When Gwynne arrived at the house on Russian Hill late in the evening it

occurred to him to tap on Isabel's door and tell her that he had obeyed

her orders, recalled all the traditions down in their common ancestor's

old domain, and "got the feel" of the place. He had never crossed the

threshold of this room although he had brushed his hair many times in

the spotless bower by the marsh, and he was surprised, after a moment's

colloquy through the panels, by an invitation to enter. He was still

more surprised to find Isabel sitting before her dressing-table in full

regalia, although they were not to start for the party until eleven

o'clock. She wore the white tulle gown with the dark-blue lilies in

which she had created a sensation at Arcot, and looked more radiant than

he had ever seen her. Her eyes were like stars, her cheeks were pink;

her red lips were parted, the upper trembling with excitement.

"Come! Look!" she cried. "See what your mother has given me. I had to

dress at once to see the whole effect."

She lifted and fingered rapturously a row of splendid pearls that lay on

her neck.

"Did you ever see anything so beautiful? All my life I have wanted a

string of pearls--real pearls that you read about, although I thought

myself fortunate to have that old string of Baha California pearls, and

never expected anything better. At first I wouldn't take them, but

Cousin Victoria said they were her mother's, a gift from _her_ father

when she married, so that I ought to inherit them, anyhow; and might as

well have them while I was young. She vowed she should never wear them

again, as her skin was no longer white enough for pearls. I can't

believe it!"

Gwynne looked at her curiously. "I had no idea you cared for those

things. I could have given you pearls. Your pose has always been to

scorn the common weaknesses of your sex."

"You are just a dense man! I have all my sex's love of personal

adornment, if you like to call that a weakness. Do you suppose I admire

myself in that riding-habit or those overalls? Don't I always dress for

supper even when alone? Have I not a lot of lovely gowns? Look at this

one! I am so glad I never wore it again until to-night. As for jewels, I

adore them, and when I am a millionaire I shall have little shovels full

like those you see in jewellers' windows, just to handle; and the most

lovely combinations to wear. But I don't ruin my complexion pining for

what I can't have--or have lost. Of course poor mamma had beautiful

jewels, but they went the way of all things."

Gwynne looked at his watch. "I shall get a bite in town," he said. "The

shops will be open till midnight. Hofer will endorse a check for me; I

have sold three farms in the past week and have a pot of money in the

bank. There is something else I want you to wear to-night--"

"I won't take jewels from you--"

"You are not only my fiancee but my cousin--"

"Nonsense!"

"I shall be back in about two hours. Mind you are sitting just there

when I arrive."

As he went swiftly out and closed the door, she shrugged her shoulders,

and her eyes danced with anticipation. After all, she could return his

present when the farce was over, and she was in a mood to have the world

poured into her lap.

She dined alone with her Puritan and Spanish ancestors, and when the

brief meal was over, went up and exhibited herself to Lady Victoria, who

was in a state of silent fury at being the victim of a headache. She

complimented Isabel upon her appearance, however, and added:

"I hope this pretended engagement will end in reality. You are of our

blood. I recognize it more and more. I am thankful he escaped Julia

Kaye. You are--could be--all I am afraid I compelled myself to believe

she was."

"Do you want him to go back to England?" asked Isabel. "I had a letter

from Flora the other day, and she thinks it is my mission to restore him

to his country."

"I don't care. What difference does it make? I want him to be happy, and

he can have a career anywhere. In your case beauty is not a curse, and I

should be glad to see you concentrate your gifts where you can find and

give real happiness. Now, enjoy yourself like a girl to-night and don't

bother about Jack or any one else--certainly not about me," as Isabel

stood looking down upon her with a puckered brow.

Lady Victoria, in a negligee of salmon pink under a red light, and

reclining on her divan with a box of cigarettes beside her, and a French

novel in her hand, looked little less handsome than when she had

captivated Isabel's girlish fancy a year ago. It was only the utter

weariness of the eyes, and a subtle hardening of the whole mask of the

always immobile face, that betrayed the sudden rupture with a long

complacent youth. But she looked at Isabel's glorious youth without a

pang of envy in her cynical, if not yet philosophical, soul, and said

again, with emphasis:

"Marry him. You can do it. Any woman can marry any man she wants. That

is the reason we are never really happy. We never love men, as we

imagine that we could love. We have fevers for them that last a few

weeks, and then we become maternal and endure them. We might love a

demi-god, never man as we know him. Perhaps in some other world--who

knows?"

