"I have had what is called a full day," said Gwynne, as he sank into a

chair beside Isabel. "Lunch with half a dozen of the cleverest and most

strenuous men I ever met--and not at Hofer's house, by the way, but out

at the Cliff House, up in a tower, where we had a superb view of the

ocean and Golden Gate; then motored about the city for three hours, then

down to Burlingame for dinner, then back to supper at one of the

restaurants. After over a year of social suspension I hardly knew how to

behave, especially to all the pretty women I met at the Club House at

Burlingame,--who seemed to expect me to pay them compliments and flirt

desperately. I feel worn out, and on the verge of sighing for my lonely

ranch."

"But you have enjoyed yourself," said Isabel, smiling. "It has done you

a lot of good. You must grow straight downward to your roots. Then, when

you shoot up again you will be a real American."

Gwynne made a wry face. "Not yet. Mrs. Hofer's father, Mr. Toole (who is

now retired and spends most of his time in about the most luxurious

library I ever saw--we alighted in it for a few moments before swooping

down to Burlingame) quoted Byron to me and is well up in English

politics. There were several London newspapers and reviews on the table.

Moreover, at the luncheon, Elton Gwynne was actually discussed for a

few moments. All of which gave me pangs of homesickness. But although

they are all sufficiently versed in British politics, their interest is

very casual. Even national matters don't concern them particularly. What

absorbs them is the redemption of San Francisco; and after my

experiences last night I can't say I am surprised. The sort of municipal

government that permits and battens upon an unlimited variety of open

vice must devour the entire city in time. Mr. Toole informed me, in the

holy calm of his library, that reform is impossible; and certainly the

professional grafters seem to be one of the few productions of this

State whose energy is not demoralized by the climate. But that must make

the fight more interesting. And hardly a degree less menacing is this

gigantic octapus of labor unionism--of inexcusable socialism. Well, we

shall see! It makes one tingle."

"And do you never, in your inmost, contemplate returning to England?"

asked Isabel, curiously.

Gwynne swung about and planted his elbows on the railing, clasping his

hands about his head. For some moments he seemed absorbed in the mass of

lights at the foot of the black hill-side. "I don't know," he said,

finally. "It is possible that only my will keeps me from thinking about

it. It may be that, having made up my mind before leaving England, I

accomplished a final wrench and adjustment. I abstain from too much

self-analysis; but it is certain that down deep I often feel a tug at

familiar strings. I don't pretend to know myself, for after all what is

each one of us but the composite of the race, always at war with a spark

of individuality. Some fine morning I may wake up, order my trunk to be

packed, and take the first train out of California."

"Oh, might you?"

"Well, of course, I should stop and say good-bye to you. That is if I

did not fall into a panic at the thought of a final encounter with that

terrible will of yours." He turned and met a pair of eyes that were

shining like a cat's in the dark. "You know that you have been

manipulating the strings of my destiny!" he said, abruptly, and

surprised at himself. "I grew fearful of self-analysis and buried myself

in the law--jolly good antidote--but I am always conscious of a subtle

pressure on my will--was. I have thrown it off. It was either that or

leave."

"Perhaps you have felt freer since Saturday morning," said Isabel,

cruelly.

His own eyes glittered, but if he blushed the darkness screened him.

"Quite true," he said, dryly, "The man-brute turned. And in the final

battle, when the feminine principle is pitted against the masculine, I

fancy we shall know how to win the day. If we resort to primitive

methods it will be your own fault."

"I was invited for dinner to-morrow night, and had to decline because my

arms are black-and-blue."

"I don't repent," said Gwynne, doggedly.

There was another silence, and then he asked: "Haven't you been trying

to manage me?"

"I have only been trying to steer you in a new country--to make things a

little easier--"

"You are not always frank. And that is not altogether what I mean. I

hardly know myself what I do mean. Before I arrived I thought it likely

I should ma--want to marry you. In many respects you were designed to be

the wife of an ambitious public man. With your beauty, and brains, your

grand manner, and your subtlety--but it is the last that has put me

off. I have seen too many men managed by their wives. I never could

stand it. Doubtless my Celtic blood gives me the tiniest feminine drop.

It is only the big uncomplicated oafs that don't mind being managed by

their women. I should want the freest and most open companionship, but

with my will always in the ascendant--although no man would be more

indulgent to his wife."

"You will find thousands to answer all your requirements and

limitations."

"Much you know about it. True, this place is full of handsome and

attractive women--topping! And they have a free wild grace, a stride, a

swing--it is wonderful to watch them go up these hills. And I was vastly

entertained at luncheon, and at one or two of the houses where I was

afterward taken to call. But I doubt if I shall ever find anyone again

that possesses so many remarkable qualities in combination as your own

puzzling unsatisfactory self."

"I am not in the least like Mrs. Kaye, and you thought she combined

every quality under the sun."

"I expended the last of my calf love on Mrs. Kaye. I was blinded by

passion; but that my emotional depths were not even stirred was

manifested by the rapidity of my convalescence. We were utterly

unsuited. In many respects I should have been ashamed of her. Blood must

always tell in England--although in America--if Mrs. Hofer is a

type--well, this is the land of reversed theories. Mrs. Kaye and I would

have been at swords' points in less than a year. The next time I choose

a wife it will be with my judgment."

"And are you no longer capable of love?"

"Oh, love!" Once more Gwynne gazed down upon the sleepless city, where

the lights seemed to powder the upper air with gold dust. "Perhaps. It

seemed to me that day in Park Lane that all the heat died out of my

veins. I am only just beginning to feel alive once more. But I have no

wish as yet to experience the passion of love again--not even with you;

although if you would cry off in some respects I don't know but that I

should still like to marry you."

"At least you could beat me if I did not behave."

He laughed. "I don't doubt I should want to. No, I'll never let myself

go like that again; but I should be sure first that my will was the

stronger of the two."

"You carefully abstain from proposing so that I cannot make the retort I

should like to."

"You may. I know you won't have me. But that does not alter the fact

that the same ancestral lines have given us an inconceivable number of

molecules that are subtly responsive. The great cleavage has

accomplished as many points of divergence and contrast. Therefore is

there, in me, at least, an insistent whisper for ancestral and long

denied rights. You will feel it in time--"

"How much you have thought about it!"

"My mind is pretty well oiled: it does not take me years to work out any

proposition. To tell you the truth, I have never put that undercurrent

of consciousness into words until to-night. All the same, even if I

loved you, if I finally believed you to be the stronger of the two, I

should take the next boat for England. California wouldn't hold me. And

I should not say good-bye."

"That would be a confession of weakness."

"It is one I'd be the better for making."

"Well, anyhow, as I am hostess I can order you to bed. It must be one

o'clock. I don't doubt you will find more than one affinity if you are

awakening; that is merely the mating instinct. Good-night."

Far too hospitable and high-handed to incommode a guest, she did not

tell him that Paula had gone, and that Stone had sauntered out in search

of a "bracer," and had not returned. Gwynne slept the sleep of the

unburdened conscience, and returned to Rosewater by the first

train--Isabel was remaining in town for another day--ignorant not only

of having violated the proprieties, but of the fact that a former

inhabitant of Rosewater lived not far from the foot of the bluff.

XXV

Two weeks later Lady Victoria was established in the house on Russian

Hill. She had given no intimation of her coming until the day her train

was due in Oakland, when she telegraphed, suddenly reflecting, no doubt,

that she was descending into the wilderness and that precautions were

wise. Gwynne barely had time to catch the train from Rosewater, and when

the connecting boat arrived at the ferry building in San Francisco, he

was obliged to run like a thief pursued by a policeman down to the

Oakland ferry building, in order to catch the boat just starting to meet

the Overland train. All this was by no means to his taste. Nor was his

mother's cavalier arrival. It savored too much of royalty. And he had a

masculine disapproval of being taken by surprise; moreover was far less

ardent at the prospect of seeing his mother again than he would have

expected. In England he had needed her; she seemed superfluous in this

country, which she never would understand; and he wanted all his time

for his studies--and as little reminder of England as possible. His

mother, for all her individualities, was the concentrated essence of the

England he knew best. Besides, she was accustomed to a great deal of

attention. He had no taste for dancing attendance upon any one, and from

whom else could she expect it--unless, to be sure--he recalled that his

mother was a beautiful woman, always surrounded by a court of admirers.

Why should Americans be impervious to the accomplished fascination and

the beauty of a woman that had reigned in London for thirty years? He

determined to press Isabel into service. She could try her hand on his

mother's American destinies, and provide her with amusement and a host

of friends.

He felt all the promptings of natural affection when he was actually

face to face with his mother once more, and forgot all his doubts in his

intense amusement at her naive surprise before the comfortable immensity

of the San Francisco hotels, and the crowds and automobiles in the

streets.

The next day he took her up to the ranch. For a week she stalked about

the country, eight hours out of the twenty-four, expressing interest in

nothing, although her eyes always softened at her son's approach; and if

she manifested no enthusiasm for his adopted country, at least she

barely mentioned the one of his heart. At the end of a week she promptly

accepted Isabel's suggestion to transfer herself and her grim disgusted

maid to the house on Russian Hill. Isabel lost no time in piloting her

thither. Anne Montgomery undertook to provide her with a small staff of

servants, and to call daily and order the household until all wheels

were on their tracks. Mrs. Hofer delightedly agreed to be the social

sponsor of Lady Victoria Gwynne, and issued invitations at once for a

tea and a dinner; and Gwynne, who had been half indifferent to

rebuilding on the San Francisco property, immediately began holding long

interviews with bankers, lawyers, architects, and contractors. The law

required him to give but thirty days' notice to his tenants, well-to-do

workmen; and if all went well the building might be finished in seven

months. Lady Victoria evinced something like a renewed interest in life

when told that by the following winter her income would be increased;

and trebled as soon as the large revenue from the building had paid off

the mortgage. Her son offered to place his own share at her disposal

until her debts were paid, but to this she would not listen. He found

her maternal affection undimmed, but other changes in her which he was

far too masculine to understand, and after she was fairly settled and

apparently content, he dismissed feminine idiosyncrasies from his

overburdened mind. He had neglected his studies long enough, and it was

time to begin his amateur practice in Judge Leslie's office, to say

nothing of the bi-weekly lecture at the State University at Berkeley,

which, with the journeys, consumed the day.

Isabel's feminine soul took a far more abiding interest in the subtle

changes of that complicated modern evolution whose special arrangement

of particles was labelled Victoria Gwynne. She bore little external

traces of her illness, and when Isabel congratulated her upon so

complete a recovery, she looked as blank as if memory had failed her.

Isabel had encountered this truly British attitude before, and

experienced none of the irritation of several of the Englishwoman's new

acquaintances when insisting upon the beneficence of the San Francisco

climate. But it was not long before Isabel discerned that under that

sphinx-like exterior the older woman was intensely nervous, that once or

twice even her splendid breeding could not control an outburst of

irritability. Her eyes, too, had a curious hard opaque look, as if the

old voluptuous fires had burned out; and she seemed ever on her guard.

What her future plans were no man could guess. She might have settled

down for life on Russian Hill, so completely did she make the new

environment fit her imperious person. She even remarked casually to

Isabel that "of course" she should entertain in the course of the

winter, but at one of the hotels; she would never ask people to climb

those stairs on a possibly rainy night. But it was evident that her

entertaining would be merely on the principle of noblesse oblige; her

lack of interest in the doings of a civilization so different from her

own was patent, and it was doubtful if she would have even accepted the

attentions showered upon her had she not feared the alternative of an

unbroken ennui. Isabel felt vaguely sorry for her, and puzzled deeply,

but she could do no more than provide her with entertainment and the

abundant comforts and luxuries of the city; to express any deeper and

more womanly sympathy to that proud nature would have been a liberty

Isabel would have been the last to take. But she retained her own rooms

and went down with Gwynne once a week, when they both devoted themselves

to Lady Victoria's amusement. It was at least gratifying that the French

restaurants and many of the unique Bohemian resorts entertained her more

than society; and she found the Stones amusing, and frankly made use of

Paula, who did all her shopping, receiving many a careless present.

