+edict had gone forth that not so much as a candle should be lit in a
+house that night and that all cooking must be done out-of-doors. The
+spectacled Jap was boiling soup on one of the oil stoves, which he had
+carried into the garden and half surrounded by a screen. Beside him was
+what looked like an open newly-dug grave, and the girls, startled,
+demanded what it meant.
+
+Sugihara, apparently, never smiled, but his eyes flickered. "Before
+Cusha and Kuranaga went I made them dig a hole for the silver," he said.
+"It is too heavy for the launch. If we are driven away, I will cut your
+ancestors from their frames and take them with us."
+
+"Well, you are a treasure," said Isabel, with a sigh. "You shall do
+nothing but read when you get to the ranch."
+
+Lady Victoria was pacing slowly up and down the porch, her eyes seldom
+wandering from the fire. When dinner was ready, she merely shook her
+head impatiently, and Isabel and her guest sat down in the little
+tower-room, which was brilliantly illuminated from below. Sugihara
+had made a very good soup of canned corn and tomatoes and had fried
+bits of meat and potato. There was little conversation. The dynamiting
+was now something more than sporadic. The detonations were so terrific
+that it was not difficult for the San Franciscans to imagine
+themselves--supposing they had a grain of imagination left--in a
+besieged city. Isabel suggested, and Anne agreed with her, that they
+might have been far worse off than they were; nature at her extremest is
+never so pitiless as the human brute when the lust to kill is on him.
+
+Isabel prepared the remains of the feast for Mr. Clatt, and asked
+Sugihara if he would object to relieving the watch, that the wharfinger
+might snatch a few hours' sleep. There was no longer any danger of fire
+except from the conflagration itself, and now that the dynamiting had
+begun in earnest it was possible that the flames would be isolated
+before midnight.
+
+The Jap went off with the dish in one hand and a book in the other,
+hoping that he would be allowed to light a candle on the launch. He
+returned in a few moments, and for the first time he was smiling.
+
+"Mr. Clatt will not give up his watch," he said. "He says he might miss
+the chance to put a hole in some--dago (his language was very bad,
+Miss). He says there's not a wink of sleep in him."
+
+"No doubt but that he will hold on to it, unless the military step in,"
+said Anne. "Then, I fancy, he would surrender very meekly. They have
+impressed a good many launches for prisoners and dynamite. But I hope
+not, for whether the fire comes up the hills or not, there is going to
+be terrible privation. Heaven knows how many days it will be before we
+have enough water even to drink, and I heard a little while ago that as
+soon as food comes in the authorities will establish relief stations,
+where everybody, from the millionaire to John Chinaman, will have to
+stand in line and wait for his loaf of bread. Wouldn't it be better for
+you to go at once?"
+
+"I fancy I can endure as much as any one, and if I am driven from here I
+will go down to you. I shall go down anyhow when I have seen Mr. Gwynne.
+I do not propose to lie in a hammock while several hundred thousand
+people are sleeping on the ground. What do you take me for?"
+
+"Somehow I don't see you as a nurse, or amusing children, or doling out
+bread and raiment. You would be much more in the picture encouraging Mr.
+Gwynne. However--I am going to impress your linen and a clothes-basket
+to carry it in. No doubt the philosophical Sugihara will help me carry
+it to the fort."
+
+"Take what you like." Isabel directed her to the linen-closet, and went
+down to the veranda. She paused abruptly in the doorway. Victoria's face
+could be seen only in profile, but its expression, as she gazed down
+upon that tossing twisting furious flame ocean, needed no analytical
+faculty to interpret. It was voluptuous, ecstatic.
+
+Isabel crossed the porch in a stride.
+
+"What are you thinking of?" she demanded, imperiously.
+
+Victoria did not turn with a start. She did not turn at all. "I am
+thinking," she replied, automatically, as if in obedience to the
+stronger will--"I am thinking that at last I understand what it is we
+are so blindly striving for from the hour when we can think at all; what
+it is--that unsatisfied desire that urges us on and on to so many fatal
+experiments in the pursuit of happiness. The great goal, the real
+meaning of our miserable balked mortal existence is not that dancing
+will-o'-the-wisp we call happiness, for want of a better name. It is
+Death."