Isabel pricked up her ears. Was Lady Victoria meditating the

consolations of the Church--or of Flora's more modern substitute? What a

solution! But she dared not ask. She was still a little afraid of her

complicated relative. She begged her not to read too late, and went out,

promising to conciliate the offended Mrs. Hofer.

As she walked down the hall she stooped absently and picked up a scrap

of paper, hardly aware that she held it in her hand until she sat down

once more before her mirror. Then she glanced at it. To her surprise it

was an advertisement of a prize-fight, cut from a newspaper; and on the

margin an illiterate hand had scrawled, "_Nine o'clock sharp._" She

wondered which of the servants was indulging in the distractions of the

ring. All except Lady Victoria's maid were Japs. Could the Frenchwoman

have found a lover who had introduced her to the forbidden pleasures of

the town? Obviously it was not Gwynne's for the date was two days old,

and he had been in Menlo Park at the time. But she had more interesting

things to ponder over. Being a good housekeeper, she folded the scrap

and hid it under one of the little silver trays, intending to give it in

the morning to Lady Victoria, who was the temporary mistress of the

mansion. Then she fell to counting her pearls, wound them twice about

her throat, decided that she preferred the single long ellipse falling

among the blue flowers on her bosom, marvelled, in an abandon of

femininity, at the dazzling whiteness of her skin. She was beautiful, no

doubt of that; it might be as Lady Victoria and Flora Thangue asserted,

that any future she chose was hers to command; and, as the latter had

intimated, to be an English peeress, with her husband at the head of the

state, was no mean destiny. To-night, her almost fanatical love of

California was dormant. She felt wholly personal. Whatever the future,

she wanted to be the most admired girl at this party to-night, to

dominate its long-heralded splendors as a great soprano rises high and

triumphant above the orchestral thunders of a Wagner opera. Old

instincts were stirring subtly. She had the rest of her life for great

ideals. To-night she would be an old-time belle: as Concha Argueello had

been just a century ago, as Guadalupe Hathaway, Mrs. Hunt McLane, Nina

Randolph, and "The Three Macs," had been in the city's youth; as Helena

Belmont had been but twenty years before. She recalled the oft-told

story of the night of Mrs. Yorba's great ball, in the house next to the

one which was to be the theatre of her own debut, when Magdalena Yorba,

Tiny Montgomery, Ila Brannan, and the wonderful Helena had been

introduced to San Francisco, and the most distracting belle the town had

ever known had turned the heads of fifty men. It was far easier to be a

belle in that simpler time than to-day, when the San Franciscan vied

with the New-Yorker in the magnificence of furnishing and attire, and a

mere million was no longer a fortune. And the city more than maintained

its old standard of beauty, for its population had nearly doubled; the

handsome girls of the upper class had learned the art of dress, and even

among the shop-girls there was a surfeit of pretty faces and fine busts.

As to the demi-monde it was the pick of America, for obvious reason.

But Isabel was an ardent dreamer, and as she sat in her silent old home,

high above the city's unresting life, she imagined herself into a

blissful picture where she should realize to the full all the desires

dear to the heart of a girl. It was true that she had created a _furore_

that night at Arcot, but her triumph had been extinguished by fright and

the tragedies that came in its train. And no triumph abroad ever quite

equals the conquest of your own territory. Isabel concluded that if it

were a matter of a single season, she would rather reign in San

Francisco than in London--but her dreams were cut short by Gwynne's

rapid step on the plank walk, and a moment later he was tapping on her

door.

She looked up at him with undisguised expectancy.

"I am going to enjoy it," she said. "I shall accept it. I don't care!"

"I should hope so, after all the trouble I have had." He sat down in a

low chair beside the dressing-table and facing her. "Hofer had been

turned out of the house and had taken refuge at the Mission. I took an

automobile and rushed out there, only to find that he and his friends

had concluded to come in and dine at one of the restaurants. Definite,

but I know their tastes pretty well, and finally tracked them down. By

that time I was starved, but when the dinner was over Hofer went with me

himself to the jeweller's--"

"What is it?" asked Isabel, impatiently, her eyes on a long box Gwynne

had taken from his pocket.