Meanwhile Gwynne, when not reading, or practising, or attending

lectures, or endeavoring to hurry forward his new enterprise in the

city, took long buggy rides with Tom Colton about the country, and made

acquaintance with many farmers, as well as with the guileful depths of

the ambitious young politician. Colton, although for the present

dependent upon only the voters of his district, by no means confined

his attentions even to those of his county. The time would come when he

would need a wide popularity, and with his cool far-sighted tactics he

was already sowing its seeds. There was an immense and varied material

to work on. Not only were his own county and the two adjoining as large

as a State more modest than California, but, with the exception of the

Asti vineyards, and one or two ranches like Lumalitas, were cut up into

an infinite number of farms owned by Irish, Scotch, Danes, Norwegians,

Swedes, Hungarians, Swiss, Germans, Italians, and a few native

Americans. Asti alone, a great district devoted to the vine, and

boasting the largest tank in the world, was entirely in the hands of

Italians. The Swiss, for the most part, were cheese makers. The rest

devoted themselves to chickens, grain, hay, wheat, and fruit. There were

several orange orchards and one violet farm. Many of these foreigners

were so numerous that churches had been built for their separate use,

and service was held in their native tongue. All were willing to drop

work for a few moments and talk politics with Colton, particularly if it

was to abuse lawmakers and monopolists--above all, the railroads, whose

prices were exorbitant, and whose service was inadequate. In this

department of monopoly at least they had a real grievance, and Colton

never let them forget it. He made no secret of the fact that the United

States Senate was his goal, and reiterated that there alone could he

accomplish the legislation that would free the farmer from the costly

tyranny of the corporations and give the laboring man his rightful share

of profit. Some were skeptical that any mortal could accomplish all he

promised, but the foreigners for the most part were gullible, and they

all liked the rich man's son, with his simple ways and his blatant

democracy.

Of Gwynne they took little notice, but he studied them, one and all, and

it was not long before he understood the materials with which he must

deal in the future. The State was Republican, although San Francisco

presented the remarkable spectacle of a Democratic mayor with a

Republican boss controlling the labor element, which was presumably

democratic in essence, and devoted to the figurehead. But country

politics were far less complicated, and it was possible that a strong

Democrat with a sufficiency of inherent power could weld together the

conflicting and half indifferent elements, and change the political

current. Californians had gone thunderously Republican at the last

Presidential election, because for the moment they were dazzled by the

Roosevelt star and all it seemed to portend. There could be no better

augury for a really great and sincere leader; for whether or not

Roosevelt was all they imagined, the point to consider was that they had

been carried away by their higher enthusiasms, not by those a mere

trickster like Colton was trying to stimulate. They had rushed to the

polls with all that was best in their natures in the ascendant, eager

not only for a great servant that would reform many abuses, but for one

that stood at the moment before the country as the embodiment of all

that was high-minded, uncompromisingly honest, and nobly patriotic in

American life. It was one of the greatest personal triumphs ever

accomplished--for the leaders wished nothing more ardently than his

downfall--and whether or not it was to be justified by history, it must

ever remain to his credit that he had hypnotized his countrymen through

the higher channels of their nature. The reaction might be bitter, but

memory is short, and at least he had served to demonstrate that the

American mind was not materialized by the lust of gain, was quite as

susceptible to the loftier patriotic promptings as in the days of its

revolutionary and simpler ancestors. A man like Colton might delude for

a time, for the Democratic party was deplorably weak in leaders, and the

Republican bosses, in California, as elsewhere, had made the State a

byword for shameless corruption; and their iron heel ground hard even in

that land of climate and plenty. Colton might be useful to rouse

Californians to a sense of their wrongs and opportunities, but Gwynne

doubted if he could hold them. He promised too much. The time would come

when they would turn to a strong man who talked less and did more, who

gradually imbued them with the conviction of absolute honesty,

distinguished ability, and as much disinterestedness as it is reasonable

to expect of any mortal striving for the great prizes of life.

One day there was a mass-meeting suddenly called to express sympathy

with the orange growers of the South, who had dumped twelve carloads of

early oranges into the San Francisco Bay rather than submit to the

increased rates of the transcontinental railroads. Gwynne saw his

opportunity and summoned his powers. There was a moment of doubt, of

hesitancy, of reflection that he was rusty, and that the subject was of

no special interest to him; then, at the eager insistence of Colton, he

walked rapidly to the front of the platform with all the actor's exalted

nervous delight in a new role. In a few moments there was no subject on

earth so interesting to him as the iniquities of the railroads and the

wrongs of the orange growers; he awoke from his torpor so triumphantly

that his amazed audience, as of old, felt the deep flattery of its

power over him, and he made a speech which was like the rushing of risen

waters through a broken dam. Not that he permitted himself to be carried

away wholly; he deliberately refrained from indiscriminate phillipics,

from rousing their ire too far, grasped the opportunity to see what

could be done by appealing to their reason through their higher

emotions, and begged them to meet constantly and consider the question

of electing men that were not mere politicians, that would deliver the

State from the medieval tyranny that oppressed it; advised his hearers

to employ the best legal counsel they could get, and to give their

leisure moments to the study of practical politics, instead of

indolently submitting all great questions to the hands of men as

unscrupulous as the State bosses and corporations. With his peculiar

gift he made each breathless man in the auditorium feel not only that he

was being personally addressed, but that his mental equipment had

mysteriously been raised to the plane of the speaker's. When Gwynne

finished amid applause as great as any he had evoked in England after

the expounding of great issues dear to his heart, he turned to find

Colton regarding him with sharp eyes and lowering brow. He immediately

took his arm and led him without.

"I am glad a climax has come so soon," he said. "Otherwise I should have

begun to feel like a hypocrite. Not only are your principles and mine

utterly antagonistic, but you must consider me as your rival. I can do

nothing definite, of course, for nearly four years, and meanwhile you

may reach the United States Senate. If you do I shall do my utmost to

oust you. Nevertheless, if I can be of any service in sending you there

I am perfectly willing to place myself at your disposal, for the

experience and insight I shall acquire in exchange. And as you are no

worse than the others, and some one must go, it might as well be you as

another. But, I repeat, I shall use all my powers to oust you and take

your place."

Colton stood for a few moments, his hands in his pockets, regarding the

ground. Then he lifted his eyes and smiled ingenuously.

"You are dead straight, for a fact. And I think I have got just as good

an opinion of myself as you have of yourself. You put me in the United

States Senate with that tongue of yours--God, you can talk!--and I'll

take the chances of even you getting me out. It will take more than

eloquence to upset a great State machine, and before I get through I'll

have the Democratic machine stronger than the Republican is to-day. You

can't get anywhere in this country without the machine, and the man in

control stays in control unless he falls down, and this I don't propose

to do. I'll swap frankness and tell you right here that when I'm boss I

may let you come to Congress as my colleague, but that you've got to do

as I say when you get there. What do you say to that?"

"I'll take all the chances. At least we understand each other. I work

for you now, and I break the power of both you and your infernal machine

when I am a citizen of the United States."

"Shake," said Colton.

And they shook.

XXVI

Isabel sat idly on the veranda of her old hotel as was her habit in the

evening hour. There had been no heavy rains as yet to freshen the hills

and swell the tides until the salt waters scalded the juices from the

marsh grass, turning it from green to bronze and red; and the barometer

was stationary. A cool wind came in from the sea with the flood, and

Isabel enjoyed the beauty that was hers all the more luxuriously in her

thick shawl of white wool. A great part of the valley north and south

was within the range of her vision, and it was suffused with gold under

a sky that looked like an inverted crucible pouring down its treasures

in the prodigal fashion of the land. Facing her house and on the

opposite side of the marsh, at its widest here, was a high wall of rock,

from which the valley curved backward on either side, tapering to the

great level in the north, but on the south halting abruptly before the

mass of mountains following the coast line and topped by the angular

shoulder of Tamalpais; coal black to-night against the intense gold of

the West.

She had not seen Gwynne for several days, and half expected that he

would come to-night. These were busy days, and she saw less of him than

formerly, although he snatched an hour for shooting whenever he could,

and occasionally rode over for supper; and they saw much of each other

during the weekly visit to the city. Their relations were easy and

sexless. He refused to talk of chickens, but they had many other

interests in common. She had by no means forgotten his outbreak in the

launch, and had scowled at her arms for quite a week as she brushed her

hair for bed, but that episode was now several weeks old, and she had

ceased to harbor resentment. But she was subtly out of conceit with

herself and life, resentful that she missed any one, after her long

triumph in freedom from human ties; also resentful of the respect and

interest with which Gwynne had inspired her, particularly since his

summary expulsion of her will from the battle ground where it was

becoming accustomed to easy triumphs. She had no love for him, and she

was as satisfied with the life she had chosen as ever, but she was

beginning to feel a sense of approaching confusion, where readjustment

would once more be necessary. The future looked longer, and she was

losing her pleasant sense of finality. She had guessed long ago that the

only chance of escaping the terrible restlessness that pursues so many

women, like enemies in the unseen world converted into furies, was to

caress and hug the present, fool the ego into the belief that it wanted

nothing beyond an imminent future, certain of realization, which should

be as all-possessing as the present. But she had been wise enough to do

little analysis, either of her depths or of life, and her time was full

enough.

"Are you asleep?" asked a polite voice. Gwynne swung himself over the

low railing of the veranda.

"I did not hear your horse." It would be long before he could surprise

her into any sort of emotion again.

"Good reason. I walked. I read Cooley until I had an alarming vision of

the Constitution of the United States writ black upon the sunset, so I

thought it was high time to walk it off. Naturally my footsteps led me

here."

"That was nice of them. Mac will drive you home, or you can have my

horse."

"It is like you to plan my departure before I have fairly arrived. May I

sit down?"

Isabel shivered. The glow had gone, there was only the intense dark

fiery blue behind the stars--silver and crystal and green; one rarely

sees a golden star in California. There were scattered lights in

Rosewater and on the hillsides; and the night boat winding through the

marsh was a mere chain of colored lights; here and there a lamp on a

head mast looked like a fallen star.

"That is the way I generally feel after the glow has disappeared," said

Gwynne, abruptly. "Let us go in."

There were blazing logs on the hearth, and a comfortable chair on either

side. The room looked very red and warm and seductive. As they passed

the table Isabel half lifted one of the English Reviews for which she

subscribed. "There is an allusion to you here," she said. "I meant to

send it to you. I fancy they want you back. It is very complimentary."

But Gwynne concealed the promptings of vanity and took one of the chairs

at the fireside, asking permission to light his pipe. She noted, as she

settled herself opposite, that there was less of repose in his long

figure than formerly, something of repressed activity, and his rather

heavy eyes were colder and more alert.

"It all seems a thousand years ago," he said. "I am John Gwynne. I doubt

if I shall ever love your California, but I am interested--this mass of

typical Europeans not yet Americanized--no common brain to work on, no

one set of racial peculiarities. And the law has me fast. I have become

frightfully ambitious. Talk about your Hamilton. I too walk the floor

till the small hours, repeating pages aloud. My Jap thinks me mad, and

no doubt is only induced to remain at his post by the excellence of my

tobacco, and the fact that his education is unhindered by much service.

While I am packing my own brain cells I infer that he is attending a

night school in St. Peter, for I hear him returning at all hours; and he

certainly shows no trace of other dissipation. We have never exchanged

ten sentences, but perhaps we act as a mutual stimulus."

"Don't you love California the least little bit?" asked Isabel,

wistfully. "Or San Francisco?"

"I have liked San Francisco too well upon several occasions--when I have

run down to spend the night at the Hofers--or have fallen in with Stone

on my way back from Berkeley, and been induced to stay over. Hofer and

that set seem to be content with living well; they are too serious for

dissipation. But Stone! Of course such men die young, but they are

useful in exciting the mind to wonder and awe. I don't think I am in any

danger of becoming San Franciscan to the point of feeding her insatiable

furnaces with all the fires of my being, but there is no denying her

fascination, and it has given me a very considerable pleasure to yield

to it. Whether I shall practise law there--change my base--I have not

yet had time to think it out."

