PART II

1905

I

For Isabel Otis the _genius loci_ had a more powerful and enduring

magnetism than any man or woman she had ever known. She had felt the

consolation of it, although without analysis, in her lonely girlhood by

the great Rosewater Marsh; definitely in Tyrol, Perugia, Toledo, in

Munich where she had lingered too long, in a hundred tiny high-perched

and low-set villages of Austria and Italy of which the tourist had never

heard, at Konigsee and Pragserwildsee; and deeply in England. But no

place had ever called her, disturbed her, excited her into furious

criticism, mockingly maintained its hold upon the very roots of her

being, like the city of her birth. Her childhood's memories of it

clustered about the old house on Russian Hill where the most cordial

neighbors were goats; the beach by the Cliff House on a stormy day; long

rides up and down the almost perpendicular hills of the city in the

swift cable cars; and certain candy stores on Polk and Kearney streets.

At long intervals there was a children's party at one of the fine houses

on the ledge below her home; or out in the Western Addition, where an

always migratory people were rivalling the splendors of Nob Hill--as

that craggy height had long since humbled South Park and Rincon Hill

into their abundant dust. She also cherished many charming memories of

her mother, with dinner or ball-gown so prudently looped under her

rain-coat that it gave her slender figure the proportions of the

old-fashioned hoop-skirt; always laughing as she kissed the little girls

good-night before braving the two flights of steps to the carriage at

the foot of the cliff. Two years before her death Mrs. Otis was glad to

bury her mortification and misery in Rosewater. After that Isabel had

never so much as a glimpse of San Francisco until she was sixteen, when

her father was induced to visit his adopted daughter and take his

youngest martyr with him. Isabel had planned for this visit throughout

six long months, and arrived in the city of her heart radiant in a frock

every breadth of which was new--heretofore her wardrobe had risen like

an apologetic ph[oe]nix from the moth-eaten remnants of her mother's old

finery--and such uncompromising trust in the benevolence of fate as a

girl rarely knows twice in a lifetime. There were three days of

enchanted prowling about the old house on Russian Hill, where, as the

tenant, in the rocking-chair by the bedroom window, did not invite her

to enter, she consoled herself with the views and the memories; and of

an even more normal delight in the shopping streets and gay restaurants

of a real city. After that the visit existed in her mind with the

confused outlines of a nightmare.

Her adopted sister's peevish complaints at being obliged to remain in

the foggy windy city all summer, the crying baby, the whirlwinds of dust

and shivering nights, she might have dismissed as unworthy the spirit of

sixteen, and dreamed herself happy. But Mr. Otis, who had been sober for

seven months, selected this occasion for a fall which resounded from

Market Street to Telegraph Hill, and rejuvenated the long line of

saloons that had graced Montgomery Street since the days when "Jim" Otis

had been one of the wildest spirits in the wildest city on earth. That

was "back in the Sixties," when his lapses were as far apart as they

were unrivalled in consumption, span, and pyrotechny. By the late

Eighties he had disappeared into the north, and the careless city knew

him no more.

During the Seventies and early Eighties there had been a period of

reform, incident upon his marriage with a pretty and high-spirited girl,

and one of the city's estimable attempts to clean out its political

stables. His brilliant and desperate encounter with Boss Buckley was

historic, but its failure, and the indifference of the gay contented

majority to the city's underworld, soured him and struck a fatal blow at

the never vital roots of personal ambition. When he began to water the

roots at his old haunts, the finish of his career and of his splendid

inheritance passed into the region of problems that Time solves so

easily. When she solved his problem he was glad to subside into one of

his cottages in Rosewater. Here he reformed and collapsed, reformed and

collapsed; but, with fewer temptations, and a remnant of his legal

brilliancy, he supported his family after a fashion; and fed his pride

to the day of his death with the fact that his wife, unlike the

forgotten half of many another comet, had never been obliged to do her

own work.

During that last visit to San Francisco, Isabel, guided by her amused

brother-in-law, routed him out of no less than fourteen saloons, and

spent night after night walking the streets with him to conquer the

restlessness that otherwise would find a prolonged surcease beyond her

influence. When she finally steered him back to Rosewater he fell into

an exuberant fit of repentance, during which he was so charming and so

legal that Isabel forgave him, laid by her bitterness and

mortification, and hoped. But although no repentance could maintain a

grip upon that slippery flabby substance which he still called his

character, at least he never went to San Francisco again. Occasionally

he permitted Isabel to spend a week with her sister, while he pledged

himself to good behavior during her absence; and kept his word. He

always kept his word; and he took care to withhold it except when he was

sure of himself. Isabel decided that as everything was relative it was

better to have a dipsomaniac as her life portion than a drinking-machine

of more steady and industrious habits.

Finally his patient clients left him, he sold the cottage in

Rosewater--all that remained of his inheritance--to pay its mortgages,

and moved with Isabel out to the ranch-house, preserved with a few

hundred acres by the more canny and less thirsty Hiram. When the elder

brother died James would have returned forthwith to the sources of

supply, but by this time Isabel had the upper hand, and although he

disappeared for days at a time, he was always forced to return to the

ranch when the small monthly sum allowed him by the terms of his

brother's will was exhausted; no one in Rosewater would give him credit.

As he invariably left a note behind him promising to "be quiet about

it," Isabel ceased to haunt his footsteps. His appetite was far beyond

his control or hers, and as he kept his word and spent his time in the

back parlor of a saloon, and had no longer the digestive capacity to

achieve his former distinction, she merely sat at home and waited.

Fortunately he did not live long enough after his brother hopelessly to

embitter his daughter's youth. Liberty came to her when she had ceased

to hate with young intolerance and begun to pity; and before too much

longing for freedom, and its insidious suggestions, had poisoned her

nature. Indeed, when she had seen her father buried with much pomp in

the cemetery behind Rosewater, and returned to the permanent peace of

her home, she missed her cares and responsibilities, so long and

systematically borne, and mourned, not as a child for its parent, but as

an adoptive mother suddenly bereft. Nevertheless, she was bent upon

enjoying her freedom to the utmost and rebelled against the obduracy of

her uncle's executors, who disapproved of her pilgrimage to Europe

unattended by a matron of Rosewater. Hiram Otis, who trusted no man, had

appointed four executors; and had not Judge Leslie been one of them the

other three might have delayed the settling of the estate beyond the

legal term. But at the end of a year Isabel was absolute mistress of her

property and herself.

One of the happiest moments of her life was when she sat before her

lawyer's table in San Francisco and watched the pen strokes that

cancelled the mortgage of the house on Russian Hill. The house and its

acre, encumbered by the inevitable mortgage, had been all that remained

of Mrs. Otis's personal inheritance when she left San Francisco for

ever. James Otis had promised his dying wife that he would never sell

the place, which she bequeathed to Isabel; and when his last client left

him and he could no longer pay the interest, Hiram, who was morosely

devoted to his niece, met the yearly obligation: he would not redeem the

mortgage unless he were permitted to buy the property. But to this James

Otis, clinging to his solitary virtue, would not consent; and Hiram,

although he intended to leave all he possessed to Isabel, could not

bring himself to part with any sum in four figures.

Before leaving for Europe Isabel had leased the house to a young

newspaper man whose wife had an income of her own, and not only an

artistic appreciation of the view, but a more practical esteem for a

site so far removed from the "all-night life" below. Immediately after

Isabel's return Mrs. Glait had asked permission to sublet the house,

remarking cynically that time had inured her to the desultory phenomena

of journalism, but never to the stable prospect of her husband's death

struggle with foot-pads, or her children falling down the cliff of this

wild bit of nature in the heart of a city.

Isabel took back her old home with another spasm of delight, and vowed

that not until she was a pauper would she part with it again. Five or

six days of every week must be spent on the chicken-ranch, which had

grown to such proportions that she was now one of the persons that

counted in her flourishing community. But in time she would live more

and more in her lofty home, become a notable figure in San Francisco,

drawing with both hands from its varied best; and meanwhile, once a

week, she could sit for hours and look down upon the city, which, even

in rainy weather, was a wild and beautiful sight from her eyrie.

Mrs. Otis had been a niece of the Mrs. Montgomery who had reigned on

Rincon Hill twenty years ago, and a cousin of the Helena Belmont who had

been the greatest belle the city had seen since that earlier time when

Nina Randolph, Guadalupe Hathaway, Mrs. Hunt McLane, and "The Three

Macs" had made history for themselves in spite of the momentous era of

which they were so unheeding a part. Mary Belmont would have been no

mean heiress herself had not her father been too adventurous a spirit

on the stock-market during the Belcher Bonanza excitement of 1872. For a

time it looked as if Gordon Belmont would be a far richer man than his

famous brother, Colonel Jack, always contented with a modest million;

but in ten mad days there was a decline of sixty million dollars in the

aggregate value of stocks on the San Francisco market; and six months

later, when he died of sheer exhaustion, he had nothing to leave his

only child but the house on Russian Hill, and a small income generously

supplemented by her uncle and guardian until her marriage. She was

thirteen at her father's death, and as her mother had preceded him, she

spent the following five years in a New York boarding-school. Then she

returned home, and, after a year's gayety, married James Otis. Colonel

Belmont surrendered her small property. Skilfully "turned over" it would

have multiplied indefinitely. But James Otis and his wife knew far more

about spending money than making it, and to-day nothing was left to

commemorate the meteoric and eminently typical career of Gordon Belmont

but the ancient structure whose nucleus he had taken over just after his

marriage as a "bad debt." His wife, too, had insisted upon living in it,

for reasons subsequently understood by her daughter and Mrs. Glait, and

complacently enlarged it with all the hideous improvements of the day.

That part of Russian Hill conspicuous from the city is little more than

a great cliff rising abruptly from the extreme north end of the graded

ledge on the summit of Nob Hill, which, in its turn, almost overhangs

the steep and populous ascent from the valley. In "early days" none but

the goat could cling to those rough hills that all but stood on end, and

the brush was so thick and the titles so uncertain that their future

distinction was undreamed of. Then came a determined period of grading

which embraced the heights in due course, titles were settled, and many

that foresaw the ultimate possession of that great valley now known as

"South of Market Street"--but which in its haughty youth embraced South

Park and Rincon Hill--by the tenacious sons of Erin and Germania, moved

to the uplands while lots could still be bought for a song. The Jack

Belmonts, the Yorbas, the Polks, and others of the first aristocracy to

follow the Spanish, made Nob Hill fashionable before a new class of

millionaires sprang up in a night, and indulged its fresh young fancy

with monstrous wooden structures holding a large portion of converted

capital. Mrs. Yorba, who led society in the Eighties, when it was as

exclusive as a small German principality, was disposed to snub all

parvenus. But the young people made their way. When Mary Belmont

returned from school, and, chaperoned by a widowed relative, gave at

least a dance a month until she married, and many a one after, the heirs

of all grades thought nothing of leaving their carriages at the foot of

the cliff to climb the precarious stair; groping blindly more often than

not through the rains of winter or the fogs of summer. To-day Isabel's

neighbors wisely made no such demands upon the pampered, but in that

incomparably older time the young people would have climbed to the stars

for the sake of the lavish hospitality of the gay indulgent young

hostess; and if some of the youths rolled down the hill when the lights

went out, that was hardly a matter to excite indignant comment in a city

where drink was so admittedly the curse that it was philosophically

accepted with such other standing evils as fogs, trade-winds,

small-pox, mud-holes, dust-storms, and unmentionable politics.

When Mary Belmont became the wife of James Otis, one of the greatest

ranchers in California--in which State, unlike other fervent patriots of

that era, he had been born--and a brilliant figure in one of the most

notable legal groups of any time, she long held her position as a social

favorite. But children came and died too quickly for her health and

fragile beauty, and the storms of life beset her. She continued to live

in her inconvenient eyrie, not only in the waning hope of ultimately

separating her husband from the convivial beings on the lower plain, but

because she felt an intense pride in owning a home two generations old

in that young community. She was determined that it should remain in the

family and be occupied by at least one of her children. So the ugly

brown wooden structure with its bay-windows, its central tower, its

Mansard-roof--added for the servants--had, contrary to all tradition,

actually joined three generations of San Franciscans in one unbroken

chain. It owed its proud position, no doubt, to the fact that when the

Otis fortunes collapsed there was but one child left to inherit it and

to be supported meanwhile.

Isabel intended in time to give the house a new facade, and had gloated

over such of the Burnham plans as had been reproduced by the city press.