+
+"Well?" Isabel's voice rose, but she kept the anxiety out of it.
+
+"I cannot imagine anything more delicious," went on Victoria, in the
+same low rich tones, "than to walk straight down those hills and into
+that sea of flame. I have always admired Empedocles, who cast himself
+into Etna. Once I saw a friend cremated, and the brief vision of that
+white incandescence, before the coffin shot down, seemed to me the
+apotheosis, the voluptuous poetry of death. I could walk down into that
+colossal furnace without flinching, and I believe that my last moment,
+as the world disappeared behind me, and those superb flames took me into
+their embrace, would be one of sublimest ecstasy."
+
+Isabel caught her by the shoulders and whirled her about. "Well, you
+will do nothing of the sort," she cried, roughly. "In the first place you
+couldn't get through the lines, and in the second you are wanted at Fort
+Mason. Anne is going down with a basket of linen for the poor women who
+will be confined to-night. You are an uncommonly strong woman, and you
+can make use of every bit of your strength. Anne and the Leader are
+frail creatures, and no one else that I know of is going. They need you,
+and you will soon have your hands so full that your head will be purged
+of this nonsense. It is the fire lust--the same lust that incited a boy
+to-day to attempt to set fire to a house in this district that he might
+watch the whole city burn. I hope your egoism exploded in that climax.
+Here comes Anne. You must go."
+
+"Very well," said Victoria, suddenly dazed, and with a will relaxed
+after the long tension of the day. "I will go."
+
+"Where are your jewels?"
+
+"Down in the bank."
+
+"Well, gather up any other small things you treasure, and either conceal
+them about you or give them to me."
+
+"I shall not take anything. My laces are in the chiffonnière. I do not
+care to enter the house again."
+
+Isabel fetched her hat and jacket, for in spite of the fire it would be
+cold near the water; and a few moments later she stood on the edge of
+Green and Jones streets, on the other side of the hill, and watched
+Victoria and Anne, carrying a large clothes-basket between them,
+carefully making their way down to the level. They had a walk of some
+thirteen blocks before them, but the streets were full of people and of
+ruddy light.
+
+She returned to the house and sat down on the porch, her eyes diverted
+from the fire for a moment by the picture of Sugihara, a pair of
+eye-glasses in front of his spectacles, comfortably established on a
+chair in the garden and reading by the lamp of the burning city. It was
+apparent that he had forgotten the 18th of April.
+
+Isabel was alone but a moment. Stone burst in upon her. He had
+approached from behind, and came running down the hill.
+
+"Isabel," he cried. "Get a bottle of champagne."
+
+"Champagne?"
+
+"Yes. It may be six months before I see another--but that is a mere
+detail. I want to drink to the old city."
+
+Isabel, who liked him best in his dramatic moments, found a bottle of
+champagne. He knocked the head off, and filling the glass, went down to
+the first landing of the long narrow flight of steps. He held the glass
+high, pointing it first towards the middle of what had been Market
+Street, and was now a river of fire, then slowly shifting it along
+towards Kearney and Montgomery, as he named the restaurants that had
+given San Francisco no mean part of her fame.
+
+"Here's to Zinkand's, Tait's, The Palace Grill! The Poodle Dog!
+Marchand's! The Pup! Delmonico's! Coppa's! The Fashion! The Hotel de
+France! And here's to the Cocktail Route, the Tenderloin, and the
+Bohemian Club! And here's--" By this time his voice was dissolving, and
+the glass was describing eccentric curves. "Here's to the old city,
+whose like will never be seen this side of hell again. Pretty good
+imitation of heaven in spots, and everything you chose to look for,
+anyway. And the prettiest women, the best fellows, the greatest
+all-night life, the finest cooking, the wickedest climate. Here's to San
+Francisco--and damn the bounder that calls her 'Frisco!"