"A country lawyer's is certainly no career."

"This is a good place to begin politically. San Francisco is too hard a

nut to crack at present. If I could become powerful in the State, the

Independent leader they need, then I might transfer my attentions to

that unhappy town. Even Hofer and all the rest of the devoted band seem

to be practically helpless since the re-election of the mayor. What

could I do--at present?"

"With a big legal reputation made in San Francisco you could travel very

fast and far. And you would be learning every thread of every rope,

become what is technically known as 'on'; and then when the time came--"

"I hate so much waiting! The shortest cut is here in the country. I

shall manage these men far better than Colton, who is the crudest type

of American politician. Nothing could be simpler than his program:

abuse, promise. Nothing simpler than his ambition: all for himself, and

the devil take the hindmost. I have yet to hear him utter a sentiment

that betrays any love of his country or desire to serve her, any real

public spirit. Those are the sentiments I am trying to cultivate for

this accidental land of my birth, for without them ambition is

inexcusable and endeavor a hollow sham."

"And can't you?" Isabel left her chair and stood by the mantel-piece. It

was the first time he had spoken of himself with any approach to

confidence since the day of his arrival. "Sometimes I repent the share I

had in your coming to America--not that I flatter myself I had much to

do with it--" she added, hastily. "But my being there may have turned

the scale. You might have gone off to rule a South American Republic--"

"I should have done nothing so asinine, and you had everything to do

with my coming here. Not that I hold you responsible. You gave a hint,

and I took it."

"And you don't regret it?"

"Why waste time in regret? I can go back any moment. Not that I have the

least intention of doing anything of the sort."

He was pleasantly tired in mind and body, and the warm homelike room

caressed his senses. He settled himself more deeply in Hiram Otis's old

chair and looked up at Isabel. She had laid aside the white shawl, but

wore a red Indian scarf over her black gown. The gown was cut out in a

square at the neck; she always dressed for her lonely supper, and she

had put a red rose in her hair, in the fashion of her California

grandmothers. With her face turned from the light, her eyes with their

large pupils looked black.

"I shall stay in California, like or no like," continued Gwynne. "But I

did not walk five miles to talk politics with a woman after a day of law

and the citizens of Rosewater. Where did you get that curious

old-fashioned scarf?"

"I found it in a trunk of my mother's. Doubtless it belonged to her

mother. I also found this." She indicated a fine gold chain and heart of

garnets that lay on her white neck. The humor in his eyes had quickened

into admiration; he reflected that the various streams in her

composition might not be so completely blended as would appear upon that

normally placid surface. The feeling of uneasiness which he had

peremptorily dismissed stole over him once more. She looked wholly

Spanish, and put out the light of every brunette he knew. Dolly Boutts,

whom he still admired at a distance, although he fled at her approach,

was a bouncing peasant by contrast; and several well-bred and

entertaining young women of the same warm hues that he had met during

the past few weeks in San Francisco suddenly seemed to be the merest

climatic accidents beside this girl who unrolled the pages of

California's older past and afforded him a fleeting vision of those

lovely donas and fiery caballeros for whom life was an eternal

playground. That they were his progenitors as well as hers he found it

difficult to realize, he seemed to have inherited so little of them; but

they had flown generously to Isabel's making, and to-night she gave him

that same impression of historic background as when she turned the

severity of her profile up on him and suggested a doughtier race.

"It was about the same time," he said, abruptly.

"What?"

"While our Spanish ancestors were playing at this end of the continent,

our 'American' forefathers were bracing themselves against England. It

was in 1776 that the Presidio and Mission of San Francisco were founded,

was it not? Curious coincidence. Perhaps that is what gives you your

sense of destiny."

"I have no sense of destiny."

"Oh, but you have. Now I know that you are quite Spanish to-night. It is

your more ordinary mood of calm unvarnished--not to say

brutal--directness that gives you your greatest charm as a comrade--even

while you repel as a woman."

"Do I repel as a woman?" Isabel had placed one foot on the fender, one

hand on the mantel-piece, and as she leaned slightly towards him, the

red glow of the lamps and the mellow old scarf softening her features,

the small square of neck dazzlingly white, and the position revealing

the lines of her figure against the high flames of the logs, she looked

more lovely than he had ever seen her. Like all racial beauties, bred by

selection, she needed the arts of dress and furnishings to frame her.

It is only your accidental or peasant beauty that can defy "clothes";

and Isabel's looks in ordinary ranch and riding costumes made no

impression on Gwynne whatever. But to-night her appeal was very direct,

although he had not the least idea whether she was posing or was

entirely natural in an unusual mood. He had no intention of being made a

fool of, however, and answered with the responsive glow in his eyes due

a pretty and charming woman:

"Sometimes. Not to-night. If you would remain Spanish with no

Revolutionary lapses, I make no doubt I should fall in love with you,

and then perhaps you would fall in love with me merely because of my own

lack of picturesqueness, and we should live happily ever after."

"What a bore." Isabel sniffed, and moved her gaze to the fire. But she

did not alter her attitude.

"Are you really happy?" asked Gwynne, curiously.

"Of course. So much so that it begins to worry me a little. My

puritanical instincts dictate that I have no right to be quite happy.

What slaves we are to the old poisons in our blood! I live by the light

of my reason, and all is well until one of those mouldy instincts, like

a buried disease germ, raps all round its tomb. Then I feel nothing but

a graveyard of all my ancestors. I don't let them out, and my reason

continues its rule, but they keep me from being--well--entirely happy,

and I resent that."

"I should say it was not the Puritans but your common womanly instincts

that were thumping round their cells. You have no right to be happy

except as Nature intended when she deliberately equipped you, and that

is in making some man happy."

"That is one of those superstitions I am trying to live down while I am

still young. Your mother is unhappy, under all her pride, because she

has outlived youth and beauty and all they meant to her--she made them

her gods, and now they have gone, and she doesn't know which way to

turn. Ennui devours her, and she is too old to turn her brains to

account, too cynical for the average resource of religion, and too

steeped, dyed, solidified, in one kind of womanism to turn at this late

date to any other. But there are so many resources for the woman of

to-day. The poor despised pioneers have done that for us. Of course it

has not killed our natural instincts, and if I had not fallen in love

when I did, no doubt I should still be looking about for an opportunity.

It is my good-fortune that I was delivered so soon. I wish all women

born to enjoy life in its variety could be freed of that terrible burden

of sex as early as I was."

"I suppose you would like to rid men of it too."

"I do not waste any thought on men; so far as I have observed they are

able to take care of themselves."

"A woman incapable of passion is neither more nor less than a failure."

"I have seen so many commonplace women capable of it! Look at Mrs.

Haight and Paula."

"I never look at Mrs. Haight, but as for Mrs. Stone I can quite conceive

that if she had better taste she would be almost charming. She embodies

youth properly equipped."

"For reproduction, you mean. That is the reason that the silliest, the

meanest, the most poisonous girl can always find a husband if she is

healthy. It is no wonder that some of us want a new standard."

Gwynne laughed. "Schopenhauer suits you better when you are out on the

marsh in rubber boots and a shooting-jacket. Do you realize that if you

persist in this determination to camp permanently in the outer--and

frigid--zone, you will never be the centre of a life drama? That, I take

it, is what every woman desires most. You had a sort of

curtain-raiser--to my mind, hardly that. First love is merely the more

picturesque successor of measles and whooping-cough. In marriage it may

develop into something worth while, but in itself amounts to

nothing--except as material for poets. But the real drama--that is in

the permanent relation. This relation is the motive power of the great

known dramas of the world. Life is packed with little unheard of dramas

of precisely the same sort--the eternal duet of sex; nothing else keeps

it going. Now, it is positive that a woman cannot have a drama all by

herself--"

"Not a drama in the old style. But that is what we are trying to avoid.

Are there not other faculties? What has civilization done for the world

if it is to be everlastingly sex-ridden? What is the meaning of this

multitude of faculties that progress has developed? What is the meaning

of life itself--"

"Oh, are you aiming to read the riddle of life?"

"I mean to pass my own life in the effort. Men have failed. It is our

turn. But if I say any more I suppose you will pinch me again."

"No," said Gwynne, smiling. "I feel much more like kissing you--ah!"

He had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes blaze. His pipe was finished;

he clasped his hands behind his head and almost lay down in his deep

chair. "I am just tired enough to be completely happy, and if I can

look at you I am willing to listen like a lamb all night."

"And be convinced of nothing." Isabel tossed her head and returned to

her chair. It faced him and he could still look at her. They watched

each other from opposite sides of the hearth with something of the

unblinking wariness of a dog and a cat, and no doubt had they possessed

caudal appendages they would have lashed them slowly.

"I don't say that," he replied, in a moment. "I believe I intimated that

I came here to-night with a purpose. It was to tell you that I have

thought more or less about what you said in the boat that morning, and

that I can understand, if I cannot agree with you. No doubt the times

have bred a certain class of women too good for mere matrimony. I have

seen many that were miserably thrown away; although I will confess that

the only remedy that occurred to me was a better man. But if you and

your like--are there really any others?--if you, let us say, are groping

towards some new solution of life, some happiness recipe that will

benefit the few that deserve it, far be it from a mere man

to--well--pinch you. You--you individually--have so many highly

developed faculties that I can conceive your finding sufficient

occupation through them, a filling up of time;--and no doubt idleness

and the vain groping after sex happiness are the principal reasons for

the failure of so many women. But work does not give happiness; it

merely diminishes the capacity and opportunities for unhappiness. I take

it that you, with all your gifts and the immense amount of thought you

have bestowed on the subject, are striving for something higher than

that. Besides, I had your lucid exposition of your mission. I now have

an additional reason for remaining in California--to watch the new

century plant flower. Like other commonplace mortals, however, my

instincts fight for the only solution of happiness I know anything

about. I still think that as the wife of some ambitious public man you

would find a far better market for your gifts than to stand as a sort of

statue of Independence on the top of Russian Hill with only San

Francisco to admire. And if you passionately loved the man--"

"Now you are spoiling everything. But it is handsome of you to admit

that I am not a fool; and that you have thought my theories worth

turning over in your busy mind is a compliment I duly appreciate."

"Even a sneer cannot spoil your loveliness to-night, so I don't mind the

sarcasm in the least. But it is true that in my few unoccupied

intervals--as, for instance, when Imura Kisaburo Hinamoto is shaving me,

and I have, by an excess of politeness, made sure that he will not cut

my throat--I have had visions of you on that ungainly pedestal with all

San Francisco kneeling at the base. It is quite conceivable. I am a born

leader myself. I recognize certain attributes in you. The town is on the

qui vive to know you. Mrs. Hofer is determined that you shall be the

sensation of her ball, and no doubt that will be the commencement of

your illustrious career. When you are really grown into your pedestal

like one of Rodin's statues, you are certain to have a most illustrious

and distinctive career--and accomplish much good. But you will be

terribly lonely."

"I should not have time. And if I am a born leader, how, pray, could I

yoke comfortably with any man? I should despise a slave, and the same

roof will not shelter two leaders."

"I am not so sure of that, if both were working to the same end. It

takes two halves to make a whole. If women have so far been the

subordinate sex, no doubt it is merely the result of those physical

disabilities which enabled man to gain the ascendency during the long

centuries of struggle with nature. But your sex is rapidly altering all

that. We shall see woman's suffrage in our time--and be better for it. I

have never been opposed to it--and that is proof enough of the progress

the idea has made, for I am arbitrary and masculine enough. Then--now,

no doubt--women will be as much partners as wives, and I grant the

relationship might be vastly more interesting than marriage in the old

style. And I will even concede that it may be the only sort of marriage

for a man of my type--with a pretty woman, of course; hanged if I could

marry the finest woman in the world if she were ugly; and if this be

true--if men really need women enough to make such a concession as I am

making this moment, then I fancy that women will retain enough of their

original generosity to meet our demands."