These lovely plans were designed to make the city as classic and

imposing as Nature had dreamed of when she piled up that rugged

amphitheatre out of chaos; and Isabel had long since resolved that, if

she could not be the first to plant a bit of ancient Athens upon a brown

and ragged bluff, the high tide of her fortunes should coincide with the

awakening of the city to the sense of its architectural guilt. She

banished much of the tasteless furniture of the old time, and refitted

with a stately comfort that expressed one side of her nature. She too

clung to traditions--and to the long mirrors in their tarnished gilt

frames, with the little shelf below; the multitude of family portraits

engraved on wood, and surrounded by a wide white margin and tiny gilt

frame. That they might strike no discordant note, she made use of a

lesson learned in London, where she had spent a month with Lady

Victoria, and had the walls and wood of the living-room painted white,

covered the windows and furniture with a plain stuff of a dark but

neutral blue. In the dining-room were a few paintings of her New England

and Spanish ancestors, and she disturbed them only to replace the

wall-paper with leather; at the same time sending the black walnut

furniture to the auction-room.

Being the one practical member of her family, and the product of an

earthquake country, she repaired the uncertain foundations of her house

before removing the walls that had cut up the lower floor into the

conventional number of rooms and hallways. The house, of no great depth,

was so close to the hill-side, still rising above it, that more than one

enterprising cook had made use of the natural ledges before the windows.

Besides the kitchen department and pantries, there were now but three

rooms on the lower floor: the dining-room, a small reception-room in the

tower, and an immense living-room, broken by the white pillars that

supported the storys above.

Mrs. Belmont and Mrs. Otis, in the time-honored American fashion, had

made a day nest of their bedroom, but Isabel was far too modern for that

lingering provincialism, and lived luxuriously in the big room

down-stairs when she was not in the porch. She had reserved her mother's

old alcoved bedroom with its mahogany four-poster for her own use, but

the rest of the second-story rooms she had fitted for her English

cousins, that they too might have headquarters in town.

Neither appeared to be in any haste to visit the city of their

ancestors. Gwynne had left England in October, now nearly a year ago,

but, having discovered from his solicitor that he could apply for

letters of citizenship as late as the end of the third year after

landing, had announced to Isabel his intention to travel slowly about

the country "before settling down in its remotest part, which, from all

accounts, was sufficiently unlike the rest to provincialize his point of

view unless he saw something first of the East, South, and Middle West."

He had written to her several times, but only on business. She had

returned in January, after a round of visits in England, and had put his

house in order at once. The lease had expired, and Mr. Colton had

engaged a temporary superintendent, but Gwynne sent Isabel his power of

attorney and she was temporarily in possession. She wrote to him from

time to time that all was well, or to send him an account of her

expenditures; but felt no promptings towards a friendly correspondence

with one who showed as little disposition to encourage it.

From Victoria she had not heard directly since she bade her good-bye in

Curzon Street, but Flora Thangue had written that her ladyship's superb

health had (to her ill-concealed fury) given way, following an attack of

influenza, and she would not be able to leave her doctor for an

indefinite time. A few months later she wrote that "dear Vicky" was

outwardly herself again, but in reality very nervous, the result, no

doubt, of her illness, and of the prolonged stress of business. However,

she had finally succeeded in letting the Abbey and Capheaton to

advantage, and it was on the cards that she would reach California

before the end of the year. Isabel hoped that, unfed by her son's

exacting presence the maternal fires burned low; she had a clearly

defined intention to be a factor in the new career of Elton Gwynne, and

no desire for the capricious interference of his mother.

II

As Isabel stood in her little porch that brilliant September morning,

she dismissed her occasional regret that she had not remained in England

for a London season. Not only had she put the time to better use on her

ranch, but no doubt her agent would have relet this house, and delayed

the fulfilment of one of those dreams upon which she unconsciously fed

her soul. The shrieking trade-winds and the dense white fogs were

hibernating somewhere out in the Pacific. All the city, in the great

irregular amphitheatre below, was sharply outlined in the yellow light;

Isabel wondered if the sun renewed its stores from the golden veins to

north and south. On the wide broken ledge just beneath her pinnacle was

the concrete evidence of an architectural orgy to be seen nowhere else

on earth: wooden mansions with the pure outlines of the Renaissance; a

Gothic palace with bow-windows, also of wood; a big brown-stone house in

the style of New York; piles of shingles and stones; here and there a

touch of Romanesque, later French, and Italian; the majority of those

plutocratic and perishable masses, of no style in particular, unless it

were that of Mansard combined with the criminalities of him who invented

the bow-window and the irrelevant tower. On the slopes were a few old

houses in gardens, some with cottage roofs, others square, brown, dusty,

melancholy. But the majority were of the "house in a row" type,

radiating in all directions from the "boarding-house blocks" on the

lower slopes. Then, down on the plain, came the big compact masses of

stone and concrete, brick and steel, devoted to business and housing of

the itinerant. The lofty domes of the City Hall and a newspaper

building, a few church spires and the great white-stone hotel on a crest

not far from Isabel's, were the sole pretenders to architectural beauty

within her ken.

Far away she could make out the Mission Church, once called after St.

Francis of Assisi, now named Dolores for the vanished lake. It was the

last reminder of the work of the Spanish fathers, and looked

indescribably ancient in the midst of that busy and densely populated

district. At night Isabel watched the lights of the electric cars

flashing about that old monument of an almost forgotten conquest--like

the angry haunted eyes of the padres that had labored in the wilderness

for naught. But although this old church and the Presidio, which still

retained its quadrangle and a few of the original adobe houses, appealed

deeply to Isabel on account of the romance of Rezanov and Concha

Argueello that distinguished her family, her more personal sympathies

were with the streets just below her hill-top, packed as they were with

memories, tragic, humorous, gay, pathetic, of a people that had made the

city great.

Even the dilapidated houses, with their sixty steps or more toppling

above the cut that had widened and levelled the street, had been very

hospitable in their time, and Isabel knew that her mother and

grandmother had toiled up those perpendicular flights in satin slippers

and ballooning skirts on many a rainy night. Mrs. Otis had told her

little girls stories of all those old houses, fine and simple, more

particularly of the fortunate mansions on Nob Hill's brief level. Isabel

longed for the time when she should enter them and pick up the threads

dropped from her mother's nerveless fingers. The Belmont house was

closed, the still restless Helena occupying a palace in Rome at the

moment. The Polk house had been sold to the energetic son of one of the

plodding old money-makers that had fought shy of stock gambling and

railroads. Nicolas Hofer belonged to the latest type the prolific city

had bred: the son of a millionaire, but a keen man of business, whom the

wildness of the city had never tempted, highly educated, honorable, and

an ardent reformer.

Magdalena Yorba--Mrs. Trennahan--like most of her old neighbors, still

dwelt in the ancestral mansion, although she had given it a stucco

facade and shaved off the bow-windows. In each, Isabel was sure of

welcome, and she longed particularly to wander through the old Polk

house, where one of her Spanish great-aunts had reigned for a time. Like

all San Franciscans of family, she took more pride in her young-old city

than a Roman in his Rome. Its forty-two square miles had seen so many

changes, its story was so romantic and unique, that its age was not to

be measured by the standards of Time. Her grandfather had stood on this

hill after his Sunday climb and looked over and down a ragged wilderness

to the city bursting out of its shell--a wretched huddle of shacks and

tents by the water's edge. The bay no doubt was crowded with ships from

every corner of the world, many of them deserted, unmanned, forced to

lie idle until the return of the hungry disappointed gold-seekers. That

was less than sixty years ago. In the first ten years of its rapid

growth the city had burned seven times, millions blazing out in an hour.

To-day San Francisco was replete not only with life but with wealth,

talents, and every variety of enterprise; it was as full of fads and

cults and artistic groups as London itself; it had sent forth authors,

artists, mummers, singers--and millionaires by the score. Many of the

art treasures of the world had been brought here and hidden from the

vulgar in those awful impermanent "palatial mansions." Some of the

finest libraries of the world were here. It had its bibliomaniacs, its

collectors, its precieux. And yet what a lonely city it was, stranded on

the edge of the still half-vacant western section of the United States,

with all the Pacific before it. Save for the rim of towns across the

bay, which were little more than a part of itself, it watched the Orient

alone, and was far too gay and careless, too self-absorbed and insolent,

to keep its jaws on the alert. Tact it was much too high-handed to

cultivate. It welcomed the hungry Oriental for so long as he was useful,

and when he outstayed his welcome, incontinently kicked him out. San

Francisco's intensity of independence as well as of civic pride was due

in part no doubt to the isolation which compelled it to be self-centred,

and to its unconscious dislike of the elder breeds beyond the Rocky

Mountains; but largely to the old adventurous reckless gambling spirit

and the habit of sleeping on its pistol. These first causes had

developed individuality to such proportions that the hair of a

Californian bristled when he was alluded to as a "Westerner," or even as

a mere American.

And with time the patriotism of the San Franciscan waxed rather than

waned. It was no longer the fashion to take one's money to New York,

merely because of the higher cost of living that made a millionaire

"feel his oats," and of the allure of the older and more difficult

society to his women. San Franciscans still fled from the winds and fogs

of summer to their beloved Europe, and country-house life gained ground

very slowly, but deserters were few; and of late the rich men had shown

their faith not only by investing the greater part of their capital in

the city--until "improved real estate" was become a current phrase--but

the best of them, including Hofer and the mayor who had preceded the

present figurehead and his omnivorous Boss, were engaged in a desperate

battle with the highly organized gang of political ruffians that owned

and pillaged and dishonored the city in a manner with which nothing in

the history of municipal corruption could compare save the old Tweed

Ring of New York. For at least ten years previous to 1901, San Francisco

had enjoyed a period of not only decent but honorable government. There

was no "graft" in high places, the city was out of debt, it held up its

head with the cleanest municipal governments in the land. But, as ever,

the disinterested grew somnolent with content, and gave no heed to the

burrowing of the hungry recuperated and wiser rats in that prolific

underworld whence never a high-minded citizen emerges. The few that saw

and warned were disregarded; and circumstances, proper in themselves,

swelled the ranks of the petty politicians with thousands of greedy and

insurgent laborers. San Francisco awoke one morning to find herself in

the drag-net of a machine to which old Boss Buckley and the illustrious

Tammany doffed their hats. But the majority still gave little heed, too

content in their various blessings, and the gay light spirit the

climate gave them, to foresee the time when their pleasant city would be

utterly debauched, and life among arrogant thieves, prostitutes, and

socialists have become as impracticable as it already was in Chinatown

or on Barbary Coast.

A group of the more thoughtful and patriotic citizens, assisted by the

one militant editor the city boasted, were doing all that was humanly

possible to prevent the re-election of the mayor, who had already

represented the worst element twice, and to break the power of the Boss.

Isabel in her lonely ranch house, when her chickens were asleep,

followed the fight with a passionate interest, and was tempted to come

forth from her seclusion and meet at least the representative men of her

city. But she was not yet ready to take up her own share of the burden,

and was far too modest to imagine that she could be useful until she had

become a person of importance in San Francisco. Nevertheless, as she

looked down to-day on the sharp outlines of the city under the hard blue

sky, almost glittering in their golden bath, she was impatient to become

a part of its life, or at least to discuss its interests with some one.

Rosewater, which of late years had become virtuous to excess, and almost

blind and deaf with local pride, took no interest in San Francisco

whatever, except as a market for eggs. When driven to the wall it

confessed the superiority of the metropolis in the matter of shops and

theatres; but its politics it invariably dismissed with adjectives more

forcible than elegant.

It was at this point in Isabel's meditations that her eye happened to

rove along the plank walk to the rickety old flight of steps that led

from Taylor Street up Russian Hill. There was something vaguely

familiar about a tall, thin, well-groomed, but by no means graceful,

figure rapidly ascending the steps. In a moment her mind lost its

tensity of projection and she was almost flying down her own long stair.

Gwynne broke into a run as he saw her. She wondered if he intended to

kiss her, but he merely shook her hand for a full minute.

"I never in my life was so glad to see anybody!" he exclaimed, with the

joyousness of a school-boy come home for his first holiday. "It was such

luck to hear that you were in San Francisco."

"But why didn't you telegraph? In a way I am disappointed--glad as I am

to see you. I intended to meet you at Oakland and take you directly up

to Lumalitas, where everything was to have been in gala array. And how

did you know I was in town?"

