Chapter XIV: Part II (8)

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 vitae 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 _blasee_. 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 naive 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 role. 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 donas 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."