"You do not need any woman. In England I fancied that your mother meant

a great deal to you, but I don't believe you have missed her at all--or

that you will mourn when she returns to England. I was more than ready

to take her place; you actually stirred my maternal instincts when you

arrived, you looked so forlorn. But you spurned me, and now you have

grown too independent even to illustrate your own theories."

"I did not spurn you. Some day I may tell you why I did not come to you

in my dark hours, but not now."

"Why not now?"

"Because I do not choose to. And seductive as you look I am not to be

made a fool of to gratify one of your whims--of which you are quite as

full as the least emancipated woman I ever saw."

To this Isabel deigned no reply, and a silence ensued. She transferred

her gaze to the fire, and her mind revolved in search of new arguments,

but it was tired and worked slowly. She concluded to change the subject

and offer to read him the article in the Review, so complimentary to

himself; but she turned her head to discover that he was sound asleep.

She laughed, half vexed, half amused. Then she laid a rug lightly over

his knees, and softly replenished the fire. The room was deliciously

warm, her own chair very comfortable. She too fell asleep.

She was rudely awakened. Gwynne was shaking her by the shoulder, and his

face was white with consternation.

"Good God!" he exclaimed. "Do you know what time it is? It is two

o'clock! Why did you let me sleep? Those old tabbies--"

"They must be asleep too," said Isabel, indifferently. "Come out, and I

will hold the lantern while you saddle Kaiser."

XXVII

Mrs. Haight was hastily putting her parlor in order for the "Ten o'Clock

Five Hundred Club." She was without a servant, having had four hired

girls and three Japs in the past month; during the last three days she

had cooked for herself and Mr. Haight, "done all the work," and attended

seven card parties. Mr. Haight, who had not had his dinner the night

before until nine o'clock, and whose steak this morning had been burned

and his coffee muddy, had gone down-town in a huff, threatening to move

to the hotel unless his wife found a servant or her sanity.

Mrs. Haight, who wore a red flannel wrapper trimmed with black lace,

which she believed became her style, shook up the sofa-cushions on the

divan, where she longed to receive her guests reclining in Oriental

voluptuousness, but had never dared, and dusted the table as if she were

slapping an enemy's face. The bed was not made, nor likely to be before

night, and she too knew the penalties of burned steak and bad coffee,

enhanced by the irritability of the insomniac. She had her redeeming

virtues, no doubt; all have, even burglars and murderers, until they

slip into the region of pathology; but this morning she looked and felt

like a she-wolf; and few mammals are so dangerous, particularly a

she-wolf that has never suckled young.

Her expected guests arrived promptly, glowing with the light dry cold,

some wearing furs because they became the season, others thin cloth

jackets over their shirt-waists. One had bundled herself into a broche

shawl and "run over" hatless. Each, as she entered the parlor, cast a

critical eye upon the silver spoon standing in lonely glory on the

mantel-piece, and nodded or scowled, according to her bent. Mrs. Haight

was far too cunning to detain them from the tables they fairly rushed at

as the last member arrived, and it was not until they had "scrapped" and

wrestled and stormed at and abused each other for at least two hours,

not until their ugly passions were in full possession, and they threw

down their cards with loud indignation that a substitute should be

allowed "to compete for a prize, anyhow"--the substitute having won the

spoon--that the hostess, with the peculiar slow fire in her eyes that

marks the beast of prey in sight of its quarry, suddenly let it be

understood that the high tension was to be relieved with a choice bit of

scandal. It was some time since they had had one; propriety, like

business honesty, being almost inevitable in a community little larger

than a throne.

Mrs. Wheaton exclaimed: "Your eyes look like two burnt holes in a

blanket, Minerva. What is it? Hurry up. I must run home and supervise a

new Swede that speaks ten words of English. She asked me if I wanted

young children for dinner. I suppose she meant chickens, but one never

knows, and Anabel's babies are just over the fence."

"It's this, and it's no joking matter, Sarah Wheaton. I saw Mr. Gwynne

pass this house at three o'clock this morning, and on Isabel Otis's

horse. Now, I saw him going out to Old Inn, _walking_ before sundown.

He had plenty of time to say what he had to say and get home at a decent

hour--which is long before half-past ten, and that's what it's been many

a night. This thing has become a scandal to the community, and I for one

won't stand it any longer. Its downright immoral, and I'm not using too

strong language purposely."

"Oh my!" exclaimed Dolly Boutts. "You could never make me believe

anything against Isabel. He's studying terribly hard--the judge told

pa--and likely as not has insomnia. Englishmen are so terribly dull to

talk to I shouldn't wonder if it was hard work for them to learn

anything."

"Insomnia!" cried Mrs. Haight. "I guess I have insomnia and I guess I

know what I am talking about. What does a kid like you know of the

wickedness of the world, or insomnia either? But this has gone just as

far as _I_ intend to permit it."

"It certainly looks very bad, very bad," muttered Mrs. Wheaton, whose

own light eyes were glowing. "What steps shall you take, Minerva? Or

what should you advise me to do? I am sorry I had forgotten the girl. I

should have kept the eye on her that I intended."

"It's a matter for all, not for any one of us. I intend to bring it up

at the Club Meeting this afternoon, and I expect you all to back me, for

the thing's a disgrace to the community, and all our girls will be

talked about. In my opinion the best thing to do is to tell her to leave

and go and live in that hot-bed of wickedness, San Francisco."

"Why Minerva, you're a regular old Puritan witch-hunter!" exclaimed Mrs.

Colton. "You never could make me believe that child had any harm in

her--"

"It isn't what one believes. It's what is. I know. I've studied human

nature. If I don't know anything else I know that. She'll get out of

Rosewater, or I'll hit her in her weak spot. I'll write her up for the

San Francisco _Illuminator_. They'd give hundreds, and they can have it

for nothing--"

"Why, Minerva Haight, I'm ashamed of you!" cried Mrs. Colton. "It's like

persecution, and you have no proof. Why should you know more of the

world than we do, I'd like to know?"

"I do, that's all. And I don't see her doing every mortal thing she

wants, while others have to walk a chalked line through life. It's all

or none. That's my creed. She'll soon wilt when she sees we mean

business--either go, or take a chaperon, or marry the man, whichever she

prefers. I don't care, so long as she ain't allowed to do as she pleases

and no questions asked and no penalty paid. But she'll knuckle, for it's

my opinion she's just making money to spend it in San Francisco--cut a

dash there like her mother did before her. Probably wants to become a

society leader and have a string of lovers. Nice product to hail from

Rosewater. I think she ought to be sent back to Europe where they don't

mind such goings on. The things you do read about the English

aristocracy! It's my opinion _that_ Lady Victoria ain't any better than

she should be. She looks it--and through us, just as if we were

window-panes."

"You are real crude, Minerva," said Mrs. Colton, crushingly, as she rose

to go. "I thought Rosewater was near enough to the metropolis for us not

to be as provincial as some folks farther up the line, who haven't the

same advantages."

"I guess we're all crude enough, if it comes to that," retorted Mrs.

Haight. "I'd like to know what's cruder than a man's staying at a girl's

house till two o'clock in the morning--and for all the high and mighty

way he carries himself--and him the born image of Hi Otis. It's too

ridiculous. I'd like to bring him down several pegs, too."

"He bears only the most distant resemblance to Hi Otis," said Mrs.

Colton, indignantly. "I never could endure Hi; he didn't have the

manners of a car-conductor, and this young man's real polite and kind,

besides having a _much_ more high-toned face. I don't believe you can

run him out, either. He looks the kind to stay or go, just as suits him.

And I'd advise you to think this matter over before you give it

publicity. I might go out and speak to Isabel quietly--"

"Not much she don't get off as easy as that!"

Mrs. Wheaton nodded approvingly. "It's a case for the Club," said she.

"We'll talk it out this afternoon and decide what's best to do."

And all the others, save Mrs. Colton and the loyal Dolly, cordially

agreed with her.

XXVIII

The Rosewater Literary, Political, and Improvement Club met on the first

and fourth Thursdays of the month, in a large room on the top floor of

the Town Hall, and across the corridor from the Public Library. Saving

only the business section of Rosewater, rejuvenated by the fruitful

Leghorn, there was no such centre of activity within forty miles.

Rosewater, once as disreputable as San Francisco in the Fifties, now

contributed but an occasional drunkard or burglar to the languid powers

on the first floor of the Town Hall. The reading public was largely

confined to young girls with the taste for romance fresh on the palate.

The new books wandered in a year after the rest of the world had

forgotten them, and rarely in couples. One copy was quite able to quench

the thirst for "keeping up," and was often read aloud in the intervals

between cards. The standard works were well represented, however, and a

reasonable amount of history. "All Rosewater's good for," quoth one of

the biting wits of St. Peter, "is to die in. If you're born there people

never forget it; it sticks to you like a strawberry mark on the end of

your nose. And if you live there you might as well be dead, anyhow."

Rosewater retorted that if St. Peter had a better library it was because

she had nothing else to do than read, and, for all its court-house, was

nothing but a suburb of Rosewater, anyway; or at the best a mere

headquarters for drummers.

On the afternoon following Mrs. Haight's card-party the large sunny room

with its outlook upon marsh and hill was filled promptly at two o'clock;

for the word had flown about town that Minerva Haight was on the

war-path and that the scalp she pursued was Isabel Otis's. The

President, as she rapped for order, betrayed no ruffling of the humorous

imperturbability that had made her a power in Rosewater. Mrs. Leslie,

although of "the old Southern set" of San Francisco, had none of the

external elegances of Mrs. Wheaton, Mrs. Boutts and Dolly, or even of

her own daughter. She was generally to be seen in a rusty black frock

and bonnet, a pair of eye-glasses in black frames bestriding the bridge

of her nose. But her eyes were very black and bright, her mouth was as

firm as it was kind and humorous. Beside her sat the Treasurer, Mrs.

Wheaton, whom Mrs. Leslie understood as thoroughly as she did every

member of the flock that was really hers, although in matters of mere

society she disdained to lead it. Mrs. Wheaton, for all her petty airs

and evil-scenting profile, was really a woman of high ideals. Her

severity to others was due to the secret knowledge that these ideals

were beyond her personal accomplishment, and the satisfaction to be

derived from audibly rating the failings of her neighbors. Her highest

ideal was self-control, particularly in relation to the weaknesses of

the flesh; but after a period of stern abstinence, she indulged

inordinately in oysters, fried chicken with cream gravy, and ice-cream

with cocoanut cake; and sipped a night-cap upon retiring. Her passion

for cards had long since routed her will; but she intended to reform

wholly in time, for she walked in fear of the Lord. If she judged the

young harshly, she persuaded herself that she had only their well-being

at heart. She was one of the pillars of the church and gave liberally to

its support.

Mrs. Haight, who, as we have seen, enjoyed one of those purely

fortuitous reputations for cleverness, was Secretary of the combined

wings of the Club, and sat on Mrs. Leslie's left. Mrs. Wheaton's portly

person was sheathed in purple velvet, and there were handsome strings

between two of her chins, but Mrs. Haight wore a battered hat of

Neapolitan straw bedecked with a ragged bunch of carnations. It sat on

one side of her ill-kept head, giving her a singularly rakish and

definite appearance. She was furthermore attired in an old Paisley shawl

belonging to her grandmother--what better way to advertise a

grandmother?--over a blue alpaca frock made by her own unskilful

fingers. Mr. Haight was the most prosperous druggist in Rosewater, but

his wife had sounding virtues.