But Gwynne seldom had an opportunity to tease her. He drew his finger

along the heavy coil of hair that rose from the very nape of her neck

and pushed forward a soft little mass on to the brow. "I have always

wanted to see something here," he said. "I remember once seeing a lovely

print of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, who wore her hair somewhat as

you do--"

"Not a bit of it. Her hair was generally half-way down her back--"

"Well the effect was the same--and in this print she had a row of

daisies or stars; I never could remember which--"

"You haven't brought me daisies?" said Isabel, in disgust.

Gwynne pressed the little gilt nob, and as the lid flew up Isabel cried

out, with delight.

"You shouldn't! But I don't care! I said I wouldn't. I never expected

anything so gorgeous, though--"

She caught the box from his hand and fastened the diamond stars in the

line he had indicated. There were five, graduated in size, and they gave

her beauty its final touch of poetry and light. Isabel gazed at her

dazzling reflection with parted lips and dancing eyes, then turned

impulsively, flung her arms about Gwynne's neck, and kissed him. He

pushed her away roughly.

"Don't do that again!" he said. "I am not your brother, nor one of your

girl friends. Can I look about? I have always had a curiosity to see

this room. I had an idea that it was different from the one at the

ranch."

"You can look at what you like," said Isabel, indifferently. "I shall

look at my stars. _Madre de Dios!_ as our Spanish ancestors would have

said. _Ay yi! Valgame Dios! Dios de mi alma! Dios de mi vida!_ I never

was so happy in my life."

Gwynne walked about the large old-fashioned room with its bow-window,

and alcove for the bed. He had half expected that the room he had so

often passed with reluctant steps would be furnished in blue or pink,

but it was as red as that of the traditional queen. Isabel had brought

up all the old crimson damask curtains that had been fashionable in her

grandmother's time, and covered the windows and walls of her bedroom,

even the head of the mahogany four-poster in which her mother and

herself had been born. The carpet was new, but a dull crimson, like the

faded hangings, and the dressing-table with its quantity of chased

silver--one of the few inheritances she had managed to retain--was the

only spot of light in the rather sombre room: it was all white muslin

and bright crimson silk. There was an old-fashioned settle against the

wall and three stiff chairs. Gwynne liked the room, and had a vague

feeling that he knew Isabel a little better. Certainly it expressed a

side of her of which he had caught but an occasional glimpse.

He pulled the curtains apart and shading his eyes from the light of the

room looked down towards the city. It had vanished under a sea of white

fog that broke against the ledge of Nob Hill. A cable-car might have

been a comet flashing along the edge of a void.

"I wonder," he said, "I wonder--should San Francisco disappear--be

burned by that fire you are always expecting--or if the bay should

shoal, or the Golden Gate rush together, so that she would have no

reason for existence, and gradually be devoured by time--I suppose the

fog and the winds would still be faithful. I can imagine the fogs

rolling in and embracing her, and the winds raging about every forgotten

corner, centuries after there was anybody left to curse either."

"Was it Mrs. Kaye or Lady Cecilia Spence that said you just missed being

a poet? I hope some slumbering ancestor is not struggling for

resurrection out here. I much prefer that you should be a statesman."

"I intend to be, nor have I any desire to turn poet. I have seen too

many in London. But this city, ugly as it is, appeals in its own way to

the imagination--more, for some unknown reason, than the most poetic I

ever saw in the old worlds. There is something almost uncanny about it.

While it is raw, and crude, and practically in its infancy, it at the

same time suggests an unthinkable antiquity. Perhaps--who knows?--it had

a civilization contemporary with the Montezumas--or with Atlantis; and

it is the ghosts of old unrecorded peoples that linger and give one a

fairly haunted feeling when one climbs these hills alone at night."

"Much better you keep your hand on your pistol and your eye out for

foot-pads--and one dreamer in the family is enough. I hope I have not

infected you."

She forsook her glowing image and looked at him inquisitively. He

wandered about the room again and paused to look at a row of

daguerreotypes on a shelf, dead and forgotten Belmonts.

"You do dream a good deal," he said. "Judging by your varying styles of

beauty as well as other things, you must be possessed by a dozen

different sorts of old Johnnies trying to mutter something up out of the

dark."

"I'm going to be nothing but a dreamer for a whole week."

"If that means that you will forget chickens, and dress yourself

decently, I shall do what I can to heighten the illusion. Should you

like me to make love to you?" he asked, turning to her with a quickening

interest.

"That might wake me up," said Isabel, politely. "This week is crowded

with parties and things. I am to visit Mrs. Hofer and go to all of them.