+
+Then he drank what was left of the contents of his glass and hastily
+refilled it. After he had finished the bottle luxuriously, he held out
+his hand to Isabel. "Come along?" he asked. Then, as she shook her head:
+"I must go back to Paula and the kids. The mattresses are out in the
+Park already. You are in no danger, what with the neighbors above and
+the patrol. Good luck to you," and he vanished.
+
+Isabel was alone at last, a state she had unconsciously wished for all
+day--it seemed a month since the morning. She sat down and leaned her
+elbows on the railing. Now that the sun was gone, the heavens, or the
+smoke obscuring them, were as red as that sea beneath which seemed to
+devour a house a minute as it rolled out towards the Mission and worked
+with all its might among the great business blocks between Market Street
+and Telegraph Hill. Some one had estimated that the columns of fire
+were seven miles high, and they certainly looked as if they had melted
+the very stars. Here and there was a play of blue flames, doubtless from
+some explosive substance, and when the dynamite shot the entrails from a
+house there was a gorgeous display of fireworks--the golden showers of
+sparks symbolizing the treasure that blackened and crumbled in dropping
+back to earth.
+
+Before sitting down she had swept the distant hills with her field-glass
+and seen thousands of people lying not ten feet apart, like an exhausted
+army after battle. In that intense glare she could even study the
+eccentric positions of the fallen headstones and monuments in the old
+deserted cemeteries--Lone Mountain and Calvary. The cross on the lofty
+point of the bare hill behind the Catholic cemetery was red against the
+blackness of the west; and hundreds of weary mortals were huddled about
+its base. She tried to pity all those terrified uncomfortable creatures
+out there, but again the part they played in the greatest natural drama
+of modern times occurred to her, and she thought that should console
+them.
+
+She wondered at her lack of sentimental regret at the destruction of her
+beloved city. But sentiment seemed a mere drop of insult to be cast into
+that ocean of calamity. Moreover, she was pricked by a sense that it was
+a living sentient thing, that city, and was getting its just dues for
+the hearts it had devoured, the lives it had ruined, the merciless
+clutch it had kept upon so many that were made for better things. To its
+vice she gave little thought; she fancied it was not worse than other
+cities, if the truth were known; it was the picturesqueness of its
+methods that had held it in the limelight. But that it was one of the
+world's juggernauts, and the more cruel for its ever laughing beguiling
+face--of that there was no manner of doubt.
+
+She wondered also that she was not in a fever of anxiety about Gwynne.
+She had interrogated the sentry and been informed that the automobiles
+carrying dynamite dashed straight down to the fire line, often within;
+that a number of the soldiers, whose duty it was to lay the explosive,
+had been wounded and carried to the hospitals; that there was always the
+risk of a laden machine being suddenly surrounded by fire, for many
+houses were ignited by the sparks, and, in that wooden district down
+there, burned like tinder. Perhaps, like Victoria, she was too sure of
+his destiny; perhaps the picture of the future with him that she had
+conceived refused to alter its lines; or it may be that there was no
+place in the impersonal arrangement of her faculties the double
+catastrophe had effected, for fear; or for anything beyond the
+impressions of the moment. Her mind worked on mechanically. She was
+determined to remain as long as there was a possibility of Gwynne's
+returning for food or care. But the soul beneath was possessed by an
+absolute calm. She had the sense of having been taken into partnership
+with nature that morning; so sudden and personal had been that assault,
+from which she yet had issued unscathed. She felt that everything that
+would follow in life, excepting only her love for Gwynne, would be too
+petty to regard more seriously than the daily meals. Not that she had
+more than a bare mental appreciation of the phases of love at the
+moment; but it possessed her and it was infinite.
+
+She sat motionless until nearly two o'clock and then went up to her room
+and lay down. It was not possible to sleep for more than a few moments
+at a time, for the detonations were almost incessant, but she forced
+herself to rest, not knowing what work the morrow might have in store.
+When she finally rose and looked out of her window she saw that the fire
+was coming up the hills.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+She barely touched the breakfast prepared by the methodical Sugihara,
+who had already buried the silver, and cut the pictures from their
+frames, rolled, and tied them securely.