"While I was taking my lonely breakfast this morning--I arrived late

yesterday afternoon--and glancing over one of your newspapers, my eye

caught your name. I learned that 'the charming and beautiful young

mistress of the old Belmont House on Russian Hill, who had excited so

much interest of late, had come down as usual for Sunday."

"No?" Isabel flushed for the first time within Gwynne's knowledge of

her. "That is the very only time I have been the subject of a newspaper

paragraph--outside of Rosewater, which doesn't count--and I am as

delighted--as I have no doubt you were the first time you saw your name

in print!" she added, defiantly.

There was nothing cynical in Gwynne's smile. "I understand," he said;

and then, as he ceased to smile, the light died out of his face, and

Isabel noticed that it was older and thinner. It had lost more than a

little of its aloof serenity, and his crest was visibly lowered. But on

the whole he was improved, for he had cut his hair, his lilting locks

having been too conspicuous a feature in the cartoons of _Punch_ and

_Vanity Fair_. But there was something subtly forlorn about him, and

Isabel's maternal promptings, once too active, but long moribund,

suddenly awakened.

They mounted the steep flight of steps to the house slowly, exchanging

ejaculatory remarks. When they reached the porch she motioned to a long

wicker chair.

"It is only ten," she said. "Luncheon will not be ready until one, and

my California hospitality demands that your entertainment shall begin at

once. Make yourself comfortable while I brew you a cup of Spanish

chocolate. I have actually one of the molinillos of our ancestors."

When she returned with the frothy and fragrant beverage he was standing

with his hands in his pockets staring down at the city. He turned

swiftly at the sound of her step on the wood, but something was rushing

to the back of his eyes, and once more Isabel had the singular

impression of hearing his spirit cry: "Oh God! Oh God!" But his lips

were hard pressed and his eyes became suddenly contemptuous, then

smiling.

"This is jolly of you," he said. "I have a weakness for

chocolate--cultivated during the winter I was in Munich with my tutor. I

never cared for beer--don't like anything bitter. Do you remember the

Cafe Luitpoldt, and all those little tables in the garden of the

Residenz--"

He paused and narrowed his eyes. Isabel had turned white. "I must hear

that story," he said, quietly. "You are my only friend out here. In a

way you have altered the whole course of my life. I shall always have a

sense of relationship with you quite different from anything I have ever

known. So there must be perfect confidence and openness between us. I

told you frankly the unpleasant finish of my episode with Mrs. Kaye. I

hate mystery. I saw you go white once before, when I tried to make you

talk about Munich; and the romantic Flora was full of surmises.

Confession is good for the soul, anyhow. I want the atmosphere

cleared--not out of curiosity--I don't care tuppence about other

people's affairs--but I don't know you! I must know you! I am always

conscious of a wall about you--and in this damned God-forsaken country I

must have one friend!" he burst out.

Isabel had quite recovered herself. "I will tell you everything, but not

now. We must be in the mood. This moment I am interested in nothing but

yourself. Sit down. What has happened to you in all these months?

Something not altogether pleasant. Have you had any adventures? Have you

been recognized?"

He had finished his chocolate, and he clasped his hands behind his head

and leaned back in his chair, giving the railing a slight kick.

"No," he said, grimly, "I have not been recognized. At first I avoided

all the big hotels, lest I might be; then growing more secure, and

disliking the inferior ones, I became quite reckless. The second time I

visited New York I went to the Waldorf-Astoria, and the third time to

the St. Regis. In the smoking-rooms of all the hotels and trains I

talked with any one whom I found disposed to conversation. Not that I

was; but I was perambulating the country for an object and determined to

accomplish it. As you had told me to improve my manners I did my best,

and have reason to believe that, if not effusive, I am almost cynically

approachable. In New York I was at times repelled with a haughty stare

or a negative frigidity which no duke I know could compass. But in

Boston they were more friendly, and farther West so expansive that I was

frequently invited to houses before I had presented my modest card. Very

often I had long talks with newspaper men, and made no attempt to

conceal the fact that I was a Britisher. Once or twice that fact was

commented on, but taken as a matter of course. There are a good many

Britishers in the United States. My identity was never suspected. I

never saw a newspaper paragraph about myself."

He laughed, but looked at her between lids so narrowed that she could

not see the expression of his eyes. She nodded, smiling; and she could

make her smile very sweet and encouraging.

"The time came when I felt like a shipwrecked mariner. Stranded!

Abandoned! Forgotten! Finally--take all the circumstances into

consideration and make due allowance--I felt that I would risk

everything to see my name in print once more. I arrived in Chicago late

one night. There had been a break-down that doubled the time of the

beastly trip. I went to its first hotel and registered myself as Elton

Gwynne. The night clerk, with the haughty indifference of the stage

duke, or the New-Yorker who fancies himself, called a bell-boy and

turned his back on me. I remained in Chicago three days. Not a reporter

sent up his card. Not a line appeared in a newspaper. It was the most

chastening experience of my life. No doubt it did me good. My ego has

actually felt lighter." He smiled. But he added in a moment: "It left a

scar, nevertheless."

"Never mind," said Isabel, consolingly. "All that will read delightfully

in your biography. What on this difficult globe is not difficult, first,

last, and always? The only thing for you to do is to snap your fingers

at everything, as we do out here, and see nothing in the future but

success. How do you like the land of your birth?"

"I hate it!" he said intensely. "Washington is a crude unwieldy village.

New York is like one of those nightmares a certain class of writers

project and label 'Earth in the Year 2000.' Chicago is the entrails of

the universe. The small interior towns and villages of the Eastern

States are open mausoleums for people so old and so dried up that their

end will be not death but desiccation. There is nothing picturesque in

those old towns, for they were dead before they were civilized. Some of

the cities and villages of the South are certainly attractive to look at

and have a background of a sort, but they are as lifeless as their

negroes. The cities of the West are hives, and when you have seen one

you have seen all. Its smaller communities are horrors, pure and simple.

Much of the country is magnificent. The Adirondacks, the Hudson River,

Yellowstone, those great prairies and deserts, atone for a good deal.

The last three weeks I have spent in southern California. It seemed to

me--below Santa Barbara, at least--little more than a reclaimed

desert--and with nothing of the wonderful atmospheric effects of the

great interior deserts; nothing but dirt and a hideous low shrub caked

with prehistoric dust. Precious little of it reclaimed at that. I am

glad that ranch is in good hands. I never want to see the place again.

That eternally grinning sky! That dead atmosphere! It blunted my nerves

for the time, but the reaction is all the worse. However--" He stood up

and leaned over the railing. "I did not expect the earthly paradise. I

am not going to treat you to a continued diatribe--"

"But you must like California--love it!" cried Isabel, in alarm. "Of

course you have hated everything--natural enough--but not California! It

is your State, your home, your future. You must begin by liking it, at

least."

"Very well, mentor, I shall do my best. One might certainly indulge in

an illusion or two up here. I thought as I walked--climbed--through the

city, guided a part of the way by a messenger-boy, who ejaculated at

intervals, 'Say, mister!' and described Nob Hill as the 'millionaire

bunch,' that I had seldom seen so many ugly buildings together; but from

this perch of yours it looks quite beautiful. Still I long for the

country. Can we go to the ranch this afternoon?"

"Why not?" Isabel stifled a sigh. She had intended to ride all round the

city on the electric cars; but she felt as if she had an adopted

homesick child on her hands, and he was a responsibility that she had

deliberately assumed. Moreover, she felt deeply sorry for him.

"You can express all your luggage but a portmanteau, and we will go in

my launch. It is down on the bay side of the Hill. We must start at four

to catch the tide. You have no idea how cosey and pretty your

ranch-house looks, and I have sent out my uncle's law--and

farm--library. I have arranged everything with Judge Leslie, and you

enter his office at once. He is the first lawyer of northern

California. I wrote you that it would be impossible to conceal the truth

from him, as his firm has done all the legal business of the estate for

the last thirty years, and he knows your mother has only one son. But he

is the more interested. No one else knows but Mr. Colton and his son

Tom--your Rosewater bankers and agents. Your secret is safe with them.

Gwynne is not an uncommon name in California, although some of its

letters have been dropped. Lumalitas has been leased for so many years

that your name has ceased to be associated with it in the public mind,

and the deeds are so deeply buried in the archives of St. Peter--the

county-seat--that the most curious would hardly attempt to unearth them.

Of course most townspeople all through the State take in a San Francisco

paper, and your name has doubtless appeared now and again in the

telegrams. But they are not the sort that take the least interest in the

career of a young Englishman--those that do, at all events, are few and

far between. Judge Leslie is deeply interested; so is Tom Colton, the

only son of the bank, so to speak. He is a Democrat, by-the-way--but I

don't suppose you have made up your mind--"

"I have quite made up my mind. In practice one party seems about as bad

as the other, but at least the Democratic ideals more nearly correspond

with my own. Besides, the Democratic party is the under dog, and that

always appeals to me, to say nothing of the fact that it is weak in

strong men, that all its salient leaders are what you so elegantly term

'blatherskites.' If I go in for American politics, I must fight so hard

that I cannot help becoming absorbed body and soul; with only the

present and the future--no past. Let us take a walk over these hills."

III

"Do you run this thing yourself?" asked Gwynne, as they boarded the

launch, which was at anchor by the end of the sea wall at the foot of

Russian Hill.

"Rather. How do you expect me to make a fortune in this paradise of the

labor-union if I don't do things myself? I have a hard time being

economical, and I suspect that where I save once I spend twice, but I

try not to think about it. Theories make life so palatable! This old

launch belonged to Uncle Hiram. I had it repaired, and take my eggs to

the hatcheries and my produce to Rosewater three times a week. There I

deal direct with the San Francisco buyers--and in this launch; it serves

me very well as an office. Then I come down in it every week. The

railroad is exorbitant, and the boats are too slow. It may be that

gasolene and repairs cost more than a railroad fare once a week, but I

have abstained from making a comparison. The trip is so delightful!"

The launch was about twenty feet long with a small cabin and a fresh

coat of brown paint. It shot lightly over the smooth water, and Gwynne

sat on top of the cabin above Isabel swinging his long legs, and looked

with some envy at the hundreds of yachts that skimmed the bay. They

appeared and vanished about the corners of the Islands and promontories

like birds swooping after prey. The Islands and all the mainland had

lost their greens long since, but the burnt grasses shone in the sun

like hammered gold; were tan and brown and fawn on the shadowed eastern

slopes. The chain of mountains beyond the towns across the bay and

facing San Francisco glittered like bronze, but the lofty volcanic peak

of Monte Diablo, farther still, was a pale and misty blue. North of the

Golden Gate and high above the mountains of Marin County, Mount

Tamalpais was so intense and hard a blue, and was cut against the

fleckless sky with so sharp an outline, that it produced in Gwynne a

vague sense of unreality and uneasiness. The Marconi poles on the summit

looked like the masts of a mammoth ship, and every window of The Tavern,

close by them, shone like a plate of brass.

They steered for the southern point of Angel Island, and Gwynne looked

about him with much interest. The mainland of the great northern cove

and the eastern side of the Islands were thick with trees: oaks,

buckeye, willows, madrono. And almost as thickly set, although sometimes

half hidden, were the villas: light and airy of architecture, gayly

painted, with broad verandas and overhanging vines. At the foot of

Belvedere and the little town of Tiburon were house-boats, in which

people lived for eight months of the year.

And everywhere, people, people, people. They swarmed in the yachts, on

the house-boats, on the driveways, the verandas. Gwynne twisted about

and looked at San Francisco. The palaces were on the heights and in the

Western Addition--out towards the Presidio and the Golden Gate; but

hundreds of tiny dwellings clung to the precipitous sides of Telegraph

Hill and Russian Hill as if their foundations were talons. And each had

its bit of garden, or its balcony full of flowers. Telegraph Hill, the

great bluff where the city turned almost at a right angle from north to

south, was given over largely to Mexicans and Italians, and was

uncommonly vivid. And the streets were full of people. The city had

turned itself inside out. Everywhere were bright gowns and parasols,

whizzing cars packed to the rails.

And the wealthy class by no means monopolized the bay with their yachts

and luxurious launches. There were fishing-smacks filled with whole

families of Italians and Chinese; in fact every tongue floated over the

water in the course of a brilliant Sunday afternoon. And at the docks

there were steamers, sailing vessels, from all the ports of the world, a

forest of spars and funnels; odd little Italian craft and even a Chinese

junk. A man-of-war was coming down from Mare Island. Gwynne had seen a

big Australian liner flying the Union Jack enter the Golden Gate as the

launch rounded Angel Island. It made him homesick, and he was not sorry

to lose sight of it.