You won't see much of me until New Year's eve, when I come home and we

dine at a Bohemian restaurant with Lyster and Paula, and watch the

street crowds after. But I do not look so far ahead. If I am a success

to-night I am going to make believe that I am an old-time belle like

Helena Belmont, or my poor little mother, for that matter. And I shall

feel just like her when I start, for Angelique will pin up my skirts

under a long cloak, and pull carriage boots over my slippers so that

nothing will be spoiled going down those steps. I suppose I can't hope

to be quite such a belle as if I had lived in those less-sophisticated

days, but who knows? And I can forget Rosewater--and Bohemia; I sha'n't

even think of the Stones until New Year's eve; I sent them their

Christmas presents this morning, on purpose. I am going to be frivolous,

coquette, and imagine myself a girl of the old Southern Set, when there

were no new people. And I'm going to make them _think_ I am a great

beauty, whether I am or not. I remember mamma used to say to me:

'Cultivate the beauty air. That often is more effective than beauty

itself. Tiny Montgomery was a beauty according to every known standard,

but she had no dash, and was never looked at when Helena Belmont was in

the room.' So to-night, you'll see me sail into that ballroom as if I

already had the town at my feet. By-the-way--the last time I began to

feel like a real girl again was that night at Arcot--and I did feel

eighteen--triumphant--happy--until I got back and saw Lord Zeal in the

library. I have never forgotten his face."

"Nor have I," said Gwynne, dryly; but he turned pale. "I suppose you

haven't had the least suspicion what he came to tell me that night?"

"I thought to say good-bye without letting you know--it isn't possible

that he told you he intended to kill himself?"

"He told me a good deal more. He had shot Brathland. Murdered him, in

plain English. You may fancy the night I had with him."

Isabel stared up at him, the radiance gone from her face.

"And you have been carrying that about in addition to everything else?"

"It was brutal to tell you this to-night! I can't imagine why I did,

particularly as I have never told even my mother--who, like everybody

else not necessarily in the secret, thinks that Zeal killed himself in

despair over his failing health. But--yes, I remember that dress now--I

rarely notice the details of women's clothes--but I remember admiring

those blue lilies on that airy white stuff--I suppose you suddenly

brought the whole thing back as vividly as if we were at Capheaton

instead of out here on the edge of creation. You must forgive me and

forget it."

"Yes I will! I'll forget everything for a week." She wheeled about and

rubbed her cheeks. Gwynne stooped suddenly and kissed the little black

mole on her shoulder.

"This is all I ask in return for the baubles," he murmured; and then as

he met a blazing eye: "Could I do less than restore your lovely color?

But I must fly and get into my togs."

XXXIII

The old-fashioned interior of the Polk House, with, on the lower floor,

its double parlors connected by sliding doors, its narrow central hall,

and its many shapeless rooms of varying size, had been entirely

remodelled by the essentially modern Mrs. Hofer. Her husband had wished

to build an imposing mass of shingles and stones, but Mrs. Hofer was far

too impatient to wait a year--perhaps two, if there were strikes--to

take up her abode on Nob Hill, and the Polk House was in the market.

Perhaps something in the stolid uncompromising exterior of the old

barrack appealed to her irresistibly, mausoleum that it was of an

aristocratic past. But upon the interior she wasted no sentiment, and

some half a million of her husband's dollars. There were now three great

rooms on the lower floor and four small ones, besides a circular hall

with a spiral marble stair. The drawing-room, which ran from east to

west, was one of the most notable rooms in the country, had been the

subject of violent controversy, newspaper and verbal, and was a

perpetual delight to the dramatic soul of its mistress. The most

original artist the State had produced had painted a deep frieze which

was a series of the strange moonlight scenes that had made his fame: the

deep sulphurous blue of the California night sky, the long black

shadows, the wind-driven trees, the low desolate adobe houses abandoned

in the towns settled by Spain. Now and again a cluster of lights

indicated a window-pane and a belated tenant, but the garden walls were

in ruins, the tiled roofs sagging, the ancient whitewash was peeling;

all blended and lifted into a harmony of color and pathos by the genius

of the artist. The expanse of dull green-blue walls of rough plaster

below the frieze was unbroken; on the marble floor there were blue

velvet rugs. The furniture was of ebony and dull-blue brocade. There was

not even a picture on an easel, but there were several Rodins and

Meuniers. At the lower or west end of the room the wall had been removed

and replaced by a single immense pane of plate glass. From this window,

always curtainless, there was a startling view of the steep drop of the

hill, beetling with houses and steeples, Telegraph Hill beyond and a

little to the north; then the bay, and the towns on its opposite rim. At

night the scene, with its blue above and black below, picked out with a

thousand lights--massed into a diadem beyond the bay--looked like a

sublimation of the painter's work. Within, the cunningly arranged lights

saved the room at all times from being too sombre, and were set to

reveal every detail of paintings far too precious to have been

recklessly lavished upon a wooden house in the most recklessly built of

all great cities.