+
+"It is only a question of a few hours," he said. "The dynamiting so far
+has done more harm than good. They take a house at a time instead of a
+block, and as it falls apart it ignites another on the opposite side of
+the street. The army doesn't like to interfere, and the mayor has too
+long been obsequious to capital. Mr. Clatt is still there with the
+launch behind him. I took him down his breakfast some time ago. He told
+me to tell you that he'd 'got his job cut out for him now, as the Dagos
+were beginning to leave Telegraph Hill.'"
+
+Isabel had one or two moments of panic as she watched those waves of
+flame beat up the hill, and pictured them raging up the eastern slopes
+as well; but the panic passed, for she knew that there were two exits
+still open. The heavens were black. A disk like a sealing-wax wafer
+indicated the position of the sun. The heat was terrific. The dynamiting
+was incessant, but it did not drown the roar and the eager furious
+crackle of the flames, the reverberating crash of falling walls. And the
+flames were the redder for the blackness above. Cinders were falling all
+over the heights, and the smoke burned the eyes.
+
+"I shall feel like Casabianca presently, and rather ridiculous," she
+reflected, "but I shall stay till the last possible moment." She went
+within and packed a pillow-case with Lady Victoria's laces and other
+portable objects of value and adornment, then gathered up similar
+belongings of her own, tied the case firmly about the neck, stood it
+where it could be snatched in flight, and returned to the porch.
+
+The boarding-house district, several blocks of large wooden houses,
+seemed literally to be swept from its foundations by those rushing
+pillars of fire. The whole quarter was wiped out in an hour, and then
+the fire turned its attention to the higher slopes.
+
+It played with them for a while, darting west and returning for a morsel
+at which it leaped with the agility of a living monster, went west
+again; then, its appetite whetted and its greed insatiable, it started
+straight for Nob Hill. The soldiers drove the faithful servants out of
+the houses at the point of the bayonet. Then--in a moment--the familiar
+curtains were blowing out of the windows--shrivelled to a crisp and
+pursued by the red rage behind.
+
+Sugihara did not go through the form of cooking luncheon. He knew that
+his mistress would not eat, and he had as little appetite himself. He
+folded his arms on the top of the fence and waited for the signal to
+retreat.
+
+Isabel went into the house repeatedly and dipped her burning face into a
+basin of water, but returned quickly to her post. The fire was running
+from the east along California Street hill; she saw the men who had been
+cutting pictures from their frames in the Institute of Art flee to the
+west, then watched the Gothic structure flare up and burn like an old
+hay-stack: that monument to a millionaire whose name would be already
+forgotten had it not been tacked to the gift. The fire reached
+California Street, on the edge of the plateau, from the south, coming up
+the west side of Taylor Street. Other great houses of the rich were so
+many roaring furnaces--several were curiously neglected and isolated by
+the fire, that seemed to have gone mad with its own lust. The eastern
+slopes were a mass of smouldering ruins, not black, but the most
+exquisite tints of violet, rose, chrome, gray, sepia, yellow. They
+looked, with their arches and columns, towers and broken walls, like the
+Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill on a colossal scale. About and through
+them floated clouds of fine white ashes, ghostly restless dust of
+unthinkable treasure.
+
+Suddenly, hardly crediting her eyes, Isabel saw an automobile labor up
+the steep acclivity, through that swirling furnace, and dart across
+California Street and in the direction of Russian Hill. She knew that
+Gwynne was in it, and a moment later Hofer discharged him at the foot of
+the steps, then ran the car out Jackson Street at the top of its speed.
+
+Gwynne walked up the steps and along the plank walk. Isabel recognized
+him by his carriage, for he was as black as a coal-heaver and most of
+his hair was burned off.
+
+"I should like to wash first," he said, as he came up the house flight.
+"The water will go with the rest."
+
+"Of course. Do you want anything to eat."
+
+"No, I had some sandwiches a while ago."
+
+He went up to his room and Isabel awaited him in the farthest corner of
+the living-room, where it may have been a trifle less hot and less noisy
+than elsewhere.