They passed steamboats crowded with holiday seekers coming home from a

day's outing in Sausalito, San Rafael, Mill Valley, sporting parks; the

majority noisy and vulgar, but a mass of color. It was a scene of

surpassing variety, life, gayety, prosperity, importance. Gwynne, as the

light electrical breeze began to prick his veins, experienced a

sensation of pride in the country where his lines were cast, in those

ancestors of his that had memorably helped to develop its vast

resources: a tremendous concession, for he had barely acknowledged these

ancestors before. A slight meed of resignation descended upon him. He

smiled down upon Isabel, who was frowning at the sun and sighing for

her forgotten veil; she had a tender regard for her complexion. Gwynne

thought her very pretty in her smart crash suit and sailor hat, not

nearly so severe and fateful in appearance as when she had adjusted

herself to the formalities of Capheaton; although he remembered that he

had heard much discussion of her beauty and had not been unappreciative

himself. But he liked her far better here in California. Her eyes were

more alert, her voice was less monotonous; and those little black moles

looked particularly fascinating on the ivory white of her skin, fairly

luminous in the sunlight. He fancied they would drift into matrimony;

and that she appeared to be as indifferent and passionless as she was

handsome and clever but the better suited his present mood. His love for

Mrs. Kaye had died a sudden and violent death, but it had left him

callous, somewhat contemptuous of the charms of woman. He doubted if his

heart would ever beat high in his breast again, but in the course of

events he should need a partner, and Isabel seemed to him fashioned to

be the helpmate of a busy and ambitious statesman.

But all he said was: "You have a little freckle on your nose. I saw it

come."

Isabel shrugged her shoulders and sniffed. He lost interest in her for

the moment, for he distrusted a woman without vanity. He knew girls too

little to suspect that the most business-like were often smitten with a

desire to pose; and were as likely to forget the pose of to-day in the

naturalness of to-morrow. Secretly, Isabel was grievously afflicted at

the thought of the freckle, and did not speak for some time, recalling

the antidotes of her early girlhood, when she and Anabel Leslie

experimented in secret with various beauty recipes cut from the

newspapers. She smiled as she recalled that Anabel, who had pretty

golden hair, had washed it with lye to acquire a reddish tinge, and been

forced to retire for a month; and a semi-tragic experience of her

own--smothered from crown to toe in a blanket taking a hot-air bath for

the benefit of her complexion, the spirit lamp, in a wash-basin under

the chair, exploded, and there was one interminable moment of panic, and

several days of discomfort. She quite forgot her companion in these

lighter reminiscences of a period that seemed far more than ten years

agone.

Gwynne had discovered at Capheaton that one of his cousin's charms was

her absence of effort in conversation and a corresponding indifference

to effort in others. They did not exchange a syllable as they sped up

the wider expanse of the bay east of the Islands, and he watched the

hills and mountains close on his left, with their bright little towns

and sombre depths of forest. Many of the rounded cones of the foothills

were bare, and so was the rocky crest of Tamalpais, but the old redwoods

still held triumphant possession of several of the slopes and all of the

canyons. Here and there factories and warehouses marred the almost

primeval beauty of the scene, but to-day at least there was no smoke to

cobweb the radiant sky. Even the Chinese shrimp-pickers were lounging on

the beach before their little shack village.

They passed the last of the towns. Towers and sharp roofs rose above the

mass of cultivated trees in some private park; the trees a motley

collection of pines and palms, eucalyptus and oak, madrono, laurel,

locust, and acacia. The gardens were full of children and birds. On the

roads horses in old-fashioned buggies danced at automobiles whizzing by.

In the yachts even the men had laid aside their keen anxious look--as

peculiar to the young San Franciscan of business as to the New-Yorker or

Westerner--and were bent upon absolute relaxation for the day. One

millionaire was alone in his big luxurious launch, a broad grin on his

homely ingenuous countenance, and even his mouth open to inhale the

clean and sparkling air. His hands were clasped on his curves.

"He inherited," said Isabel, in reply to Gwynne's comment that he did

not look as if he ever expended his energies in the piling of dollars.

"And he doesn't want any more. But they all look well enough. It is not

only the climate but the cooking."

They left San Francisco Bay and Isabel steered more carefully: the

channel in the Bay of San Pablo is narrow and the current treacherous.

When they reached the drawbridge they were not only alone on the wide

silvery expanse of water, but there was scarcely a country-house to

break the wild loneliness of mountain and canyon. After they entered

Rosewater Creek the mountains with their broken and multiplying ridges

were more imposing still, and before long another range began to taper

northward on the opposite shore. They were in the great tidal marsh now,

green, where all the rest of the world was burnt and dry. At times the

creek was as wide as an ordinary river, at others so contracted that one

could gather grass on either side. Isabel told Gwynne to "watch out for

other boats," for the creek wound and twisted and doubled like a mammoth

brown snake into an infinite perspective, broken here and there by

sailing boats that had the effect of skimming the land. It was a scene

reminiscent of Holland, but far more beautiful, with the wild primeval

character of the landscape and the grandeur of the mountains.

Isabel indicated an island well out in the marsh. It was crowned with a

white house shaded by many trees. Men in duck trousers, and coatless,

were lounging in the shade.

"That is a country club," she said. "Tom Colton will put you up. But if

you are still disinclined to sociabilities you can shoot all the ducks

you want on my place."

"Shoot what?"

"Best duck-shooting in the world is out here--canvas-back, teal, English

widgeon--fancy your not knowing that. It begins on the fifteenth of

October. I have not rented my marsh-lands this year, and intend to shoot

ducks for the market. You can help me and we'll go halves."

Gwynne's eyes were sparkling. He had expected to kill his bear and deer,

but any variety of sport new or old gave him joy. Isabel pointed to many

little shanties on the edge of the marsh.

"The more enthusiastic sit in those and wait for the tide to come back.

I avoid being left high and dry, for if the ducks go elsewhere it is

rather a bore."

The mountains on the left diminished in height, turned off abruptly to

the northwest, following the coast line. Those on the right took form in

the pink mist that enveloped them, for the sun had set. All the lower

sky was pink, melting imperceptibly into the still pale blue of day. Far

to the north other mountains seemed suddenly to heave from the level,

villages appeared, with great stretches of farming land between. Then

the glow faded into the gray of twilight and the vast landscape took on

a sudden aspect of desolation; as of a country stranded, forgotten,

with a heap of stones here and there to mark some ancient civilization.

"There is Rosewater--over there where the lights are coming out; and

here we are," said Isabel.

Gwynne turned with a start and found that Isabel had run her launch up

to a little pier. Behind it was a cluster of low hills set with narrow

fields and tiny white houses. In the foreground was a large house of two

stories and no architecture whatever, although the roof was mercifully

flat. It was painted white and surrounded by a broad veranda. The garden

was full of bare rosebushes and blooming chrysanthemums, but save for

two mournful eucalypti and a naked acacia, there was not a tree in

sight. Just behind were many out-buildings, stark and white.

"Is this where you live?" asked Gwynne, wonderingly. He had vaguely

pictured her in a romantic setting, a bit of California epitomized.

"It was like Uncle Hiram to sell off the prettiest parts, but I don't

bother about anything I can't help, and I have a lovely view opposite.

Where is that boy?" She raised her voice and called, "Chuma! Chuma!" and

in a moment a Japanese boy came running down to the pier.

"The two men spend Sunday in Rosewater, but I have trained my Jap to do

a little of everything," said Isabel, as they walked up to the house.

"He is one of the willing sort; most are not. Chuma is my cook and

butler and chambermaid--"

"Do you mean that you live here without any other woman?"

"Why not? No girl would stay in this lonely place. I should have to send

her in to Rosewater every night and get a second girl to keep her

company. Mac--who was with Uncle Hiram before I was born--sleeps in the

house. It was a hotel forty years ago, by-the-way, and is still known as

Old Inn. That was in the days of picturesque ruffianism, and there are

terrible stories about the house, but no ghosts."

It had been decided that Gwynne should dine with Isabel and spend the

night at the hotel in Rosewater. Isabel had telephoned to her patient

Jap, and there was a log fire in the "parlor"--now transformed into a

comfortable living-room. Gwynne looked about him with considerable

curiosity while Isabel was up-stairs dressing. The walls were "ceiled"

with redwood and hung with the photographs she had accumulated in her

travels, a motley collection of many climes, from the snows of the Alps

to the patios of Seville; all, she had informed him, with a personal

association: "she was no photograph fiend." Several artist's sketches

arrested her guest's attention and he wondered what her life in Paris

had been. He fancied that her three years abroad were full of curious

chapters, most of them untold; but although she mystified him he could

not associate her with license of any sort. There was even a hint of

austerity about her, as if she drew strength from her Puritan

forefathers.

It was patent, however, that she felt herself entitled to physical

comforts after the labors of her day. There were half a dozen

easy-chairs and a big divan covered with cushions. The carpet and

cushions were red, but although the room was delightfully comfortable

and homelike it might have been a bachelor's, so entirely were lacking

all the little devices of femininity. The only ornaments in the room

were an odd assortment of Tyrolese pipes and Indian baskets. On a shelf

above the divan, however, were many books, and Gwynne ran his eye over

them. They included masterpieces of the modern Russian, German, French,

and Italian schools; only three or four volumes of English criticism. A

set of shelves opposite was filled with the standard English and

American histories, essays, and novels, many of them old and bound in

calf. The upper shelf was devoted entirely to the Russian novelists, and

the bindings were new.

When Isabel came down, looking very pretty in a blue evening frock,

simple enough to make her guest feel at ease in his travelling-clothes,

but carefully selected with an eye to effect, she sent him up to her

room to make his own simple toilet.

"I suppose I should furnish a spare room," she remarked. "But if I did I

should have Paula--my adopted sister--and her family here whenever they

happened to want to come, which would be always when I didn't want them.

But you won't mind."

Gwynne made a wry face as he sat down before the dressing-table that he

might reflect his visage while he brushed his hair. Nevertheless, he

cast about a curious and apologetic eye, in the belief that a woman's

bedroom must reveal some secret of her personality. This bedroom was so

simple and girlish that it gave him a vague sense of pleasure. The

windows and dressing-table were covered with white muslin, and there was

a canopy of the same above the little brass bedstead. The flounces were

so full and fluffy that he held his knees back nervously lest he should

disturb a puff. There was no other furniture in the room but two

rocking-chairs, and the only color was in the blue Japanese rugs

scattered over the white matting, and in two immense bows above the

dressing-table and bed. He decided, as he ran down the stairs to the

warm room below, that she understood both taste and comfort, and looked

forward to his own lonely ranch-house with more equanimity than when he

had paid the bill.

IV

There were two miles between Rosewater and Old Inn, but although Isabel

rode briskly and was sensible as ever of the keen buoyant quality of the

morning air that so often filled her with a pagan indifference to the

human side of life, her thoughts were with the pleasant evening by her

fireside, the supper in the low raftered room which once had been the

office of the hotel--a supper of fried chicken, transparent asparagus,

and soda biscuit, which Gwynne had disposed of with a school-boy's

enthusiasm--the hundred and one impersonal topics they had discussed in

a cloud of smoke before the logs, until Abe, the second hired man--who

was to drive Gwynne in to Rosewater--had opened the kitchen door three

times and coughed. Not since Isabel's return to California had she sat

at a fireside and talked to anybody; nor, indeed, with the exception of

her father in his lucid intervals, and her uncle in his rare moments of

expansion, had she ever talked with any one that covered the large range

of her own interests. Gwynne had snapped the lock on his unquiet spirit,

but in that comfortable domestic environment, half lying in an

easy-chair, with his gaze travelling indolently between the fire and the

animated face of his cousin, he had talked of her favorite books and

told her much of lands she had never visited. He had transferred himself

to the buggy with a grumble of disgust, and begged her to come for him

early in the morning. He refused to pay his first visit to his ranch

without her; and she had promised that Abe should go early for his

saddle-horse and meet her at the hotel.

Pleasurable as the evening had been, Isabel was not in a sentimental

frame of mind; she was stirred at the prospect of a companion, and

wondered that she had been content in her solitude so long. Solitude and

complete liberty might be indispensable elements in her ideal of mortal

existence, but desultory companionship might be as necessary to

intensify them.