The dining-room--which had the proportions of a banqueting-hall, with an

alcove for family use--was hung with tapestries and furnished with

chairs lifted bodily from a castle in Spain; and it was a room in which

no one would remember to look for ancestors. The library also commanded

a view of the bay and had been decorated by native artists with

imitations of the Giorgione frescoes, charmingly pink and smudgy. The

hangings and furniture were of royal crimson brocade, and the walls were

covered with books. Mr. Toole, who was a scholar of the old-fashioned

sort, of which California still holds so many, had selected the books;

and the contents were as noteworthy as the bindings. In a special alcove

was a large number of priceless Fourteenth and Sixteenth Century

editions. From this sumptuous room curved an iron balcony, where the old

gentleman might be seen sunning himself any fine day, his steel

spectacles half-way down his nose, and a volume propped on the shelf of

an easy-chair furnished with all the modern improvements.

On the white satin panels of the large round hall were a few of the most

valuable old masters as yet brought to the country, but Mrs. Hofer, who

was a patriot or nothing, did not hesitate to mix them with the best

efforts of her fellow-citizens, nor to proclaim her preference for the

native product. It was all very well to have old masters, and modern

Europeans, if it was the thing, but she never felt quite at home with

them, and liked her California inside as well as out.

The four little reception-rooms, or boudoirs, were so many cabinets for

treasures, and on the night of the ball, like the rest of the rooms on

this floor, were entirely without further adornment; only the white

marble of the spiral stair was festooned with crimson roses; and the

narrow hall that led from the rotunda to the new ballroom was dressed in

imitation of a long arbor of grape-vines, and hung with clusters of

hot-house grapes and Chinese lanterns. The ballroom had been built out

from the back of the house upon the steep drop of the hill, and as even

its graduated foundation did not lift it to the level of the first

floor, it was reached by a short flight of steps. For three months Mrs.

Hofer's judicious hints had excited the curiosity of the town, and all

that were not bedridden had presented themselves at as early an hour as

self-respect would permit. Mrs. Hofer, to use her own phrase, had

"turned herself loose," on this room, and even her husband, who had

gasped at the sum total, indulgent as he was, admitted to-night that

"she knew what she was about." The immense room was built to simulate a

patio in Spain. The domed roof, in the blaze of light below, looked to

be the dim blue vault of the night sky. The gallery that encircled the

room was divided into balconies, and from them depended Gobelin

tapestries, Eastern rugs, silken shawls--yellow embroidered with red,

blue embroidered with white--after the manner of Spain on festa days.

The background of the gallery was a mass of tropical plants alternating

with latticed windows and long glass doors. Sitting with an arm or elbow

on the railing, was every California woman of Mrs. Hofer's acquaintance

that had the inherited right to wear a mantilla, a rose over her ear,

and wield a large black fan; that is to say, those that were too old or

too indifferent to dance. How Ada Hofer induced them to form a part of

her decorations nobody ever knew, themselves least of all; but there, to

the amazement and delight of the hundreds below, they were, and it was

many years since the majority of them had looked so handsome. Beneath

the balcony was an arcade where many seats were disposed among palms and

pampas grass. The inevitable fountain was at the end of the room; it was

of white stone, and colored lights played upon its foaming column. The

musicians were in the gallery above it.

When Gwynne and Isabel descended the steps and stood looking down upon

the scene for a moment, the younger people were dancing. Every woman

seemed to have been fired with the ambition to contribute her own part

to the brilliancy of the night. There were tiaras by the score in these

days, and the gowns had journeyed half-way round the world. There had

been imported gowns in the immortal Eighties, when Mrs. Yorba reigned,

but never a tiara; and Isabel for the first time fully realized the

significant changes worked by the vast modern fortunes and their

ambitious owners. Blood might have been enough for their predecessors,

but the outward and visible sign for them.