+
+He came down in a moment. "That was a close shave," he said. "We didn't
+know what we were in for, and it was either go on and hope for better
+luck at the top, or dive down into a very good imitation of a live
+volcano."
+
+He was recognizable, although his khaki clothes were black and burned,
+and one side of his head made him look as if he had just been discharged
+from a military hospital.
+
+"I shall rest for a few moments and then go back," he said, throwing
+himself into a chair opposite Isabel. "I never forgot you, but I made
+sure Stone had delivered my message and that you were on the ranch. I
+saw my mother and Miss Montgomery an hour ago. You must get out of this
+at once."
+
+"Tell me what you have been doing," said Isabel evasively.
+
+"I have been alive," he said, intensely. "Never in all my days have I
+found life so wonderful. Battle is nothing to it. For the best part of
+two days I have been dodging the open jaws of death every minute; and
+the sensation of pitting one's puny human strength and the accumulated
+wit of several thousand years of varied civilization against an element
+in its might has inspired me with the only consummate approval of life
+that I have ever known--although I might have known it the day before
+yesterday if you had looked as you do now." He sat steadily regarding
+her for a few moments without speaking, but he was sensible of no
+immediate wish to touch her. That, too, belonged to a possibly greater
+but far different to-morrow. He was keyed very high. He did not feel
+himself so much a human being as a component part of one force disputing
+every inch of the progress of a mightier.
+
+"Great God, what men!" he burst out. "I have been with some member of
+the Committee of Fifty, on and off, these two days, to say nothing of
+last night--Mr. Phelan invited me to serve on it yesterday morning. They
+are superb, not daunted for a moment, talking already of the new city,
+of the opportunity this conflagration has given them to make it over in
+every way. Architects were engaged before three o'clock yesterday
+afternoon. And the young business men that have been cleaned out! They
+talk only of the enormous possibilities of the future. I remember
+reading once of much the same spirit exhibited by Londoners after the
+Great Fire. It is the most wonderful thing in the world that for a few
+days at least you are permitted to cherish an unleavened respect for
+human nature. Every mean cowardly and selfish trait that chains man to
+earth is moribund to-day, in the normal at least; and the rats have run
+to other holes. The higher qualities, those that have inspired the world
+since it began, are in full possession. And, by Jove, it is going to be
+the pioneer life over again! Do you remember that I regretted once I
+could not be in at the foundation and growth of a great city, also that
+the drawback to such an opportunity was that one was never conscious of
+his part? Well, now we are back to the conditions of the Fifties, and we
+know it. We shall work for tremendous stakes, and in no doubt of the
+result."
+
+"The enthusiastic moment has come," said Isabel.
+
+"Rather. Here is my part cut out for me. Here I stay and become a chief
+factor in making this city greater even than before. That is enough for
+any man. And there will be plenty of fight. Politics will crawl back to
+new strongholds, as soon as men become egos again, but I shall fight
+them here, not in the country."
+
+He stood up, and Isabel asked, hastily: "Have you had no sleep?"
+
+"Hofer and I broke into an empty house in the Western Addition towards
+morning and slept on the floor for three hours. I have known harder
+beds. I must go. I felt that I must look at you and order you to leave
+at once."
+
+"I don't want to leave the city."
+
+"You must go. The fire will have taken this house before midnight. You
+will be ordered out before that. They may save the city west of Van Ness
+Avenue, for the mayor at last has consented that several blocks shall be
+blown up at once. I am carrying dynamite. If I saw Russian Hill on fire
+and was not sure that you were out of harm's way, it would unnerve me,
+and I need all the nerve I've got."
+
+"I can go down to Fort Mason."
+
+"I want to know that you are out of the city. I think my mother is
+better off where she is. She is working with a will down there and
+absolutely refused to leave. I did not insist--no fire could cross those
+sand-lots, and I fancy she needs occupation. But you must go."
+
+"I should be as safe."
+
+"Perhaps. But I should be beset by fears that you had ventured too far.
+I can be quite impersonal, keen, steady of hand and brain, if you are
+out of the city."
+
+"Very well, I will go."