The other members of the Club, some sixty in number, were as variously

dressed as became their pockets or proclivities, decently for the most

part, for there was no poverty in Rosewater. Mrs. Leslie took no notice

of the charged atmosphere, but proceeded to business as methodically as

if engaged in her morning housekeeping. The minutes of the last meeting

were read by Mrs. Haight, in the cultivated tones of one who had recited

upon the stage of her youth, "Curfew shall not ring to-night," and "The

Wreck of the Hesperus." The huskily strident voice trembled slightly,

but she read several pages of foolscap without a break, and finished

with a flourish. Then Mrs. Leslie, in spite of scraping chairs, asked

Mrs. Colton, Chairman of the Improvement Inspection Committee to read

her report on the condition of the new concrete pavements, of several

homesick palm-trees in the public squares, and on the prospect of

removing tin cans and soda-water bottles from the picnic grounds. This

resort was near the marsh, and it was the pet project of the ladies of

Rosewater to extend it into a boulevard as far as Point Santiago, so

that "public picnickers" should find an additional reason for spending

their money in Rosewater, and extend the fame of the town. They had

endeavored to extract the funds from their stingy lords by private

subscription, failing an appeal to the City Fathers, who found other

uses for the public funds; but even the civic Mr. Boutts was not ready

for such an outlay. The women--who had accomplished so much, having

literally transformed Rosewater from a broken-down pioneer country town

into one of the prettiest spots in California--had by no means

despaired; and when Mrs. Colton finished her report, Mrs. Leslie

remarked:

"Our boulevard may be nearer than you think. Mr. Gwynne has conceived a

project for reclaiming the marsh-lands, and converting them, by means of

levees and those tremendous dredges and pumps, into arable land--like

the reclaimed islands of the San Joaquin River; and has persuaded Tom

Colton to present a bill to that effect at the next meeting of the

legislature--asking for an appropriation for the levees, at least. He

has himself promised a handsome contribution for the boulevard,

convinced that it will add materially to the wealth and importance of

the town. He has even talked over Mr. Boutts--an important

conversion"--nodding smilingly at Mrs. Boutts--"and Isabel Otis, who has

forty-five acres of marsh, has promised that if the bill goes through

she will also contribute a thousand dollars. She not only realized at

once that the boulevard would bring more capital to Rosewater, but she

means to sow the reclaimed land with asparagus--and we all know the

profit in that. Her attitude and comprehension of the matter have

gratified me extremely, almost as much as her continued residence in

Rosewater after all her fine experiences abroad; to say nothing of

engaging personally in a lucrative business instead of playing with it

and leaving the actual work to dishonest help. She is an example I wish

more of our young women would follow. But as regards Mr. Gwynne: I think

he deserves a vote of thanks. He comes here a total stranger with an

immense estate, from which he could derive a sufficient income for his

pleasures, and he has already devoted a considerable amount of his time

and splendid mental abilities to the welfare of this little town. A few

of our older men have some public spirit, an idea or two beyond lining

their pockets, but we do not boast a single young man who cares whether

we have camellias or cabbages in the public squares. I feel sure that

Mr. Gwynne will supply this deficiency and be a host in himself. I have

talked with him several times, and he has said, in so many words, that

as he intends to make this county his home he purposes to accomplish

something in the way of general improvement. This means that he will,

for my husband says that he not only has remarkable mind and will, but

that he is a young man of incorruptible honor--and I know of no

combination that we need more. So, ladies, I propose that we pass a vote

of thanks to Mr. Gwynne, thus not only showing our appreciation of his

interest, but securing his friendship for the Club."

Mrs. Haight rose, sallow and trembling. She felt her sails flapping

about her, but none the less was she determined to reach her goal if she

had to get out and swim. She knew the President well enough to control

the hissing of her venom, but as she turned to address the chair she

found it impossible to imbue her tones with the suavity proper in a

baleful counsel for the prosecution.

"Mrs. President, Ladies!" she began, clearing her throat. "Before

passing a vote of thanks to Mr. Gwynne I think it my duty to ask you

dispassionately if you really think he is a person from whom we can

afford to receive favors. And above all, if Isabel Otis should be

permitted any sort of contact with the Club she has scornfully refused

to join. That is not the point, however. The point is that I maintain

that neither of them is fit for respectable people to associate with."

She felt that her summary was precipitate, and drawing herself up

defiantly looked hard at Mrs. Leslie. The President was regarding her

impassively.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because! As you force me to say it, Mr. Gwynne is out at Old Inn until

all hours of the night. I have seen him riding home as late as half-past

ten again and again. And I happen to know that before _that_ Lady

Victoria came, they were practically alone in the house on Russian Hill

one whole night. Mrs. Filkins, as you know, lives on Taylor Street, and

she saw Paula Stone pass her house in the afternoon looking as mad as a

hornet--she was sure she wasn't going back, and found out afterwards

that she hadn't; and she saw Mr. Gwynne come down those steps at seven

o'clock the next morning--going to catch the seven-thirty boat--looking

as pleased with himself as Punch. But I might have stood all that for a

while yet; I might have given Isabel the benefit of the doubt, since she

had _asked_ Paula to chaperon her, and might have found out too late

that she had gone--for she was gallivanting herself all day; I might

have overlooked his staying so often till ten-thirty--although I

maintain that an unmarried girl living alone on a ranch without even

female help is a disgrace to any community--yes, I might have swallowed

that for a while longer; but this morning--at three o'clock--I

saw--_with my own eyes, ladles_--Mr. Gwynne riding home from Old Inn on

Isabel Otis's sorrel horse Kaiser. Now I, for one, don't stand for such

goings on. I propose that instead of passing a vote of thanks to Mr.

Gwynne we pass a resolution to _cut_ both of them, and show them what a

decent community is."

She sat down in her flounces, and Mrs. Wheaton rose and seconded the

motion. The others looked rather frightened, although alert and

interested, and Mrs. Colton rose hastily and proposed that before

putting such a momentous question to the vote, the whole matter should

be thoroughly investigated.

"We must also have the advice of our President," she added. "For my

part, although I do not approve of young unmarried women living alone,

still I cannot believe such dreadful things of anybody, let alone Isabel

Otis. I am glad Anabel is not here. She would never listen to any

insinuation against Isabel, and might be tempted to disrespect of her

elders."

"And you, Mrs. Boutts?" asked the President.

"As a woman of the world I have not that implicit faith in human nature

that some people are still so happy as to cherish. My daughter--who

refused to come to-day, knowing the subject to be discussed--is

indignant at these reports; but of course she is a mere child, and very

much fascinated by Miss Otis. I do not by any means approve of the

drastic methods proposed by Mrs. Haight--I should hope that California

had taken _some_ of the old puritanical spirit out of us--but I do think

that Miss Otis should be given to understand that she cannot import

European fashions into Rosewater, and that she must have a chaperon. Let

her feel that she has acted unwisely, at the very least, by not inviting

her to any of the young people's gatherings in the future."

"As there are no more except for card-playing, and as she has recently

been the only hostess at an evening party the town has boasted for two

years, your virtuous wrath bids fair to blow past her unheeded. Mrs.

Plews, will you address us?"

Mrs. Plews was the wife of the pastor of the aristocratic Episcopalian

church, a pretty fluffy young woman, who visited the sick and made

excellent ice-cream for the church festivals. "Oh, I don't know!" she

exclaimed, deprecatingly. "It is all too dreadful! I no longer regret

that Miss Otis does not come to church. I had thought of remonstrating

with her once more--but when I recalled the last time! Now, it is indeed

well that she has not been associating with our young folks. I am sorry

this was not known before her party; I must really talk to Mr. Plews

before I can say anything further."

"Mrs. Toffitt, I am sure that you have something to say--and an opinion

of your own."

Mrs. Toffitt, a buxom highly colored woman of forty, who, since her

husband's death, the year before, had continued his business--a general

feed store--with striking success, and who was one of the most popular

women in Rosewater, with her abounding good-nature, her high spirits,

and her utter independence of speech, sprang to her feet.

"I have this to say," she cried. "For a lot of puritanical, prying,

spying, detestable old hens, we take the cake. Isabel Otis minds her own

business. Why, in heaven's name, can't we mind ours? Does she owe

anybody anything? Has she taken anybody's beau away? Anybody's husband?

Does she walk the streets doing nothing but show herself, or go buggy

riding with one fellow after another? Does she ever refuse money for

charity, or for our improvements when it's asked of her? Was she a

credit to the town with her record at the High School, or wasn't she?

Are we proud of her travels in Europe, her high-toned connections, her

business sense, the way she acted to that old reprobate of a father, or

ain't we? That's what I want to know. And she's got real intellect

instead of just the average American brightness; that's the secret of

the whole trouble. What if she does sit up all night talking to a man

who's got something besides chickens and dollars in his head? I'd do the

same if I had the chance. Just make a note of that. If Mr. Gwynne likes

to transfer his attentions to me I'll sit up all night right on Minerva

Haight's doorstep, and talk about any old thing he wants. If I was as

young and handsome as Isabel Otis I'd keep the best man going to myself,

bet your life on it! And I repeat, it's nobody's business." She whirled

upon the pallid Minerva with a flaming face. "Nice business you're

in--sitting at your window all night watching for other people's slips.

You'd make one fast enough if the Lord would let you, and that's what's

the matter with you. Now, put that in your pipe and smoke it."

She sat down amid much laughter and applause. Mrs. Leslie rapped

vigorously for order, although her mouth was twitching.

"Now, ladies," she said, suavely, "if you have all relieved your minds I

will say a few words. First of all, I wish to state that I shall refuse

to put the matter to a vote. It is a question that does not come within

the jurisdiction of the Club, which was not organized to supervise

morals as well as streets and sewers. You can all act towards Isabel and

Mr. Gwynne exactly as your consciences dictate, but for my own part, I

have this to say: I am astonished to find that the Club life, a life

which women the world over have prided themselves upon as the greatest

factor in broadening and elevating that their sex has ever known, seems

to have done, in our case at least, so little to eradicate certain

Oriental instincts and traditions. The cities are full of young women

living alone, and self-supporting. Why should not a girl have the same

privilege in the country? Because she is handsome and distinguished? I

fancy that a good many girls in analogous circumstances are passing

unnoticed. I have not the least doubt that a very respectable percentage

of very respectable young women, living alone in their city flats, sit

up late and talk to men that are interesting enough to keep them awake.

I am quite sure that were I young in these emancipated times I should

take full advantage of them. And emancipated is what we pretend to

be--although the word itself is somewhat outmoded; a healthy sign,

proving that we are no longer labelled. And if that does not mean

personal liberty, freedom from the old ridiculous restrictions that

were an insult to womanhood itself, what does it mean? It is a part of

our mission to make woman as free and independent and happy as men, and

without the slightest danger to the old high moral standards; for no

woman that has had it in her to go wrong ever waited for the permission

of her own sex. We are, in fact, we Club Women, the great sieve that

separates the wheat from the chaff; the chaff has no more use for us

than we have for it, and we are too wise in our own sex to waste any

time on it. The women that were born to be the playthings of men are in

a class apart--to be dealt with, to be sure, by Societies organized for

and experienced in that purpose; and we have not even considered them in

the stupendous effort we have made to secure the freedom of the higher

order of women from the old miserable social thralldoms. And what we

have accomplished is historic.

"I have seen extraordinary changes in my time. When I was young a woman

was an old maid at twenty-five. There was no appeal. To-day there are no

old maids. Twenty years ago, in that old exclusive set of San Francisco

led by Mrs. Yorba, Mrs. Montgomery, and for a little while by poor Mary

Belmont, it was almost unheard of for a girl of the better class to walk

alone on the street. If a man joined her the city fermented. Now, what

with the influx of all these new people, the social laws have been

modified to such an extent that my old friends must turn in their

graves; although, of course, and very properly, a certain amount of

chaperonage for young society girls is still demanded. But it is a mere

harness of flowers, worn as a sort of a joke for most of the people in

society to-day have flown upward on happy golden wings from strata

where as much was known of chaperons as the American newspapers know

about handling British titles. But, for my part, I find the whole change

a vast improvement. Nothing could be duller than a girl's life in my

time. And if society--the world of mere fashion--has broadened, how much

more should be expected of us, who are the vanguard of our sex? who have

set out to free women from every sort of senseless bondage they had

endured for centuries, and no more from the tyranny of the physically

stronger sex than through their own silliness and cowardice.