And all sets were represented to-night. It is doubtful if any woman had

done as much to entice them to a common focus as the surmounting Mrs.

Hofer. She was not the leader of San Francisco society, for that office

was practically an elective one, and meant an infinite amount of trouble

with corresponding perquisites; it must be held by a woman of supreme

tact, experience, executive ability, and practically nothing else to do.

The present incumbent, to the infinite credit of San Francisco, was a

member of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in

California; or in America, for that matter; and although still young,

and with less to spend in a year than the Hofers wasted in a week, she

had been chosen, after the death of the old leader, and some acrimonious

discussion, to rule; and rule she did with a rod of iron. But she took

her good where she found it, and was grateful for what Mrs. Hofer, with

her beautiful house and irresistible energy had already accomplished.

For Mrs. Hofer was by no means too democratic. If she had drawn all

factions to her house she had taken care that only the best of her own

kind came too, and this best was very good indeed; for it was educated

and accomplished, more often than not had mingled in society abroad; an

honor to which many of the ancient aristocracy had never aspired. No one

recognized this fact, and the irresistible law of progress, better than

the Leader, in spite of her Spanish blood; and to-night she sat in the

very centre of the north gallery, her charming dark face draped in a

mantilla some two centuries old. Beside her sat Anne Montgomery who had

not a drop of Spanish in her, but whom Mrs. Hofer had done up with a

brand-new mantilla of white lace and an immense black fan. Miss

Montgomery had a lingering sense of humor, but it suited her to look

young and pretty once more, if only for a night. Mrs. Trennahan, who was

really fond of Mrs. Hofer, particularly as she had been adroitly

persuaded that this party was to be a mere setting for her lovely young

daughter, also decorated the gallery in one of the old Yorba

mantillas--it had belonged to the beautiful aunt for whom this house had

been built by the husband she scorned--and wore it for the first time in

her life. Trennahan had shaken with a fit of inward laughter, but had

compelled his eyes to express only admiration and approval.

Other dowagers sat below, some bediamonded and others not: the "old

Southern Set" lived on diminishing incomes; new industries were

decreasing the values of the old. They had lost none of their pride, but

philosophy had mellowed them, and they were honestly grateful for such

splendid diversion; and Mrs. Hofer's suppers cost a small fortune, even

in San Francisco. Their offspring cared as little for traditions as for

supper, and had married or were marrying into the newer sets, rapidly

obliterating what lines were left. As for the new, they were legion, and

not to be distinguished by the casual eye from those that traced their

descent to the crumbling mansions of South Park and Rincon Hill; and

they had the earnest co-operation of the best of the world's milliners.

The pick of Bohemia was also present, those that were distinguishing

themselves in art and letters, or even on the stage, for Mrs. Hofer had

learned some of her lessons in London. All that were now looked upon as

county families, spending as they did but one or two months of the year

in the city, had come to town for this ball, but the country towns were

represented only by Gwynne and Isabel and the Tom Coltons. The group of

men so desperately interested in the municipal affairs of the city

disliked and distrusted Colton; but Mrs. Leslie had been born on Rincon

Hill, and all doors, old and new, were open to her daughter. Isabel

caught a glimpse of Anabel among the dancers, in a gown of primrose

satin almost the color of her hair, and a little diamond tiara made from

some old stones of her mother's.

"Well!" exclaimed Isabel. "What do you think of us? Is it not a

wonderful scene?"

Gwynne nodded. "All that is wanting is a background of caballeros in the

gallery, silk and ruffles, and hair tied with ribbons. But I suppose the

old gentlemen objected. There must be some limit to Mrs. Hofer's powers

of persuasion. But--yes--it is a wonderful scene, and you are a

wonderful people to take so much trouble."

The waltz finished and Mrs. Hofer bore down upon them. She wore white

brocade, the flowers outlined with jewels, shimmering under a cloud of

tulle, and her neck and her fashionably dressed head were hardly to be

seen for the rubies and diamonds that bound them. She was fairly

palpitating with youth and triumph, and delight in the dance, and

although without beauty or a patrician outline, there was no more

radiant vision in the room. She reproached Isabel for being late,

informed her that she had ordered all the best men to keep dances for

her, summoned several, and then bore off Gwynne to introduce him to the

prettiest of the girls. In a few moments Isabel was engaged for every

dance before supper; she had given the _cotillon_ to Gwynne.