+
+"The day the fire is over I will go for you and we will marry and live
+in any shanty we can find--begin life together like any Forty-niners.
+You can help others as much as you choose then. There will be work for
+all--but now there is not, cannot be until organization begins. And I
+must be free to take care of you. Will you go at once? The launch is
+still there."
+
+"Yes, I will go at once."
+
+He left her, and a few moments later she was walking down the other side
+of the hill, the voluminous pillow-case slung over her shoulder. Beside
+her trudged Sugihara, the ancestors under one arm, and his library under
+the other. The street along the water-front was a moving mass of
+refugees from Telegraph Hill, and Mr. Clatt was standing in the launch,
+on the alert. He gave a shout of delight as he saw Isabel, and she waved
+her hand. As she reached the wharf and forced her way through the
+Italians and Mexicans, who regarded her with no great favor, she noticed
+a small party of Chinese evidently in distress. The woman, magnificently
+arrayed, and hardly larger than a child, was huddled against the
+sea-wall, dumbly protesting that she could go no farther. Her face was
+twisted and her eyes were staring with pain and fright. A pretty child
+in three shirts of different colors, all silken and embroidered, was
+wailing in the common language of his years, and the young husband
+argued with his wife in vain: she made no response, but her passive
+resistance was as effective as if her feet had been six. She would not
+let her maid touch her, and her husband dared not relinquish his hold on
+his strong-box while surrounded by his formidable neighbors of Telegraph
+Hill.
+
+Isabel, glad to be able to do something for some one, told him to hand
+the box to Mr. Clatt, then carry his wife on board the launch. The nurse
+followed with the child, while Isabel and Sugihara, having cast their
+own burdens on board, and drawn their pistols, brought up in the rear.
+
+As the launch entered the current that would carry it east of Angel
+Island, Isabel looked at her guests--the Chinese wife and her child
+lying on the cushions of the cabin, stolid once more; the big-footed
+maid and the husband, his strong-box between his knees, seated opposite;
+the Japanese, sitting cross-legged on the roof, his back to the land--no
+doubt to emphasize his contempt for the rabble; Mr. Clatt, shaking his
+fist at a group of vociferating Italians--and smiled grimly as she
+recalled the romantic boat party that escaped from Pompeii. She did not
+feel in the least romantic, but she felt something greater and deeper.
+
+She turned her head many times to look at the wonderful spectacle of the
+burning city, the red curtain in the background, along whose front
+rushed the pillars of fire driven by the rolling masses of smoke. Where
+the fires on Nob Hill had burned low the flames looked like red
+sprouting corn. Fairmont had caught at last. It stood, a great square
+pile of white stone against the red background, and from its top alone
+poured a steady square volume of curling white smoke. The windows, and
+there were many hundreds of them, looked like plates of brass. The last
+thing she saw, as the launch shot up the bay towards San Pablo, was a
+wave of fire roll down Telegraph Hill, and hundreds of black pigmies
+fleeing before it.
+
+It was a beautiful evening of perfect peace when the launch entered
+Rosewater creek. The marsh was bathed in all the faint colors of the
+afterglow. The birds were singing. People were sitting under the trees
+in their parks or gardens. A fisherman was sailing up to Rosewater with
+his catch. But for the red light in the south and the faint sound as of
+a besieging army, there was nothing to recall that a civilization had
+been arrested and a great city was burning down to its bones.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+    THE CONQUEROR
+    A FEW OF HAMILTON'S LETTERS
+    THE ARISTOCRATS
+    SENATOR NORTH
+    HIS FORTUNATE GRACE
+    PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES
+    RULERS OF KINGS
+    THE TRAVELLING THIRDS
+    THE BELL IN THE FOG
+
+(_CALIFORNIA SERIES_)
+
+    REZÁNOV
+    THE DOOMSWOMAN
+    THE SPLENDID IDLE FORTIES
+    A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE
+    THE CALIFORNIANS
+    AMERICAN WIVES AND ENGLISH HUSBANDS
+    A WHIRL ASUNDER
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancestors, by Gertrude Atherton
+
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