It was nearly a year since her return, and outside of the bank parlor

and Judge Leslie's office, she had held naught but business converse

with any man. Nor with any woman. Although Rosewater society offered her

nothing and she was glad to live out of town, still she liked her old

school friends and had expected them to call on her. But weeks had

passed and not one of them had paid her the mere civilities. She met

them sometimes on Saturday afternoons, when all the world of Rosewater

shopped on Main Street, and they invariably greeted her with effusion,

and assured her they were "going out soon." Finally, busy and absorbed

as she was, she fell a prey to curiosity. She knew that the young men

had always rather feared her, as she had a forbidding reputation in the

way of "bookishness"; and as most of them had either left Rosewater or

married, in the four years of her absence, she had expected nothing from

them. But the girls? The young married women, who had been her comrades

at the High School? Did they resent her three years abroad and the sense

of superiority implied? It was patent from their manner that they

resented nothing. Did they disapprove of her becoming so energetic a

business woman? It was true that the girls of California's country

towns, except when forced by poverty to work, were the laziest mortals

on earth. But nothing could exceed their good-nature and entire

indifference. Isabel might have started a race-track or opened a

livery-stable and they would have vaguely admired, and been thankful

that themselves were as God made them. Her friend Anabel Colton was in

the south with an ailing child, and Mrs. Leslie was with her, or the

problem would have been quickly solved.

One morning she met the beauty of Rosewater on Main Street, Miss Dolly

Boutts, a girl who had been half grown when she left, but one of her own

rapturous admirers. Main Street was crowded, but Miss Boutts rushed up

and kissed her, protesting that she had been trying for two months to

get out to see her. Isabel guided her firmly to an ice-cream table in

the candy store, and while Miss Boutts, who was a superb specimen of

animal beauty with a corresponding appetite, disposed of two saucers of

the delectable and a plate of cakes, Isabel dived to the heart of the

mystery.

She began by dilating upon her pleasure in being home again, and then

congratulated her handsome friend, with a touch of sarcasm, upon the

overwhelming gayeties of Rosewater.

Miss Boutts stared. "Gayeties?" said she.

"What else? I never knew people so absorbed, although I fail to see why

I should be wholly excluded. Or have the fashions changed, and was I

expected to call first--"

Miss Boutts, who was not particularly quick of apprehension, here threw

back her head and gave a musical laugh, which was out of tune with her

drawling nasal voice and abundant slang.

"You innocent!" she cried. "Where have you been? I suppose you have been

imagining us at dances and dinners and teas and things. Why, we have

only danced twice in two whole years. It's cards, my dear. We are card

mad, the whole bunch of us, old and young, women and girls. Mrs. Leslie

and Anabel Colton are about the only exceptions, at least in our set.

But I fancy the whole town has got it. We play morning, noon, and

night--literally. Those who have no servants--and that question gets

worse instead of better--don't make their beds for days, and their

husbands get dinner at any old hour. Those who have a servant or two

belong to six clubs at least. I belong to every one of them, and two

meet in the morning."

It had been Isabel's turn to stare. The older people had always played

bezique or whist, but rather somnolently of an evening. She wondered if

the old gambling spirit had broken out again, and asked if they were

playing poker or monte. Miss Boutts looked at her with positive scorn.

"You girls that go to Europe and stay there too long get fearfully

behind things. Poker! Monte! We play bridge and five hundred." Then her

genuine affection for Isabel overcame her contempt. "We have spoken

often of asking you to join the clubs," she added, sweetly. "But there

isn't a vacancy at present."

"I couldn't think of it. Chickens and cards don't rhyme. What do you

play for--money?"

"No!" The scorn returned to her voice. "We are still too provincial for

that. San Francisco is ahead of us there. We don't even have real big

prizes--just a dinky little spoon sitting up on the mantel-piece to

excite us as if it was a tiara. I've won a whole bunch of them. They're

better than nothing and mean a lot of fun. I'm as proud as punch of

them."

"And the men?" asked Isabel. Did they play, too? Miss Boutts replied

that they were too busy in the daytime, but were asked once a week to a

"bang-up" affair. Their other evenings they spent at the lodges--"or any

old place," added Miss Boutts, who had no brothers, and a very busy

father. When Isabel asked her if she had not the natural yearning of her

age and sex for beaux, she shrugged her shoulders and replied:

"Rather. But where are you going to find them here? Pa won't live in the

city, and all the young men run away. Once in a while I visit in San

Francisco, and we go down to all the new plays, so I suppose I'll meet

my fate in time. Meanwhile, as there's nothing doing in that line here,

cards are a mighty fine substitute for beaux, and no mistake."

Isabel had been glad to be rid of her, and of her other old friends, who

did call in due course. Anabel had not returned and was the worst of

correspondents. So it had fallen out that she had held no real converse

with youth until Gwynne's advent, and she accepted it with delight, and

shook her head with young triumph in being able to interest him--or in

joy of the sparkling air; she hardly knew which.

* * * * *

As Gwynne left his room the Japanese "chambermaid," who had been about

to knock, informed him that Miss Otis awaited him below. He ran

down-stairs and found her still on her horse. Abe held another horse by

the bridle.

"It is nine o'clock--" began Isabel, but Gwynne interrupted her, rarely

apologetic.

"I hardly slept. There was such an infernal racket. A theatrical

troupe--"

"There generally is. How do you like your horse?"

Gwynne examined the horse, and was good enough to remark that it was a

credit to California. Then he added: "It did not occur to me last

night--my luggage is expressed to the ranch and I haven't my

riding-togs--" Then he reddened at Isabel's gay laugh and Abe's

suppressed smile.

"Oh, well," said Isabel, as she sprang from her horse. "The bloods will

be too busy to notice as we ride down Main Street, and after that it

won't matter."

She went with him into the dining-room of the hotel, a room scrupulously

clean, but with no attempt at decoration beyond the various

advertisements of beer on the white walls. There was a long table down

the middle of the room and a great many small ones. Most of the latter

were empty, although two beside the door were covered with steaks and

eggs and coffee and rolls. One man, who had evidently finished, had

swung his chair about, tipped it against the wall, and was addressing a

political monologue to his toothpick.

Gwynne led Isabel to a table in a corner by a window, and indicated the

company occupying more than half of the long table.

"'Busted,' was the word they used, and I cannot think of a better one to

describe them. I talked with the men in the bar, and later wandered into

the parlor where the women were, some tearful, others indignant. One

had an infant, and there were several small children running about,

although it was midnight. The soubrette was chewing gum and

anathematizing Rosewater as the 'jayest town on the slope,' and others

were calling for the blood of the manager, who had absconded with the

receipts of an unprofitable week. They interested me, as all your weird

specimens do, and I found them a surprisingly decent lot, considering

that it is the cheapest sort of a vaudeville troupe. That poor little

woman with the red eyes and the parti-colored hair is the mother of the

infant. I saw one of the children carrying it about the hall as I left

my room. She wears spangled tights--she told me with a lively regret at

the prospect of pawning them--and shoots balls from the head of that

young man that looks like a parson. And the soubrette--all my ideals are

shattered! Look at her."

The soubrette had a lank young body neatly attired in a store suit and

shirt-waist. Her face was sallow and her black hair as lank as her body,

but her eyes were keen and bright, and she was indisputably respectable.

She was drinking her coffee with both elbows on the table and listening

with a sort of indifferent sympathy to an elderly untidy woman who was

sniffling.

"Drop it," she shot out, finally. "'Tain't worth it. The landlord's

given us a free breakfast, anyhow, and it's more'n most of 'em does.

We'll get back to 'Frisco somehow, and will run into Jake first thing.

I'll give him a slice of my mind right in the thickest of the

Tenderloin. You just shut up and be thankful you ain't got no kids."

"She is positively discouraging," said Gwynne, as he attacked his

excellent breakfast. "I thought that the frozen surface of the American

woman thawed on the stratum soubrette."

"The class is not always remarkable for its asceticism," said Isabel,

dryly. "I often lunch here, and see many varieties. The leading lady is

generally a large voluptuous person with a head like a hay-stack seen

through the wrong end of an opera-glass, and some of the soubrettes are

all hats and eyes and wriggling grace. The men are what we call 'tough,'

which is not exactly what you mean by 'toff.' Occasionally, however,

there are the most respectable family parties, including the children

whom they won't be parted from. We have three places of amusement,

including quite a fine opera-house, so they do very well, as a rule. Was

it your sympathy that kept you awake?"

"I am not an ass. But they were in and out of one another's rooms all

night, and of course the baby cried. Then my room was over the

bar--well, what will you? Such is life. I am sorry you cannot eat

another breakfast. This seems to be the land of good cooking. If I did

not scorn to be unoriginal I should dilate upon the pie and doughnuts I

had for breakfast on the other side of your continent."

He seemed still light of heart at the sudden end to his wanderings and

isolation, and they forgot the troupe and chatted about his ranch. He

had much to ask and his sponsor more to tell.

The theatrical party appeared to finish their breakfast simultaneously.

Three, including the soubrette, reached under the table, dislodged the

morsel of gum they had mechanically attached to the under side of the

board, closed on it with a snap, and filed out. Most of them looked

quite cheerful. Several bowed to Gwynne. The soubrette gave him a

haughty suspicious nod.

"She looked at me like that last night," said Gwynne, complainingly.

"What designs does she attribute to me? I never treated any one with

more respect."

"They are all like that when they are respectable. Their fierce

Americanism resents any hint of patronage. Later on they invite it. You

will find these waitresses--the class, as a rule, is thoroughly

decent--much the same in manner."

Two girls, white clad, their extended arms loaded with dishes, were

stalking about the room, anaemic, disdainful. A portly woman, whom Isabel

knew to be the mother of a brood, was far more anxious to please. She

came up to the table in the corner and asked Gwynne affably if his

coffee was "all right" and if he was a stranger in "these parts." He was

under Isabel's amused eye, but he acquitted himself with credit; and

when he rose from the table she thanked him indifferently for his tip,

but her eyes glowed softly. It was rarely thought worth while to tip a

mere waitress.

V

As they rode slowly down the hill towards Main Street Gwynne examined

his cousin from head to foot, but, he prided himself, out of the corner

of his eye. She wore a dust-colored habit with divided skirt, and a soft

felt hat and gloves of the same shade. Her horse was a very light

chestnut, and he was obliged to confess that the effect was harmonious,

although this Western style of riding by no means pleased his fastidious

taste.

Isabel shot him an amused glance. "You don't approve of women riding

astride," she said. "We invented it; although it is now the fashion in

many other parts of America. Necessity is the mother of most fashions.

Wait till you see our mountain roads. They are a disgrace to

civilization--so broken and narrow that even in summer it is dangerous

for a woman to ride a side-saddle, and in winter impossible. I have

forgotten how, and that is the reason I never rode in England.... Here

is the centre of your existence for several years to come. Main Street

is to this section of the country what Wall Street is to the United

States."

They had entered a street that turned abruptly in from the country a

block below them, and rose gently for several hundred yards, when it

straggled unevenly along a higher level, to melt into the older

residence district and then out into the open country again. There was

nothing quite like this Main Street in California. At its southern end

was a long double hitching-rail--as old as the State--already flanked by

several dusty wagons and big strong horses. The long unbroken block had

as many and as various stores as are generally spread over the entire

area of a town. Jammed against one another like cabins opening out of a

steamer's gangway, and yet of no mean size, were banks and saloons;

stores for chicken feed, groceries, fruit, candy, jewelry, clothing,

hats, fancy goods, stationery; and five drug stores with tiled floors.

Many of the windows made a brave display that would not have disgraced

San Francisco. The entire west pavement was roofed, making a promenade

like a ship's deck against rain or the severities of summer; and from

this roof depended an extraordinary number of signs, often eccentric of

color and design. Above the buildings of the opposite side of the street

rose the spars of several fishing-boats; the creek finished at

Rosewater. Gwynne glanced about him with an interest that nothing else

Californian save the Mission and San Francisco had inspired. Here was a

bit of a civilization of a building era, that was almost old, everything

being relative. At all events it was old-fashioned. It was thoroughly

countrified and yet suggestive of the concentrated activities of a city.