"We are struggling to enfranchise our sex. We would like to try our hand

at regulating the affairs of the nation. Here, in these smaller towns,

all over the country, we have proved a far greater power for

improvements of all sorts than men. Rosewater owes to us, and to us

alone, its beautifully paved and shaded streets--we have no difficulty

in remembering what a barren mud-hole it was--the trees that shade the

poor horses at the hitching-rails; the beautiful squares, the tropical

plants and trees, the improved sewerage system, the cleanliness of the

marsh border, everything in fact that has transformed Rosewater from a

mere set of roofs and walls into a delightfully habitable town.

Moreover, we have raised both the moral and the intellectual tone, for

although I at least have always discouraged too much interest in

people's private affairs, the higher interests, and the increased

intimacy among women, have done much to keep them out of mischief. Until

this card fever descended upon the town, it was generally regarded as

occupying a high place among communities of its size. Cards, however, I

regard as a passing madness; it merely means that even yet we have not

enough to do.

"And--so it seems!--in spite of all that we have accomplished, in spite

of our long and ofttimes disheartening struggle to lift ourselves above

the average female woman, we are as ready to tear reputations to pieces

as ever, to judge by mere appearances, to discount general character and

behavior, to forget our ideals and give unlicensed rein to the mean and

detestable qualities we still cherish in common with the mass of

unenlightened women. I do not assert that I have never heard gossip from

men; but it has always been from the men that spend their lives in Club

windows, never from men that had some better way of filling their time.

From my husband I have never heard a scurrilous word of any one, and he

has a temper of his own, too. Now, so far as I can make out, we have not

only been trying to usurp the time-honored prerogatives of men, but to

attain their highest standards. While I deprecate violence of statement,

I am inclined to agree with Mrs. Toffitt that a woman belonging to this

Club, a Club which stands high in the Club life of the State, should

have something better to do than to spend the night at her window spying

on her neighbors. If she cannot sleep she can improve her mind or sew

for the poor. If a man engaged in such nefarious night work and brazenly

admitted it, I will venture to say that his Club, or his Lodge, at all

events, would ask for his resignation. It would be quite in order with

our avowed principles that we reprimanded Mrs. Haight instead of Miss

Otis, but we will let the matter pass this time with a mere hint. One

point is, by-the-way, that the latter not being a member of the Club it

would be the height of impertinence to take her to task. But in any case

I personally refuse even to consider the question of anything being

otherwise with her than it should be. There is, no doubt, some wholly

commonplace explanation of Mr. Gwynne's passing through Rosewater on her

horse this morning. As for their constant companionship, what more

natural? They are closely related, and she has been a very necessary

sister to him. Nevertheless, I shall make it my unpleasant business to

tell her that we are still the same old females, still incapable of

conceiving of aught but one relationship between unmarried members of

opposite sexes, that our imaginations and our positive knowledge of life

are alike undeveloped. Then she can take a chaperon or not as she

pleases. She will always be welcome in my house; and as for my daughter,

she will only laugh at this tempest of her elders in a tea-pot. That is

all I have to say."

She finished amid much applause, some shamefaced, some hearty, but there

were a number of lowering brows. When adjournment was declared a few

moments later, she left at once, but the others remained to talk the

matter over. The ingrained love of finding our sister worse than

ourselves is not to be eradicated by a few years of Club life, and

although the majority decided that Mrs. Leslie was quite in the right,

several announced their intention to cut Isabel Otis. There was no

informal resolution taken to ignore the matter, and, on the whole, Mrs.

Haight went home with her crest up, and Mrs. Wheaton fasted for three

days.

XXIX

Mrs. Leslie was a brave woman, but when the judge suggested that it

would be better for him to talk the matter over with Gwynne, obtain his

explanation, and delicately hint the attitude of the town, she was

nothing loath to renounce her mission. "The dear child," the friends of

her mother all remembered, had once possessed a temper that only the

peculiar circumstances of her life had chastened, and they had an uneasy

suspicion that it still smouldered beneath the well-bred insolence with

which she had so far received much friendly advice.

By this time--mid-December was nigh--the judge and Gwynne had discussed

many subjects besides the law. Mrs. Leslie, whose hospitable instincts

were too deep to be blighted even by the servant question, had placed a

room at Gwynne's disposal to be used when it rained, or he talked so

late with the judge that the long ride home was not worth while. He

dined with them several times a week, and found both these simple

old-fashioned people delightful. And with Judge Leslie, alone of all his

neighbors, could he discuss the affairs of the great world, get away

from the politics and the small local interests that absorbed every

other man in Rosewater. Moreover, Judge Leslie was well acquainted with

his past career and often manifested a keen desire for details. Gwynne

was not sure that these lapses were good for him, but certainly it was

pleasant, stretched out there by the big fireplace in an old room full

of books, English for the most part, to talk of himself and his

achievements. Isabel rarely referred to his past, never encouraged him

to talk about it. His mother had become as silent as a mummy; old man

Colton might have lost his memory, and for Tom Colton British politics

had no existence.

But Judge Leslie understood and had much sympathy for his

pupil--possibly believed in the virtue of the safety-valve. Certainly

Gwynne invariably went to bed after these long talks content in mind and

body; and the next day he was far too busy to trot out his ego and sit

down with it. And his mind at least was happy in its new sense of

expansion and acquisition, its increasing and developing powers. His

studies had the further effect of moderating the purely personal

viewpoint of the United States that had tormented him, and of enabling

him to withdraw far enough to command glimpses of the New World as a

great abstraction. And his contacts with the strange medley of small

farmers and mechanics, with local politicians in back offices and

saloons, even his acquaintance with the San Franciscans that were

attempting to reclaim that bawdy borough, did not affect the universal

idea he had at last succeeded in focussing. He had cast out disgust and

disapproval as youthful and unphilosophical, resolved anew to play his

part in the history of the country, letting the unborn events of his

term of enforced quiescence determine what the part must be. He had not

yet reached the stage of enthusiasm, but he had at least mounted to that

of interest; and he had even caught himself wondering if, should a law

pass in Great Britain, reducing the House of Peers to an elective body,

or permitting peers of his grade to sit in the House of Commons, he

would return? There was little doubt that there was more good to be

accomplished in the new country.

His English great-great-grandfather had been historically active in the

reforms of 1832; a great-uncle had devoted his services to the passing

of the Reform Act of 1867; and a cousin to the Corrupt Practices Act of

1883. Reform was in his blood, and as, after all, the United States was

as much his own as Great Britain, he hoped in time to feel for it the

same passion of affection he had cherished for the country that had

given him fame and honors with both hands. And he knew that his other

hope of being of practical service to the United States in accordance

with his own ideal was no idle dream, for it was quite apparent from the

newspapers and reviews that the best men all over the country were awake

at last to the perils besetting the Republic, and that a bloodless

revolution was slowly making its way over the country. He had

unmitigated contempt for the revolutionist of the red shirt, insatiable

for the notoriety so easily obtained by appealing to the passions of men

a shade more ignorant than himself; no blood revolution was possible in

the United States during its present condition of prosperity. No country

can be universally roused to revolt with any weapons more deadly than

words until it has long felt the pinch of hunger in its vitals, and

watched millions starve while hundreds consumed the fat of the land. No

doubt there was grinding poverty in the crowded tenement districts of

the Eastern States, but those men were not the stuff of which

revolutionists were made, if only because they deliberately elected the

rigors of the town rather than supply the crying demand for labor and

servants throughout the country. It was only the idle that foregathered

and talked anarchism or even socialism; not those that cared to work.

Here in California there was practically no such thing as poverty, or if

there was, the pauper, if fairly able of body, should be set up in a

public pillory. With a scale of wages the highest in the world, a

corresponding cheapness of every necessity of life, with the bare

exception of coal, needed in excess during one short season of the

twelve-month, sun for eight unbroken months, and a soil so fertile that

in many places it yielded two crops a year, there would have been no

discontent had it not been for the rapacity of labor unions, and the

systematic agitations of men like Tom Colton. In every human heart there

is the germ of discontent, no matter what the conditions, but Gwynne

recognized the possibility of diverting this uneasy parasite from

imaginary personal grievances to the public good, to measures which

would benefit the mass, subtly elevating man's opinion of himself in the

process, and so taking the first long stride in the direction of general

political reform. It was only by making the masses see their own part in

the abominable political corruption that made "graft" universal, and

permitted the rapid concentration of the country's wealth into a few

insolent hands, that the decapitation of the swarms of professional

politicians could be accomplished. In no part of the United States could

such reforms be attempted with anything like the same prospect of

success, as in this State with its traditions of contempt of money for

its own sake, and its almost primeval sense of independence. It was true

that there was no superb indifference to money in the small towns, but

much of the old spirit lingered among those that lived close to the

soil; and Gwynne had never seen such uncalculating lavishness, such a

humorous contempt for economy as in San Francisco. He was himself

generous by instinct and habit, but this gay reckless openhandedness,

whether a man had anything to spend or not, had already stirred some

deeper instinct still, possibly his pioneer, perhaps his Spanish, and he

had never enjoyed anything more in his life than certain nights in San

Francisco, when he had sallied forth with his pockets full of gold and

returned to Russian Hill on foot for want of a five-cent piece to pay

his car-fare. He had himself too well in hand ever to give permanent

rein to any such latent propensities, and he had no intention of

impoverishing himself, but the fact that the genius of the city was in

his blood warmed it to the strange, fascinating, wicked, friendly,

young-old city on the rim of the Pacific.

As it happened, he was not in the humor for reading on the morning after

the meeting of the female clans, nor were there any clients in the outer

office, and he uttered some of his impressions aloud to the judge who

was sitting restlessly by the window, ostensibly watching Main Street.

Gwynne had wondered at the old gentleman's sudden idleness, but fell

easily into conversation this languid morning that was more like spring

than belated winter.

"I can understand the fascination of San Francisco for anybody," said

the uneasy judge. "I wonder--" with a sudden inspiration, "if it

wouldn't be better for you to go into the law-office of a friend of mine

down there for a while. I mean--" in response to Gwynne's look of

astonishment, "of course I should hate to lose you--quite as much as I

hated to lose my own son, and yours is the only society in which I have

found any positive refreshment for years. But--well! in fact it would

be as well for you to leave Rosewater for a while--until all this talk

has died out."

"What talk?"

The judge felt what courage was left in him oozing under Gwynne's icy

stare.

"Oh Lord! It's just this, Gwynne--just fancy I am really your father.

There are a lot of infernal old hens in this town--where don't they

roost, anyway?--and they have been exercising themselves over your going

out to Isabel's so much, especially at night. They've got the idea into

their empty heads that Isabel has come back from Europe, where she lived

by herself, with all sorts of free-and-easy notions. Perhaps the real

truth is that they distrust any girl as handsome as that who won't

marry. The talk didn't amount to much until yesterday morning--"

"Ah!" Gwynne stood up and took his hat from the little private rack.

"Suppose you ask Mrs. Leslie to tell the hens that I have spent a great

many futile evening hours, the only ones I have at my private disposal,

trying to induce Miss Otis to marry me, and that yesterday evening,

after the fourth or fifth refusal, I borrowed her horse, having walked

out, and rode half-way to San Francisco to steady my nerves. Love and

the law combined are somewhat of a load to carry. I will go out now and

try my luck again. Perhaps this talk will influence her a bit. In fact I

promise that it shall."

XXX

Gwynne found Isabel just stepping out of her launch, after a business

morning in Rosewater, and was hospitably invited to dismount and remain

for luncheon.