She had realized immediately, that upon such a scene, with such a

background, she could hope to make no such overwhelming impression as

had fallen to the lot of Helena Belmont; surrounded by buff-colored

walls and a small exclusive society--for the most part disdainful of

dress. Nevertheless, she was soon pleasurably aware that she was the

subject of much comment, not only in the gallery, but among the hundreds

of smart young girls and women on the floor, the men that danced, and

those that supported the walls. The old beaux, left over from the days

when Nina Randolph and Guadalupe Hathaway had reigned, who had put the

stamp of an almost incoherent approval upon the dazzling Helena, that

famous night of her debut, were dead and dust; but another group,

including the quartet that had as promptly declared themselves the

suitors and slaves of the exacting beauty, were present to-night,

critically regarding the debutantes. Their comparisons were less

impassioned than those of their old mentors, for they were tired; they

had disposed of much of their superfluous enthusiasm in the increased

difficulties of making an income, since the brief reign of a heartless

witch, whom they still remembered with an occasional pang of sentiment,

but more gratitude that they had not had her as well as fortune to

subdue. None had prospered exceedingly, but all had done well. They were

still in their forties, but as gray as their fathers had been at sixty;

indeed, looked older than Trennahan, who had disdained to add to his own

and his wife's fortunes, and lived merely to enjoy life; and they would

far rather have been in bed. But three of them were indulgent family

men. Eugene Fort had clung to the single state, but the others were

contributing one or more daughters to the evening's entertainment; and

they had all drifted naturally together to discuss the new beauties

before retreating to the haven at the top of the house where there was a

billiard-table and much good whiskey and tobacco. They were disputing

over the respective claims of Inez Trennahan, who was a replica of the

California _Favoritas_ of a century ago, and Catalina Over with the

Indian blood on her high cheek-bones, and her mouth like an Indian's

bow, when Isabel descended the stairs. They promptly gave her the palm,

although they did not turn pale, nor lose their breath.

"The grand style," said Trennahan. "I wonder will the home-bred youth

appreciate it? In your day she would have had a better chance, but most

of these worthy young men, when they have been to college at all, have

patronized Stanford or Berkeley; in other words, never been out of the

State, and, no doubt, prefer the more vivid, frivolous, and essentially

modern product."

"If it lay with us," said Alan Rush, sadly. "But it is as you say. She

will frighten most of the young fellows. By Jove, she looks as if she

had danced at Washington's first ball. But that's it. Nothing free and

easy, there. It's no longer the fashion to be too aristocratic."

But Isabel, if she did not create a _furore_ among the young men, who

would have thought such a performance beneath their dignity, was, at

least, generally admitted to be "Pretty well as stunning a girl as you

might see in a long day's journey," "a regular ripper," "the handsomest

of the bunch," and as far as "mere looks went" the "pick of the lot."

The girls viewed her with no great favor, but the majority of the women,

especially those in the galleries, sustained the verdict of the men; and

the Leader, in the course of the evening, descended and introduced

herself, claimed relationship, and graciously intimated that if Isabel

cared to join the _cotillon_ clubs and the skating-rink--_The_

skating-rink--an exclusive yet hospitable wing would be lifted. A

younger brother of Mr. Hofer, who had also multiplied his paternal

million, devoted himself to her seriously, and Gwynne, who soon had

enough of dancing, gracefully renounced his claims to the german. They

had one waltz together and then he did not see her again until the hour

of departure, when he stood in the hall and watched her descend the

winding white stair between the roses. He thought her a charming picture

in her long white coat, with a lace scarf over her head, and her arms

full of costly toys. When she reached his side she ordered him to put

her favors into the pockets of his overcoat, and keep his hand on his

pistol, as she would not risk losing one of them, much less her jewels.

Her eyes were very bright, and her cheeks deeply flushed, but were the

cause a fully satisfied ambition, he could only guess.

XXXIV

The hour was four, and after they had said their last good-night to the

guests whose homes lay between the Hofer mansion and their own, they met

but one foot passenger as belated as themselves. This was a big man that

loomed suddenly out of the fog. Isabel screamed and ran into the middle

of the street, and Gwynne, who had obediently taken out his pistol, half

raised it. But the man laughed.

"I'm on the lookout for thim meself," he said, in a rich brogue. "Good

luck to yees."

