Chapter II: Part I (2)

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 role.

"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 Rezanov and Concha Argueello, 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 archaeological 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 role 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?"