Isabel, after leaving the hotel had made a detour, giving him a brief

glimpse of the town. On the higher streets--Rosewater lay on a cluster

of gentle hills--between Main Street and the "residence" district, he

had noticed several modern buildings of brick or stone: offices,

churches, school-houses, a solid little opera-house of colonial design,

a fine City Hall, and one of those forlorn "Carnegie Libraries" in a

state of arrested development for want of funds, but with an imposing

facade and the name of the "donor" conspicuously advertised. All this

had interested him little, although he had thought the town on its

slopes looked very pretty and quiet; but this----the word "pioneer"

suddenly came to him, and he looked up and down with a keenness of

interest that was almost like a reviving memory. This beyond question

was a remnant of the old thing, and here, no doubt, the

great-grandfather whose first name he had forgotten, had been a familiar

sight; his fortune and enterprise had helped to lay the very foundations

of this landmark of a wild and stirring time.----Then they rode past a

square park high on a terrace, walled up with stone most modernly, the

green shaded with pines and palms, acacia and oaks; and the dream

passed. At the same moment he became aware that his partner was talking.

"Rosewater is the financial and trading centre of an immense farming

district. There are four banks, as solid as the best in the world. Three

are as old as American California. The farmers come in daily for feed

and supplies, the chicken-ranchers with their produce for the San

Francisco buyers, and eggs for the great hatcheries. Many, like myself,

find the last less trouble and expense than bothering with incubators.

Something like four thousand dollars change hands daily in Rosewater,

and it has less than five thousand inhabitants."

Having parted with her information she relapsed into silence, and, the

town lying behind them, he transferred his attention to her. She looked

severe, remote again, and he wondered if she would grow quite hard and

business-like in time. In the hotel office as he paid his bill he had

overheard one man say to another that she was "as good as the best, and

no man could get ahead of her." In this sexless get-up and with her

features set she looked hardly a woman. She certainly had capacities for

good-fellowship, and yesterday she had been almost tender. He had just

decided that he would as soon marry a portrait of George Washington,

when, in response to a light call behind them, Isabel wheeled about with

the pink in her cheeks and eyes wide with pleasure. She galloped back to

an approaching buggy, in which there was an extremely pretty

golden-haired young woman, and as she and Isabel simultaneously alighted

and flew into each other's arms, Gwynne also descended, prepared to

raise his hat when his existence was recognized. For some moments the

girls talked a rapid duet, then Isabel turned suddenly and beckoned.

"This is my oldest friend, Anabel--Mrs. Tom Colton," she said,

apologetically. "She only returned last night--just caught sight of us,

and followed."

Gwynne's disapproval vanished as he shook hands with the blooming young

matron and met her bright laughing eyes. She was a small imposing

creature and received him in quite the grand manner. Her accent of

America was as slight as Isabel's, and she used no slang. There was

about her something of the primness that characterizes American women in

the smaller towns, but her simple linen frock had been cut by a master,

and she looked so warm, so womanly, so hospitable as she welcomed Gwynne

to Rosewater, that he liked her more spontaneously than he had liked

anybody since he crossed the Atlantic, and was almost enthusiastic as he

rode on with Isabel.

"Anabel is a perfect dear," said his companion, whose eyes and cheeks

were still glowing, and who looked like a mere girl. "I am much fonder

of her than I am of Paula, although we haven't a thing in common. She

was domestic and wild about children before she was done with dolls. Of

course she married at once. When we were at the High School together she

regarded my ambition to be first as a standing joke, and has never read

anything heavier than a classic novel in her life. Why I am so fond of

her I can't say, unless it is that she is absolutely genuine, and that

counts more in the long-run than anything else. Besides, she was my

first friend when I came here as a little girl. Her mother--Mrs.

Leslie--belongs to one of the old San Francisco families, and had always

known my mother. I love her as much as ever, but I am bound to confess

that I have missed her little. I suppose complete happiness comes when

you miss nobody."

They rode on in silence, for the heat was increasing and the dust lay

thick on the road and swirled about their heads. There had been no rain

since March, and the sea that sent its daily fogs and breezes to cool

San Francisco and the towns about the bay was forty miles from

Rosewater.

"Never mind," said Isabel, as Gwynne mopped his brow for the third time

and ostentatiously rubbed his face. "The nights are cool and the hot

weather will soon moderate down into the mellowness of October. When the

rains come--well it is a toss up, which is worse--the dust or the mud."

"Heavens knows what we have swallowed," muttered Gwynne, who had served

on sanitary boards and heard much talk of germs. But Isabel only laughed

and told him to go to Anabel, who had a nostrum for every ill. A moment

later the road led up a hill-side, and at the summit she caught his

bridle and reined in.

"I brought you this roundabout way on purpose," she said. "Is it not

what the poet would call a fair domain?"

Below them was a vast flat expanse bounded opposite by a mountain chain,

that rose abruptly from the level, breaking into much irregularity of

surface above, but all its hollows blurred with woods. Beyond a dip

rose, far in the distance, a huge crouching formidable mass--St. Helena,

named after a Russian princess, the wife of the last of the Russian

governors of northern California. On the plain were golden fields,

orchards, compact masses of the eucalyptus-tree planted as shelters for

the cattle in time of storm or unbearable heat. Many cattle were roaming

about; on the grazing land in the far distance towards the town of St.

Peter--a mere white cluster in the north at the base of the range--were

the horses. Over the mountains lay a shimmering haze, blue or pink; it

was difficult to define whether the colors flowed through each other or

subtly united.

"It is all yours," added Isabel, emerging from the role of the mere

cicerone. "Are you not proud of it?"

Gwynne did in truth dilate, but hastily assured himself that it was at

the beauty of his estate, not at its paltry nineteen thousand acres. Had

he not shot over many an estate as large? Had not his grandfather come

into four times that number? True, most of them had not been entailed,

and this at least was his, his own. He quite realized it for the first

time; even as a source of income he had barely given it a thought; even

after Isabel's descriptions he had never exerted himself to picture it.

As a resource in his crisis it was all very well, but not worth while

shaping into concrete form until he could avoid it no longer.

But now, as he gazed down and over the great beautiful expanse--for even

the mountain-side and much beyond was his--he felt a sudden passionate

gratitude to that Otis whose first name he had forgotten, pride fairly

invaded his chest; then, as he realized that it was visibly swelling

under Isabel's intent gaze, he blushed, laughed confusedly, turned away

his head. But his annoyance was routed by a speechless amazement, for

Isabel suddenly flung both arms round his neck and gave him a hearty

kiss.

"There!" she exclaimed. "I never really liked you before, though I never

denied you were interesting enough. Men are nothing but overgrown boys,

only some are nice and some are not. You are. I'll really adopt you now,

instead of merely doing my bounden duty. Now look at those mountains in

the south."

More disturbed than he would have believed possible at the young warmth

and magnetism of her embrace--although it was disconcertingly evident

that she would have kissed a small boy in precisely the same manner--he

composed his features to indifference and followed the motion of her

whip.

In the dim perspective of the south she indicated Tamalpais and Monte

Diablo opposite, vague dim blue masses behind San Francisco. "Monte

Diablo and St. Helena are both old volcanoes," she continued. "I never

say dead volcanoes after the history and performances of Vesuvius and

Pelee. I wish one of our volcanoes would liven up. We might have fewer

earthquakes--although, to be sure, ours are supposed to be caused by

faulting--in so far as they know anything about it."

"Do you think of nothing but earthquakes out here? You have made at

least three casual allusions since we met twenty-four hours ago, and in

southern California they are a part of every tradition."

"If you had been brought up on earthquakes they would never be far from

your own mind. There is a theory that the reason for Californians taking

everything as it comes with a happy-go-lucky philosophy, lies in the

electrical air and the eight months of sunshine; but I believe it is due

even more to the earthquakes. If we can stand those we can stand

anything. It is in tune with the old gambling spirit that still colors

the country; no doubt has kept it alive. We never know what is going to

happen next, and we don't care. _Vive la bagatelle._ We have more to be

thankful for than the rest of the world, anyhow. Well, let us go down to

the house."

The house with its out-buildings stood below them on a high knoll, three

sides surrounded by a grove of white oaks, the other open to the

mountains, although the front veranda was shaded by several spreading

trees, far apart. The large soft leaves and the pendent moss of the oaks

were gray with dust, but the shade was cool and delicious. Down in the

valley an old comrade here and there helped to tell the story of the

time when all these miles of valley and mountain were unbroken forest,

known only to the red man. And that was not a century ago.

The house was frankly ugly, like all the farm-houses of its era,

although vastly to be preferred to the "artistic" structures succeeding

them. As the couple gave up their horses to a stately Jap, who had been

engaged by Isabel as butler, chambermaid, valet, and footman, and

entered the large living-room, Gwynne generously gave voice to his

approval. There were books to the ceiling, easy-chairs, the photographs

of friends that had decorated his rooms in London and Capheaton. His

eyes contracted as he saw a pile of London newspapers on the table, and

he turned away hastily and remarked that he was glad the fittings were

red, as it would be more companionable in winter; the rest of the year

he should live out-of-doors. The veranda, which surrounded the house,

was quite wide enough to live on, and below it was a border of garden

full of old-fashioned flowers. The bedrooms, gayly furbished with chintz

and matting, were up-stairs.

"I didn't think it worth while to furnish a dining-room," said Isabel as

they returned to the lower floor. "It has always been the custom to eat

at the end of the living-room--when they didn't eat in the kitchen. And

what more dreary than to take your meals in a big country dining-room by

yourself! All the rooms here are large."

She took him into the kitchen and introduced him to his cook, a stout

Mexican woman, who received him with excessive dignity, and wore nothing

but a single calico garment open to the chest. Then they mounted their

horses again and Isabel escorted him down to the great hay-barns, the

dairy, and cattle-sheds, introducing him to his hired men, who looked

him over frankly, but, somewhat to his surprise, addressed him as "sir."

He commented upon the unexpected deference as they rode back to the

house.

"Oh, these country folk are naturally polite," said Isabel, dryly. "They

are not yet entirely corrupted by the yellow press, although independent

enough, as you will discover. Tact will manage any one. I have been

managing people all my life, and have prepared this force to like you.

Now I must be off. I am to lunch with Anabel."

"You are not going to leave me!" cried Gwynne, in dismay.

"The tragic moment must come sooner or later," she said, gayly. "And you

have forgotten your mail. It is somewhere under all those newspapers.

I'll ride out in a day or two and see how you are getting on."

She gave him a cavalier little nod, touched her horse with the whip, and

a moment later was lost in a cloud of dust. Gwynne, angry and

disappointed, looked after her a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and

went in to his mail.

VI

Mrs. Tom Colton lived on one of the higher slopes of Rosewater in a

charming little double house all brown shingles and big chimneys.

Opposite was the paternal mansion on a high terrace, a modern

Renaissance structure, painted white and shaded with gigantic palms and

acacias. There was a porte-cochere but no balcony.

All the "residences" of this quarter were modern and "artistic," even

the cottages; it was only on the lower slopes, close to the nucleus of

the town, that the many old-fashioned structures were but occasionally

thrown out of tune by a pile of shingles and stone. But all had gardens,

and there were several squares whence the streets radiated with as

puzzling an irregularity as London's own, but set thick with shade trees

tropical and boreal. On the high rim of the hills enclosing the town

were many small farms, and all were white with the Leghorn that laid the

golden eggs. These looked like a light fall of snow on the sunburned

hills, and were as refreshing as the garden trees upon which the hose

played night and morning.

As Isabel left her horse at a livery-stable and walked up the wide clean

boulevard towards her friend's house, she met no one on the glaring

pavements, although here and there a buggy was hitched, and a patient

horse stood with his fore feet on the line of grass beside the

concrete, his head under a tree, and his eyes fixed expectantly upon

the door of the house. Indeed one might walk here at almost any hour of

the day and rarely meet another; all the energies were concentrated in

Main Street, although it was the town's standing grievance that it was

not the county-seat with a court-house that should make the pretensions

of St. Peter ridiculous. No small part of those energies in the business

district were devoted to humbling the rival, in the matter of commerce.

St. Peter retaliated with the accent of a fierce contempt.

"Chickenville!" "The Eggopolis!" quoth the local wits, and who shall say

that the darts did not quiver and sting, although the more flourishing

community never lowered its self-satisfied front? Even the rich banker

families were not at the trouble to put on airs. They did not possess a

handsome turnout between them, and as for dress there were few that did

more than keep themselves cool in summer and warm in winter. It was true

that Mr. Boutts possessed a runabout automobile in which he bumped his

family to San Francisco occasionally, but he was of the newer gentry and

owed his social pre-eminence to his wife and pretty daughter, and to his

conversion from the Congregational to the Episcopal Church.