"Would you mind asking your Jap to make us some sandwiches and come with

me up to my mountain shanty?" he asked. "I have rather a headache and

want a long ride. Besides, it is high time I went. I should look over

the roads, which they tell me are very bad after the heavy rains. I want

to go into camp there in the early spring--have invited Hofer and one or

two others for salmon-fishing. I have now sent three letters to the

tenant, one Clink, by teamsters, and he has never replied. For all I

know he may have burned the house down and decamped. So, altogether,

this seems to me the time to go, and it would be very jolly to have you

with me."

"I'd like nothing better," said Isabel, delightedly, "after talking eggs

and chickens all morning. And I haven't been up to Mountain House for

years. It used to belong to Uncle Hiram, you know. He always fished

there in the spring, and took me with him. Then Mr. Colton bought it

in--I won't be ten minutes."

"Now I know why you wear that hideous divided habit and ride astride,"

said Gwynne as they started. "I have been half-way up the mountain once

or twice, to say nothing of the Marin hills, and I have never seen such

roads. They are a disgrace to the State. Why on earth doesn't the

legislature take them in hand?"

"Now _I_ know _you_ are in a bad humor," said Isabel, laughing. "You

grumbled at everything when you first came to California, and now that

you have become philosophical like the rest of us, you only anathematize

when you are put out. I saw something was wrong the moment you arrived.

What is it?"

"I'll tell you later. This is our only chance for a sharp trot."

It was quite two miles to the ascending road at the foot of the mountain

range that divided the great valley. It rose gently for a time then

suddenly became steep. Lumpy and slanting, already dangerously narrow in

many places, for there had been a few days of hard rain, it led along

the edge of cannons and chasms, creeks and little valleys as round as

a bowl. Here and there was a farmhouse or a country home on a slope, set

in the midst of fields just turning green. The first stretch of

road--cut roughly in the mountain-side and then left to take care of

itself--was on county property, but after an hour's climb along the

flank of the mountain they reached the part of the great mass included

in Lumalitas, where the road, although still public, had been mended now

and again by tenants that had used the camp in the fishing season.

"It is even worse than I thought," grumbled Gwynne. "I wonder if Tom

Colton could be induced to put in a bill at the next legislature. It

would be a good opportunity for him to make a promise with some hope of

fulfilment."

"The trouble is the farmers don't care," said Isabel, shrugging her

shoulders. "There are only a few of them in the mountains and they have

jogged up and down these bad roads so many years that they accept them

as a matter of course. I don't know that I mind this, myself. It

certainly is more picturesque than if it had become popular with

automobilists of much influence in legislative councils."

"At present you have to ride with your eyes on the road to make sure it

is there."

"We can take turns, and it certainly is beautiful."

"Oh, beautiful!"

But when the road improved for quite half a mile, he too gave himself up

to the sensation of being lost in the heart of a mountain. The valley

was far behind them and out of sight. There were groves of ancient oaks

in the hollows, turbulent streams foaming over masses of rocks that had

fallen from the cliffs above. Sometimes they looked down a thousand

sheer feet into a bit of wilderness as unbroken as if on each side of

the range man had not snatched the fertile lands from the savage a

century before.

The air grew colder and Isabel put on her covert coat. But it was a

clear sparkling day, and when they reached the summit they could see San

Francisco, a smoky mirage forty miles to the south, the ferry-boats

crawling like beetles across the bay, the surf of the ocean on the rocks

beyond the Golden Gate, a vast sweep of gray ocean; and the bulk of

Tamalpais, that from this high point looked as if it had heaved itself

free of the mass of mountains and forests about it. Two thousand feet

below, their own valley, with its marsh and fertile ranches, looked like

a dark ribbon between the hills, Rosewater like a toy village.

They trotted their horses for a few moments on the level and then rode

down into the little valley where an unsuccessful farmer of solitary

habit had some time since rented the few acres of land surrounding

Mountain House, with the understanding that the best rooms were to be at

the disposal of the lord of Lumalitas during the fishing and hunting

seasons. The log-house, or "camp," was very solid and had been built by

the first James Otis, who was a mighty hunter; and the salmon-fishing in

the creek, at present containing but a few feet of water, was so fine

that hardly a spring had passed without a visit from the tenants of

Lumalitas, who were constrained by the terms of the lease to keep the

house in repair. Of late this had been the duty of the sub-lessee, and

as no teams passed his isolated dwelling, and as he had not seen fit to

answer his landlord's communications, even verbally, by the boy from one

of the lower ranches who had carried up the missives, all Gwynne knew

was that Mr. Clink was alive, and that the ranch was free of winter

debris.

They found the gentleman sitting on a stump. He had a hand on either

knee, and his small watery unblinking eyes were fixed on space. A beard,

narrow and grizzled and stained, rested on his lean front, or stirred

gently in the breeze. He neither rose, nor otherwise noticed the

approach of his visitors.

Gwynne called, shouted, approached the verge of profanity, but he might

as well have addressed the silent forest.

Isabel elevated her nose. "To use the vernacular, he is on a long, slow,

melancholy jag. I will go in and see how he keeps the house. It needs an

airing at least. Every window is closed and probably has been all

winter."

She remained in-doors half an hour, putting things to rights with many

mysterious touches known only to her sex. When she returned to Gwynne

she found him sunning himself on the porch with his back to Mr. Clink,

who stolidly regarded an old stump of geranium.

"It is clean enough," she said. "But when you come, bring new

blankets--or send them, and your provisions--the day before you bring

your guests. I will come up with them and see that everything is in

order. I might also turn the hose on Clink, if he has chosen that

occasion to drench himself inside. At all events bring a cook--you can

have Chuma; these people never can cook anything but fried meat and

potatoes."

Drifted leaves lay on the porch a foot deep. Isabel found a broom and

swept vigorously, snubbing Gwynne's offer to do it himself. He watched

her, crossly reflecting that she was never so unattractive as in that

dust-colored divided habit, and wishing that he had waited for the

evening hour; even if infrequently seductive, she was always lovely in a

becoming gown.

Finally, her labors over, she dusted an aged rocking-chair and sat down,

fanning herself with her hat. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes

sparkling, but she turned to look at the beautiful creek that had torn

its way through the forest, and Gwynne suddenly felt that he hated her

profile. During the last few weeks he had lost that sense of a constant

and secret contest of wills, perhaps because his own had proved the

stronger in the final engagement; perhaps, who knew? because she

possessed all the infernal subtlety of the Spaniard. But her profile

suggested relentless power, and he still had a secret hankering for the

old-fashioned submissive female, liberal and indulgent to the sex as he

was. He had reflected that he had met so many handsome finely developed

girls, with a sufficiency of animated brightness, but well within the

type, during the past few weeks, that it was rather odd he had not been

captured; particularly as several of the most ripping would add

materially to his fortunes. But he had come to the conclusion sometime

since, when he hardly knew, that he would prefer to remain unmarried,

and enjoy the intimate companionship of a congenial and interesting

creature like Isabel, whom he never quite understood. He cursed the

stale old conventions that interfered with his desires.

Isabel turned suddenly and smiled. "How fierce you look!" she said.

"What is the matter?"

"Everything. Some one, Mrs. Haight, I suppose, saw me riding home on

your horse at three o'clock yesterday morning, and the whole town is by

the ears. Judge Leslie undertook to break the news to me, and I told him

I had gone out to propose, and then ridden about the country to calm my

raging fires. I feel that I owe it to you to propose in good earnest,

and such as I am you are welcome to me."

"I never heard such a graceful proposal. I wouldn't marry you if

Rosewater stood on its head."

"I was rather brutal about it, and I must honestly confess that I'm not

particularly keen on marrying you, but I think we'll have to marry, or

be deuced uncomfortable--"

"Oh, nothing to what we should be if married. And Rosewater to me is a

mere market for chickens and eggs. The only punishment they could

inflict on me would be to burn down the hatcheries. I hate to bother

with incubators."

Gwynne stood up and knocked the ashes out of his pipe. "We must be

serious," he said. "They are really malignant about it. I have felt it

in the air for some time. Every time I pass that she-devil, Mrs. Haight,

on Main Street, her eyes contract with a sort of malicious warning.

'Just you wait!' is the way she would phrase it. And I always _feel_ her

at her window when I ride home late. No woman of your age and beauty can

defy public opinion alone. The world--and scandal spreads like a plague;

San Francisco is only forty miles from Rosewater--the world can hurt you

in a thousand ways, ruin your life. I really am only too willing to

protect you, and I hope that you will marry me. I am sure we should get

along--after a bit."

"That was better. But I will not be driven into matrimony by gossip, or

even scandal. That is no part of my scheme of life. And I know Rosewater

better than you do. Mrs. Leslie, Anabel, Mrs. Colton, many of the most

powerful, would never believe a word against me."

"Not at first. But malicious tongues will wear the gloss from the

best-befriended reputation in time. The kindest natures are

conventional; and susceptible to all that take, or seem to take, a place

in the ranks of established facts."

"I won't do it," said Isabel, stubbornly; and as she turned her profile

to him he almost swore aloud. "I shall conquer, or prove the whole

modern game of woman a sham, a fool's paradise. I told you that I had

set myself to drag strength out of the unknown forces. Well, I propose

to use it now. And in your behalf as much as mine."

"I can take care of myself.... I even think I could face the prospect of

becoming your husband with a reasonable amount of equanimity." She was

looking straight at him again, her face deeply flushed, her eyes

shining. "It never occurred to me before, but I believe that if you

would permit yourself to develop, you might become the most fascinating

woman in the world. And if you did, I swear that you should be happy."

"I am happy, and in my own way. I get something out of every moment. Do

you think I am going to run the risk of losing all that for anything so

dubious as this old game of sex?"

"Very good game if it is played properly. I have a mind to teach you."

"Well, you will not!"

"I think I shall. It is either marry you or leave California."

"That is a threat unworthy of you."

"No threat at all. If you will not permit me to protect you in one way I

must in another. I leave and throw everything over with great eclat. You

have discarded me and I cannot stand the proximity."

"They might merely think that you were running away from me."

"I shall take good care they think what I choose. Women are more

romantic and sentimental than malignant, the bulk. All they want is a

starter."

"But you need not leave California. You can move to San Francisco."

"Now you are talking like a child. I shall return to England. As to my

American career, my only chance lies here. I hate the rest of the

country, and the best material is in California, anyhow. Yesterday I

received a letter from my solicitor, enclosing one from Jimmy, who

informed me that I was on every tongue, that the public curiosity was

piqued, that the newspapers were demanding that I should return and

accept my responsibilities, and that without doubt a place would be made

for me in the new Liberal Cabinet. It is a propitious moment for

return. If there is a time when a Liberal peer can make any running it

is when his party is in power."

There was a pause for several moments. Gwynne filled and lit another

pipe. Isabel stared at a ring she twisted about her finger, Mr. Clink at

the geranium stump. The low dull roar in the forest tops was unceasing,

but for other sound of life they might have swung off into space.

Finally Isabel spoke. "I won't marry you," she said. "But all ends will

be served if we announce an engagement. We can state that we think it

best not to marry until your law studies are concluded. It can be

postponed once or twice on other pretexts, then fall through. By that

time gossip will be forgotten, people will have lost interest in us. In

San Francisco they are not likely to hear of this at all, or if they do

it will not matter, and if you fall in love with any of the _cotillon_

beauties I will release you in due form and give you my blessing."

"I have not the least intention of undertaking life with a _cotillon_

beauty. Your compromise will do for the present, but you will understand

that my proposal is a bona fide one, should you arrive at a more

rational frame of mind."

"I sha'n't fall a victim to any irrational state of mind. I won't marry.

Why, even people that like me too much interfere with my sense of

liberty."

Gwynne laughed. "We had better be starting," he said.

XXXI

They parted at the foot of the mountain, and as Isabel approached her

own house she saw Anabel Colton's trap tied to the garden gate. She set

her teeth and slackened the pace of her horse, but Anabel and Miss

Boutts had seen her, and leaned over the edge of the veranda, calling to

her impatiently. She gave her horse a cut with the whip and rode rapidly

to the stable. When she finally reached the veranda she greeted her

friends courteously enough, and then, as she noted their expression of

defiant loyalty, remarked, sweetly:

"Of course you have been expecting to hear that I am engaged to Mr.