Isabel, of course, was a conspicuous member of the ancient aristocracy,

by virtue of her forefathers having owned half the county when the smoke

still rose from the wigwam; and although Mrs. James Otis had maintained

a haughty aloofness on her husband's ranch in summer, and later in a

Rosewater cottage, her neighbors thought none the less of her for that,

and Isabel, after school hours, played with their children. Later, even

the transgressions of her father, and her unchaperoned trip to Europe,

left her position secure. An Otis was an Otis. _Noblesse oblige._

Aristocracies are aristocracies the world over.

Mrs. Tom saw Isabel coming and opened the door herself; then as lunch

would not be ready for an hour, led her up to her large sunny bedroom,

where her three children, pretty fragile creatures in spite of their

tan, sweet-fed and spoiled, were playing on the floor. Isabel tossed and

kissed them, presenting them with a box of toys she had bought in Main

Street. Then she sat down with Anabel in the window to have a long talk.

But she quickly discovered that Anabel talked with one wing of her

brain, so to speak, and her roving gaze beamed constantly at the noisy

brood on the floor. Complacency, maternity, happiness, radiated from all

her sweet womanly little person, but in half an hour Isabel was casting

about for an excuse to leave directly after luncheon, although she had

promised to spend the day. As Anabel babbled on, while embroidering a

little frock, relating anecdotes of her marvellous children, commenting

upon the increasing extortions of the labor class, the iniquities of

servants, the mounting of prices in California, and the shocking mania

for cards that possessed Rosewater in common with the rest of the world,

there stole over Isabel a feeling of intolerable ennui. She had felt it

often enough in her sister's uneven domestic atmosphere, and now and

again in more regulated interiors, but never had the wings of her spirit

beaten so furiously as in this happy home of the most beloved of her

friends. The wave ebbed when the nurse came and carried off the

protesting trio, and as she sat with Anabel in the beautiful little

dining-room panelled and furnished with redwood, highly polished, the

table set with silver and crystal, the dainty meal beyond criticism and

served by a noiseless Chinaman, she was able to feel grateful that

Anabel was as happy in her way as herself in her own, and praised

everything with such warmth that the placid little lady waxed radiant.

Mrs. Tom was very golden-haired and blue-eyed and pink and white, but

none was further removed from insipidity than she. Her features were

strong, particularly her mouth and chin, and she had a repose of manner,

a squareness of shoulder, and a serenity of expression that gave her an

almost solid appearance. It was patent that she was making a success of

her life, and Isabel kissed her at parting with a hearty good-will; but

only the excessive dignity inherited from her Spanish ancestors arrested

a war-whoop as she almost ran down the hill. She had been detained until

five o'clock in spite of ingenious excuses, and when she mounted her

horse she galloped for the country at such a rate of speed that the

drowsy town turned over. When she reached a long and lonely stretch of

road she indulged herself in snatches of Spanish songs, and when she was

at home she did not go to bed till near midnight, so happy was she in

the contemplation of her solitude.

VII

Gwynne found few letters awaiting him; he had not encouraged

correspondence, and only his mother, Flora Thangue, and his solicitors

knew his address. It had been announced and reiterated in London that he

was making a tour of the world. During the first month of his absence

Lady Victoria had sent him a large bundle of clippings from newspapers,

some acid in comment upon his obvious intention of neglecting his duties

as a peer of the realm, his fruitless exposure of a chagrin at an

elevation in which he would find more and more consolation as time went

on. A few were sympathetic. Others went so far as to indicate a program

in which he might serve his country with modesty, if not with the

scintillations of the free-lance; and reminded him that peers had risen

to the post of prime-minister ere this, of viceroy, lord-lieutenant,

governor-general, and ambassador. Then, apparently, they dismissed him.

The fiscal question was acute. Dissolution threatened. There were bright

particular stars still in both parties, and the press and public had

enough to do with sitting in judgment upon their respective rays.

In the two letters from his mother, written at Homburg, there was no

news beyond the letting of the properties and a bulletin of her health,

which promised an imminent fitness for travel. His solicitors wrote that

the income from the two estates was ample to keep the numerous women of

the family in comfort, and leave a surplus which should be paid to his

mother, according to his directions. This, with the southern ranch and

the San Francisco property, should yield her an income of two thousand

five hundred pounds a year. The confidential member of the firm hinted

that if his lordship found means of increasing her ladyship's income in

that land of gold and plenty it would be wise to do so, as her ladyship

knew less than nothing of economy and was even more deeply in debt than

usual.

He missed Flora's gay letter of gossip, and looked with narrowing lids

at the pile of newspapers. None had been sent him before, and he had

left not a subscription behind him; but it was evident that his mother

and Flora were under the mistaken impression that he would welcome this

greeting in his new home. They had accumulated for a month. He

recognized the type of the leading dailies, and could guess the names of

the numerous illustrated weeklies. Suddenly he took them in his arms and

walked quickly over to the stove, his eye roving in search of a

match-box. But even as he stooped he rose again, and, blushing for his

weakness, carried them back to the table, tore them open with nervous

haste. He skimmed the great pages of the dailies from start to finish,

telling himself that he must have a breath from home, news from

authoritative sources, stated in excellent English; sickened with the

knowledge that he was but searching eagerly for a word of himself;

sickening more when he found none. Then he fell upon the weeklies, his

eye glancing indifferently from the paragraphs and presentments of the

royal and the engaged, but scanning every personality. He had had one

rival and there was much of him.

Before he had finished the third his struggling pride conquered. He

gathered the heap and flung it into a corner, then caught up his hat and

struck out for the loneliest part of the ranch. He writhed in the throes

of disappointment, jealousy, disgust of self. He attempted consolation

by picturing all the other ambitious men he knew exhibiting a similar

weakness and vanity when there was no eye to see. His imagination did

not rise to marvellous feats--and what if it did not? He had never

aspired to be in the same class with other men.

The bitter tide receded only to give place to apprehension. His

temperament was mercurial, balanced by a certain languor in the earlier

stages of emotion, and there had been little to depress his spirit

during those thirty years when all the fairies had danced attendance on

him; even defeat had but intoxicated his fighting instinct and given

another excuse for flattery and encouragement. During the eleven months

since he had left England he had experienced neither encouragement nor

flattery. He could not recall having made a profound impression upon any

of his casual acquaintances; he certainly had created no sensation. It

was true that his role had been that of the listener, the student, but

he had so long accepted himself as a personality, as the most remarkable

of England's younger productions, that he had been deeply mortified more

than once at the cavalier treatment of middle-aged business men with no

time to waste upon a young Britisher of no possible use to them.

To-day he boldly faced the haunting doubt if he were really a great man;

if his success in England, as well as his phenomenal self-confidence,

had not been merely the result of an inordinate ambition fed by

fortuitous circumstances. He recalled that from childhood his

grandfather and his mother had practically decreed that the bright,

lovable, mischievous boy was to be a great man; that as he grew older

the entire family connection joined the conspiracy. It is easy enough to

believe in yourself when the world believes in you, and easy enough to

make the world take you at your own valuation when you have a powerful

backing, a reasonable amount of cleverness, a sublime audacity, the

power of speech, and a happy series of accidents. Were all great men

two-thirds accidental or manufactured? He felt inclined to believe it,

but while it soothed his torn and throbbing pride, it by no means

lessened his apprehension.

Was he not a great man, even so? He felt anything but a great man at the

moment. He recalled that he had indulged in few lapses into complacency

since his departure incognito from England, and that he had deliberately

held self-analysis at bay by incessant travel and a compulsory interest

in subjects that did not appeal to him in the least. It was this absence

of interest after close upon a year in the country that appalled him as

much as his inner visioning. He hated the country. He hated its

politics, both parties impartially. He hated all the questions that

absorbed the American mind, from graft to negroes. He had sat in the

Congressional galleries in Washington, attended political meetings

wherever he could obtain admittance, studied the press in even the

smaller towns, travelled through the South and relieved himself of

whatever abstract sympathy he may have cherished for the colored race,

visited the sweat-shops of New York, the meat-packing establishments of

Chicago, the factories of New England, every phase of the great

civilization he knew of; and while he found much to admire and condemn,

both left him evenly indifferent. With all his soul he longed for

England. She might have her selfishness and her snobberies, lingering

taints in her political system, but she stood at the apex of

civilization, and her very faults were interesting; far removed from the

brazen crudities of the New World's struggle for wealth and power. And

although the blood of reformers was in his veins, and in his secret soul

he was an idealist to the point of knight-errantry, the desire for

reform had ebbed out of him during his American exile. And he knew the

fate of a good many American reformers. There were several in high

places at present, cheerfully trimmed down from the statesman to the

political ideal. Julia Kaye--clever woman!--had put the matter into an

epigram. The American statesman was the superior politician.

And how was he, out of tune with every phase of the country, to find the

ghost of an opportunity to lead it? He was no actor. If he had a merit

it was sincerity, a contempt for subterfuge as beneath both his powers

and the lofty position to which he had been born. Moreover, he was

honest; an equally aristocratic failing and drawback.

He recalled a conversation he had held in the smoking-compartment of a

Pullman with a sharp young politician, who had become voluble after

Gwynne had "stood him" two high-balls.

"It's graft or quit," he had announced. "All this cleaning up in

insurance and what not, all this talk of curbing the trusts and the rest

of it don't fool yours truly one little bit. It's just the ins trying to

get ahead of the outs. It's not the honestest or the best man that gets

there in God's own country, but the smartest--every time. Those that are

crying the loudest against the grafters are just waiting for a chance to

graft good and hard themselves. I am, and I don't care who knows it.

Only I don't waste any strength kicking. The labor party works itself up

over trusts and capitalists, and most of the capitalists come out of

that factory, and are the first to grind those left behind them, under

both heels. They know what I know, and what you'll know before you get

through, that the only fun in life is to be got out of power and money."

The face as sharp as a razor but by no means dishonest rose before

Gwynne. He had been a very decent little chap, and in the two days they

had travelled together he had displayed a photograph of his wife and

"kids," to whom he seemed even sentimentally devoted. Although Gwynne

had parted from the man with satisfaction it was impossible to despise

him utterly. Since then he had met many of his kind, more or less

honest, able, pettily ambitious, fairly educated, unlearned on every

subject except politics and the general business of the country; and all

equally unsympathetic. He made no pretence to judge the country on its

social or intellectual side, for he had been forced to avoid all groups

that might have enlightened him--although he found no difficulty in

assuming that well-bred and intellectual people were much the same the

world over, and was willing to give the United States the benefit of

every doubt. But its obvious side was the one that concerned him and his

career. In order to succeed--and without success life would mean less

than nothing to him--must he in a measure conform to conditions that

were the result of a century of complexities? He recurred to the dry

biographical sketches he had received, from certain of his travelling

companions, of the most distinguished--and successful!--men in American

politics to-day. Their ideals and their zeal for reform had played

between horizon and zenith like a flaming sword, so compelling the

attention of all that would pause to look that the diminishing

effulgence had been even more conspicuous; and now, although the sword

was occasionally brandished for form's sake, and was even sharper than

before, having learned to cut both ways, it had the rust of tin not of

blood on it, and deceived no one. But it had served its purpose--if to

be sure it had been needed at all--and its owners were past-masters of

success. Had he in him the makings of the mere trimmer and politician,

in addition to the miserable vanity that had riven him to-day? And would

some measure of great success won on those lines stir the dormant

greatness in him?--if there were any greatness to stir. This was the

fearful doubt, after all, that beset him. He almost saw with his outer

vision his ideals lying in a tumbled heap, as he felt himself on the

point of crying aloud that to feel once more that sense of power which

had exalted him above mere mortals, and given him an ecstasy of spirit

that no other passion could ever excite, he would sacrifice everything,

everything!

He paused abruptly and looked about him. He was half-way up the

mountain. The great valley, that looked as if it might embrace the State

itself, lay before him. North and south the scenery was magnificent,

ethereal in the distance, melting everywhere into one of those lovely

mists that seem to have extracted the spiritual essence of all the

colors. But the very beauty of his new domain added to the sense of

unreality, of uneasiness, that had so often possessed him since he had

crossed the borders of the State. And it was all on such a colossal

scale. There could never be anything friendly, anything possessing, in a

land destined for a race of primeval giants. He felt so passionate a

longing for the sweet embracing historied landscapes of England that the

very violence of the nostalgia drove him homeward with the half-formed

intention of taking the first train for New York and the first steamer

out of it. Moreover, he was suddenly obsessed with the belief that if he

had greatness in him England alone held its magnet.

But it was a long walk to his house, and he reached it late in the

afternoon, very tired and very hungry. When he entered his comfortable

living-room, redolent of flowers, he received something like a shock of

peace, and after he had taken a cold bath, he cursed himself roundly for

permitting the mixed blood in his veins to contrive at times the

temperament of an artist or of some women. As he sat down to a more than

palatable supper, he felt thankful that he had had it out with himself

so early in the engagement, and thought it odd if the Anglo-Saxon in him

could not drive rough-shod over his weaker outcroppings.

VIII

He did not see Isabel again for three weeks. Several days after his

arrival he received a note from her, briefly stating that she was

starting for Los Angeles to exhibit her prize Favarolles and Leghorns at

a "Chicken show," and after that would pay a long deferred visit to her

sister. "But I shall not be long," she added, possibly with a flicker of

contrition, "only they have been planning things for me for ages and I

am always putting them off. I will spend a week--not with them, exactly,

but at their disposal, and it will be a relief to have it over."

Gwynne felt himself ill-treated, but shrugged his shoulders with a new

philosophy not all doggedness, and easily stretched to embrace the

vagaries of woman. And, in truth, he found an abundance of occupation.

Ascertaining that Mr. Leslie was away, he spent his time on the ranch,

examining its various yields, divisions, possibilities; to say nothing

of its books and history. The dairy was now an insignificant affair,

experiments having proved disastrous, and his superintendent advised him

to let it remain so. The greatest yield was in hay, and cattle raised

for the market. The last lessee had come to grief over blood horses, and

Gwynne's agents had accepted what remained of the racers and breeders in

default of apocryphal cash. Although advised that they could be sold to

advantage if haste were not imperative, Gwynne, who had a large balance

in the bank, determined to continue the experiment. Many acres of the

ranch were profitably let, although by the month only, as pasture both

for cows and horses. The orchards always made a handsome yield, and the

vegetable garden and strawberry beds needed only proper care to become

remunerative. Moreover, several acres had recently been planted with

kale, a favorite food of the conquering Leghorn, and there were fine

runs on the hills that might be fenced off for sheep--or chickens; but

at this point the superintendent always detected something even defiant

in his employer's cold indifference, and told his friends that the

Englishman was "haughty in spots."

It was all very satisfactory, but in order to bring him a really

considerable increase of income he must dismiss his superintendent--who

now drew a salary of a hundred and fifty dollars a month, and who did

not inspire him with unbounded trust--and become his own manager, an

office which would not only make heavy demands upon his time, turning

him virtually into a farmer, with little leisure for the reading and

practice of law, but no doubt involve the sacrifice of money as well; he

did not flatter himself that he could learn to "run" a ranch of nineteen

thousand varied acres in a season. His superintendent was a half-breed

Mexican, the son of his cook, quick, voluble, and experienced in the

ways of the ranch, upon which he had worked since boyhood. Gwynne had

called on Mr. Colton at the bank two days after his arrival, and the old

gentleman, who had an eye like a gimlet and a mouth like a steel trap,

had consigned all "greasers" to subterranean fires, and emphasized the

fact that he had hired Carlos Smith by the month only. A better man

would demand a year's contract. There were infinite possibilities for

"the greaser" to pocket a goodly share of the profits, and "cover up his

tracks." And it might be a year or two before a superintendent could be

found capable in every way of managing so complicated a ranch.

While he was still revolving the problem he met Mr. Leslie and Tom

Colton, who advised him to sell at least half the ranch to small

farmers. Properties of four and five acres were in increasing demand in

this fertile county, and equally difficult to obtain. He had but the one

interview with them, as they were starting the same day to attend to

some business in the north, but after revolving the matter in all its

bearings for another ten days he made up his mind to accept their

advice, consoled his crestfallen superintendent with the promise of

constant work, and set forth one afternoon to place his advertisements.

He had visited the town but twice since his arrival, and then in the

morning. To-day he saw it characteristically for the first time. The

hills that formed a cove of the great valley were bright with their

houses and gardens, but very quiet. The long sloping block of Main

Street was crowded with wagons, buggies, and horses, that from a

distance looked to be a solid mass; and even when he rode into their

midst he found some difficulty in forcing his way. Where the dusty

vehicles were not moving they were tied to every post, the horses with

their front feet on the sidewalk observing the familiar throng with

friendly patient eyes. The shops were doing a rushing business, and so,

Gwynne inferred, were the banks. As for the saloons, their doors swung

with mechanical precision. Most of the farmers wore linen dusters and

broad straw hats, but their women had put on all their finery. The girls

of the town could be readily distinguished by their crisp muslins and

white hats and absence of dust. There were groups of Rosewater girls

holding rendezvous with their country cousins everywhere, although for

the most part in the drug stores, which, with their tiled floors and

ample space, looked like public reception-rooms. There were many knots

of men under the broad roof over the pavement, but in spite of the

ubiquitous saloon no drunkenness. Nor was there a policeman in sight.

Nor a shop for fire-arms. Gone were the old days when a man drank till

his brain was fire and his pistol went off by itself. The sting had been

extracted from California and she had settled down to practical

consideration of her vast resources; and in the comfortable assurance

that there was enough for all. Gwynne had not seen a beggar nor a pauper

since his arrival.

He placed his advertisements with both the local newspapers, to avoid

the ill-will of either, posted others to the San Francisco press, and

was riding down Main Street in order to have a closer look at the long

hitching-rail lined on either side with another solid mass of horses and

vehicles, when he caught sight of Isabel driving a buggy and evidently

searching for an empty post. He laid aside his grievance and made his

way to her side. She quite beamed with welcome, and they disentangled

themselves into a side street, where there were empty posts.

"I only got home at half-past eleven last night," she informed him. "The

boat was three hours late in starting, and when I finally made up my

mind to come by train the last had gone. So I overslept this morning or

I should have gone out to see you. But I meant to telephone you from

here and ask you to come out for the first duck-shooting--"

"Duck-shooting!" Gwynne forgot the grievance.

"The season opens to-day--the fifteenth of October. I had meant really

to ask you for the first thing this morning. Never mind, we have plenty

of time, and you will not have to go home for anything. Just wait here

until I do my errands."

He tied his horse next to hers and sat down in the shade on a chair

provided by a friendly store-keeper. In less than half an hour she

returned, and they started for Old Inn. Isabel had never seemed so

charming to him as they rode slowly out of the town and along the dusty

road. Smiling and sparkling, she asked him rapid eager questions about

his ranch, his plans, his comforts, whom he had met, how he had passed

his days and evenings. The truth was she had practically forgotten him,

and her conscience smote her. Her week in San Francisco had waxed to a

fortnight, for she had enjoyed herself far more than was usual in the

company of her relatives. Lyster Stone was one of the most agreeable of

men when debts were not more than usually pressing, and as he had just

painted a drop curtain and sold a picture for a considerable sum, he had

replenished his own elaborate wardrobe, given his wife a new frock,

silenced the loudest of his creditors, and thought it worth while to

"blow the rest in" on a sister-in-law who seemed to have no taste for

matrimony. Moreover, he really liked and admired her, and he liked still

more to spend money. When his pockets were full of actual coin he

abandoned himself to sheer happiness. Debt had bred philosophy;

moreover, his wife relieved him of too depressing a contact with duns,

and there were times when his respite was longer than he deserved. If

his Paula had a little way of cajoling the amount out of her sister's

pocket, why not? He had never refused a friend in need, and, in truth,

could see no use for money except to spend it. If all the world did not

wag his way, so much the worse for cold-blooded mercenary superfluous

beings. So, the two weeks had been a round of dinners at the gay

Bohemian restaurants, chafing-dish suppers at his own and other studios,

the theatre and opera, and long walks about the brilliant streets at

night. It was all the more interesting to Isabel from its odd wild

likeness to foreign life. She had heard much of this American

"continental" flavor of San Francisco life, only to be tasted by

artificial light, and she had given herself up to it with an abandon of

which she possessed a sufficient reserve. But one cloud had risen on the

blue, and as it emptied itself in a torrent, it was a matter for

congratulation that it had tarried the fortnight.

A woman of growing wealth, who affected artists' society, had continued

to live in her pretty odd little house, but had recently done it up like

a stuffed and scented jeweller's box. The tiny salon was her pride. It

was all cherry satin and white lace, the furniture lilliputian, to match

the proportions of the room and the lady. She was large-eyed,

dark-haired, pretty, and the room set her off admirably. It was here

that she invariably received her artist friends, and felt herself at

last set in a definite niche, in the city of individualities. One day,

in a spasm of generosity, she bade Stone, calling in a mood of unusual

depression, to paint it, and sell for his own benefit what, at least,

should be a glowing bit of still life. Stone began his work next day,

meaning, when the seductive interior was finished, to induce his patron

to sit on the doll-like sofa for a portrait, irresistible alike to her

vanity and pocket. But she capriciously went off to New York for

clothes, and he exhibited the picture in the shop of a dealer where

buyers were not infrequent. Thence, indeed, in the course of a few days

went a wealthy broker whose sign was three balls. He liked the picture,

but bargained that himself should sit on the sofa. His offer was

generous. Stone, to do him justice, demurred, for all Bohemia, at least,

knew the room. But Mrs. Paula wept at the thought of the lost hundreds,

and he succumbed. The result, at the owner's insistence, was exhibited.

The lady returned as unexpectedly as she had flown, and was asked at

every step if she had "seen her room." Scenting mystery, she went

to the gallery; and stood petrified before the faithful presentment

of her cherry-colored satin boudoir, the very edge of the sofa

accommodating a large gentleman with an eminent nose, a bulging

shirt-front--diamond-studded--and knees long severed. He looked like a

Hebraic Gulliver in Lilliput, and the unities were in tatters. She

stared, stuttered, wept. And then she descended upon Stone.

Gwynne laughed heartily as Isabel related the episode, but they fell

into silence after they crossed the bridge and were able to accelerate

their pace. He made no effort to break it, although Isabel had never

found him more polite. She also thought him vastly improved with his

thick coat of tan, and almost picturesque in his khaki riding-clothes

and high boots. There were more subtle changes in him which it was too

warm and dusty to speculate upon at the moment.

Gwynne had restrained his spontaneous delight in seeing Isabel again.

Not only did he have a genuine grievance in her neglect of him, but he

had no intention that she should fancy he had need of anything she could

give him, beyond superficial companionship and advice. More than once

during the past weeks he had caught himself longing so miserably for her

sympathy and the support of her strong independent character that it had

alarmed him. He realized for the first time what a prop and resource the

deep maturity and scornful strength of his mother had been. He must

brace and reinforce his character at all points if he persisted in his

determination to achieve the colossal task he had set for himself.

Woman's sympathy was all very well for some men, or for him in more

toward circumstances, but he had looked deeply into himself and been

terrified at unsuspected weaknesses. He had set his teeth and determined

to fight his fight alone. If he failed, at least he would have the

consolation of never having cried out to a woman: "Give me your help! I

need you!"

He did not betray the least of this, but his first remark as they rested

the horses on the slight hill leading to Isabel's ranch was less

irrelevant than it may have seemed to himself.

"I suppose you met all sorts of interesting Johnnies in that beloved San

Francisco of yours," he said, abruptly.

"Of course. It will be quite cool in an hour and we can go out.

Fortunately I never gave away Uncle Hiram's shooting-togs, and he was

quite your height and figure. We'll take tea and sandwiches with us so

that we need not hurry home for supper."

She suddenly forgot the ducks and pointed with her whip at the low hills

behind her house. The runs were covered with several thousand

snow-white, red-combed chickens, and all their little white houses shone

in the sun. The effect was by no means inartistic, but Gwynne elevated

his nose. He hated the sight of chickens.

"Did you ever see anything more beautiful than that?" asked Isabel,

proudly. "They all know me, and I love every one of them."

"I don't doubt there is money in them," said Gwynne, dryly. "But as a

pet I should prefer even a cat."

"Oh, I only pet them when they are ill. There is an old feather-bed in

the house, and I put them in that when they need nursing at night. That

is a device of my own, and much better than going out at twelve o'clock

on a cold dark night. By-the-way, I think your idea of selling half or

more of Lumalitas admirable. Great tracts of land in this part of the

State are out of date, and more bother than they are worth, anywhere.

You can invest the money to great advantage in San Francisco; but I

think you should devote the rest of the ranch to chickens--"