Gwynne, but I only really made up my mind to-day."

"Isabel!" Both fell on her neck, Dolly with tears, and she responded

with what enthusiasm was in her, and gently deposited them into two of

the veranda chairs. With a very fair simulation of the engaged girl she

answered their rapid fire of questions, and even informed Anabel that

she would prefer silver to china when the day for presents arrived, and

promised that she should come to the rehearsal of the ceremony, since,

unfortunately, the young matron's own happy state debarred her from

officiating at the altar. But she was averse from lying, even by

implication, and was glad to see them go. After they had turned for the

last time to blow her a kiss, she went within, slammed all the doors on

the lower floor, stamped her feet, and hurled a book across the room.

Finally she swore. After that she felt better and sat down to read a

letter from Mrs. Hofer that awaited her.

* * * * *

"... I can't do anything with your Lady Victoria" [the lively young

matron ran on after a few preliminary enthusiasms]. "She went everywhere

at first, but just sat round looking like a battered statue out of the

Vatican with some concession in the way of clothes--not so much.

Literally she made no effort whatever, and, you know, _American men

won't stand that_. Perhaps that's the reason she suddenly called off and

refused to go anywhere. But what can she expect? American women may talk

too much, but at any rate they are the sort American men know like a

book, and our knights have no use for inanimate beauties a good many

years younger than my Lady Victoria.

"Now she appears to do nothing but walk--stalk rather. She goes over

these hills as if she had on seven-league boots. One would think she was

possessed by the furies; or perhaps she is afraid of getting fat.

"I am simply dying to see you again. If you don't mind--I like you

better than any one I ever met. You combine everything, and although you

make me feel as fresh as paint and as Irish as Paddy Murphy's pig, still

you always put me in a better humor with myself than ever. How do you do

it? You suggest all sorts of things that I can't define at all. Comes of

living alone and making a success of it, I suppose, getting ahead of

mere femininity and all the pettinesses of life. That's flying rather

high for me, so I'd better come down. Please _make_ Mr. Gwynne come to

my party. I intend that party to be the greatest thing ever given in

California--since the old Monte Cristo Ralston days, anyhow: and have

all sorts of surprises that I won't tell even you. The ballroom is quite

finished and is a perfect success. It is _too_ fine to think that you

will make your formal debut in it. Everybody is coming. Mr. Gwynne

simply must. I know of about a dozen girls who would have given him the

_cotillon_ if he had asked them, and even now, when they are all

engaged, I know of at least two who would not hesitate to throw their

men over. We all like him tremendously, the men as well as the women.

Mr. Hofer and I--do you know, we have just a dark suspicion--where _is_

Elton Gwynne, anyway? That would be too good to be true. He could own

the town. We know an _individual_ when we see one, and wouldn't we

appreciate the compliment! We'd like him all the better for having

accepted him when he was plain John Gwynne, and we'd like ourselves

better still. You know how we make up our own minds out here. Look at

the famous actors and singers we've rejected, and the reputations we've

made. Not like New York, that never expresses an opinion until a sort of

consensus has sweated up to the surface. I hate New York. Can't you come

down and pay me a visit of a week? I should love it. Call me up on the

telephone."

* * * * *

Isabel pondered over this missive for a few moments and then reread

parts of a long letter she had received the day before from Flora

Thangue.

* * * * *

"... I almost wish Jack would return, although at first I approved of

his going. His case seemed so desperate. But since the elections there

has been so much talk of him, so many prophecies as to what he will do

when he returns--they believe him to be travelling in South America--so

much seems to be expected of him, especially now that the Liberals are

in, and there is so much dissatisfaction with the Cabinet--I really

believe he would be the one to keep the party in power and that his

becoming prime-minister would be a question of only a few years. Not

such a bad outlook! But I don't care to say all this to Jack--or even to

Vicky. You are responsible for the present state of affairs, and I am

sure you realize what a tremendous responsibility it is. Besides, you

know every side of the question over there as I do not. Think it over,

dear Isabel.... Julia Kaye, I happen to know, has been trying to get his

address. So far, she has not landed another big fish, and no doubt

thinks that Jack's disgust and enthusiasm have both worn themselves out

by this time. Don't send him back, but bring him. Of course he has

fallen in love with you. Besides, you could accomplish any mortal thing

you put your will to. Do, please, think it all over. A few years' delay,

and he might return and find it too late. The public memory is short.

There are rivals. The one he had most to fear from has an

Under-secretaryship, and lets no one forget him. There will be deep

resentment at too long an absence, especially if he should become an

American citizen meanwhile. They would never forgive that.

"... About Vicky. I wish I could have gone with her, but she did not

feel that she could afford to take me, and Vicky's spasms of economy are

not to be discouraged. But, thank heaven, she has you and Jack. Perhaps

all she really needed was a change: she was always an individual, but

she got to be distinctly peculiar after you left--nerves, I suppose:

only instead of being merely irritable like other women she sealed

herself up like a Mahatma preparing for astral flight. I only wish she

was one. Women of her class no longer take to religion, when the fires

are dead, but they certainly need a substitute, and I should think

theosophy would be as good as any. It is such a delightful mixture of

vagueness and cock-sureness, and even more picturesque than Romanism. It

is time for me to follow the fashion and write a book, and I think I'll

paint the mysterious delights of India as a late autumn resort. I am so

sick of all these public mausoleums for youth! It would be a positive

relief to think of all our erstwhile beauties stretched out in some

frescoed cave with their ears and eyes and noses sealed up with wax,

while their ever-youthful spirits sallied forth for new conquests on the

astral plane. But Vicky never 'made up': one must say that much for her.

Only this terrible fetish of youth! Heavens! the tragedies my

sympathetic soul has endeavored to see as tragedies only. Not that

growing old seems to be the worst of it. The underlying tragedy is that

they can't care enough, and this they take to be the real end of youth,

and patter up and down the old worn-out track of device, trying to fool

themselves as well as others. But Vicky, as I said, is an individual: a

touch or two more and she might have been a genius. She is like the mass

of women in many things, heaven knows, but her divergences are the more

startling; and the point of divergence lies down in the roots of her

pride. She suddenly felt the complete loss, the final departure of

youth, and she accepted it like a fallen goddess, and refused even the

sudden and startling renewal of Sir Cadge Vanneck's devotions. She had

nothing left to give him, and although her pride may have urged her to

show the world that she still could capture a man like that, I think he

really bored her to death, and she was satisfied to parade him for a

time and then publicly throw him over. And she once loved him, I am

certain of it. That is tragedy, if you like. I fancy she has desperate

moments, but she will pull through in her own way. Don't delude yourself

with the notion that she is sitting down in sackcloth and ashes with her

past! Those women don't repent, for they never admit that the laws of

common mortals apply to them. What is their royal pleasure to do they

do, and when it is over a square inch of their memory might have gone

with it. To mull themselves, commit some flagrant error that lands them

in the divorce court, or high and dry in the outskirts--that is another

matter. They repent then, _sans doute_; and get no mercy. We overlook

everything at this apex of civilization but stupidity. We respect the

high-handed but not the light-headed. That is one reason those

long-winded novels of sin and repentance--generally over one slip and

when the man has wearied--leave us cold. We know too much. It seems such

a lot of fuss about so little. If some of these good, painstaking,

and--let us whisper it--bourgeoise novelists had seen one-tenth of the

pagan disregard for all they cherish most highly, that I have seen, and

if they could only be made to comprehend--which they never could--how

absolutely admirable these same women are in many other respects--such

capacity for deep undying friendship, such uncalculating loyalty, such

racial possibilities of heroism--well, they would do a good deal harder

thinking than they have had to do yet, if they attempted to readjust

their traditions to the actual facts of life. But the old traditions get

back at our women all the same, although they don't suspect it. They pay

the penalty in that late--sometimes not so late--intolerable maddening

ennui. Heavens! how many women I have heard wish they were dead. Thank

God I am a virgin!

"Of course, dear Isabel, I would not write like this about Vicky to any

one on earth but yourself. But she is on your hands, so to speak, and I

feel you should have some sort of comprehension of her. To understand

her fully is impossible. She is unhappy, that is the main thing--what

with all I have intimated, and the great change in her fortunes--I can

hardly imagine Vicky without Capheaton and the reflected glory of

'Elton Gwynne'; and, no doubt, she finds California an exile and has

realized by this time that she can be of little use to Jack. Better make

a fortune for her in your wonderful American way and bring them both

home."

XXXII

Isabel called up Mrs. Hofer on the telephone, and after being switched

off and on half a dozen times, and crossed wires and all the other

mishaps peculiar to the California telephone service had reduced both to

a state of furious indifference, Mrs. Hofer accepted Miss Otis's

inability to go down to San Francisco until the day of the party, and

her promise to pay the visit during Christmas week, with equal

philosophy.

The party was to be on the night of the 24th, and Isabel did not see

Gwynne again until the evening of the same day. Judge Leslie went to

Santa Barbara to spend the holidays with his son, and his pupil to

Burlingame and Menlo Park for a week. After the polo and various other

sports at the former resort, with a set that bore an outline resemblance

to the leisure class of his own country, the gay life at the Club and

the multitude of pretty girls always flitting amid compact masses of

flowers, he found the now unfashionable borough of Menlo Park somewhat

dull; although he had good snipe-shooting on the marsh with his host,

Mr. Trennahan. The whole valley, however, had a peculiar charm for him;

when riding alone past the fields of ancient oaks with the great

mountains on either side, almost a sense of possession. For all this

magnificent and richly varied sweep of land, now cut up into a few large

estates and an infinite number of small ones, into towns, and villages,

hamlets, and even cities, had once been the Rancho El Pilar, and the

property of his Mexican ancestor, Don Jose Argueello. He knew that in

those old days it must have looked like a vast English park, and he felt

some resentment that his ancestors had not had the wit to hold fast to

it until his time came to inherit.

Mrs. Trennahan's father, Don Roberto Yorba, had bought a square mile

from one of the Argueello heirs, and a few rich men of his time had

followed his example; and slept in their country-houses during six

months of the year while their women yawned the days away, deriving

their principal solace in contemplation of their unchallenged

exclusiveness. Stray members of those old families were left, and were,

if anything, more exclusive than their parents, disdaining the

light-hearted people of Burlingame, unburdened with traditions.

This was still the set that never even powdered, faithful to the

ancient code that it was not respectable, and who spent the greater

part of the year in the country, finding their pleasures in the

climate--soporific--excellent old Chinese or Spanish cooks, and in

reminiscences of the time when the fine estates had not been cut up into

little suburban homesteads for heaven only knew whom.

Mrs. Trennahan had sold her father's place, and bought a superb estate

in the foothills, where she entertained in the simple fashion of the

Eighties. Trennahan still took the haughty spirit of his chosen borough

with all his old humor, but he liked no place so well, even in

California. A New-Yorker is always a New-Yorker, however long he may

live in California, but he becomes more and more attached to the

independent life, the even climate, above all to the cooking; and

Trennahan was no exception. He had found Magdalena the most comfortable

of companions, she had presented him with two fine boys--who were

preparing for college, at present--and a lovely daughter; and he was, in

a leisurely way, collecting earthquake data, for future publication, and

amused himself with a seismograph; which worried Magdalena, who thought

the instrument much too intimate with earthquakes to be a safe piece of

household furniture. Gwynne liked them both as well as any people he had

met in California, and engaged the beautiful Inez--who would seem to

have embodied all her mother's old passionate longing for physical

loveliness--to dance several times with him at the great ball which was

to be the medium of her introduction to society.

"I am still old-fashioned," Mrs. Trennahan confided to Gwynne, with a

sigh. "I never have liked new people and I never shall; Mr. Trennahan

has not laughed it out of me. But what will you? They are seven-eighths

strong in San Francisco, I have a daughter who naturally demands the

rights of her youth--so I make the best of a bad bargain. But I

protest."