As they let themselves into the house, Gwynne threw his hat and coat on

the settle in the vestibule, and then ran his hand through his hair and

rubbed the back of his head, a habit of his when he had a suggestion to

make.

"I remember we were going to sit up the rest of that night--or

morning--after Arcot," he said. "Are you very tired?"

"Tired? I shall not sleep a wink for hours. The fire is sure to be laid

in the tower-room."

They went into the small circular room, furnished in several shades of

green, that Isabel had retained for her own use, and while she shook

down her skirts Gwynne applied a match to the coals. The raw morning air

had penetrated the house, too old-fashioned to have a furnace, but

wooden walls are quickly heated. When Gwynne had removed the blower

several times and satisfied himself that the hard coals would burn, he

resumed the perpendicular.

He looked doubtfully at Isabel, who was still wrapped in her cloak, and

had elevated her feet, covered with the long carriage-boots, to the

fender. "Sha'n't you take off those things?" he asked. "You don't look

as if you meant to stay."

"You can take off the boots, but I'll keep on my coat for a few

moments."

He laughed as he knelt again. "I certainly am getting broken in. I have

known Englishwomen to pull off their husband's hunting-boots after a

hard day's work--"

"The idea!"

"Very good idea. Do you mean that you would not?"

"Well, I might, as a return favor. You need not take all night to pull

off mine."

"You might, at least, let virtue be its own reward. It's not often it

has the chance."

"Well, get up and don't be an idiot. I suppose you have been flirting in

the conservatory all the evening and haven't had time to readjust your

mood."

"Mrs. Hofer has no conservatory. Great oversight. But I did sit out a

dance or two in that room with the immense window--"

"With whom?"

"I have forgotten her name. Will you have a cigarette?"

"No, but you may smoke if you like."

He had settled himself in a deep chair on the opposite side of the

hearth. There was a silence of nearly ten minutes, until Isabel,

suddenly removing her coat, brought Gwynne out of his reverie.

"I cannot say that to-night was in any sense a repetition of my own

experience at Arcot," he said, abruptly. "That night--I have tried to

forget it--I had enough adulation to turn any man's head. I fancy it

_was_ pretty well turned, and that made the wrench during the small

hours the more severe. Still, it has been an interesting evening, and

one or two things happened."

"What?" Isabel was full of her own experiences, but too much of a woman

to betray the fact when a man wanted to talk about himself.

"I danced for a while, but I had had exercise enough during the day, and

didn't care particularly about it. Besides, all the girls I danced with,

and that one I sat up-stairs with for a few minutes, not only talked my

head off, but quizzed me, and I did not understand it. To my amazement,

I learned not long after that they know who I am. Can you imagine how it

got out?"

"They know everything. It is an old saying that the San Francisco girls

scent a stranger the moment he leaves the tram at the Oakland mole, and

know all about him before he has registered. The obscurest knight could

not hide himself in this town. Rosewater alone saved you so long. How

did they quiz you?"

"Each began at once to talk about my 'distinguished relative, Elton

Gwynne.' I may be more dense than most, or perhaps I was merely bored,

but I assumed that they thought I was his brother and knew his

whereabouts. When supper was half over, and I was congratulating myself

that I had got out of the _cotillon_, even with you, for it meant

dancing with a lot of others, my host took me firmly by the arm and

marched me up-stairs. He informed me that he was 'bored stiff,' could

see that I was, and had 'coralled' a few more choice spirits. We went,

not to the smoking or billiard-room, but to his own bedroom, and here I

found four or five more of your strenuous millionaires, the reform

editor, and the lawyer that looks like a bull-dog waiting for the word

to spring at the throat of the Boss and his whole vile crew.

"Here we sat and smoked until the air inside was as thick as the fog

that blotted out the lights of the city and towns opposite. Of course

the talk was of the rotten state of San Francisco. I never heard the

whole story before, and it made my hair stand on end. I knew that vice

flaunted itself more openly here than elsewhere, but I did not guess

that the thousand and one establishments of every sort, from the lowest

negro dive under the sidewalk, and the snares for the very young of both

sexes, straight up to the most gaudy 'French restaurants,' as well as

Chinatown, Barbary coast, and all the rest, paid tribute to the gang of

political ruffians that have got control of the city. No wonder the last

have developed a preternatural sharpness that makes it next to

impossible to bring the charges home, for they will all be rich enough

in time to move to Europe and buy up such salable scions of

improverished houses as happen to be on the market. The thing is as well

known as I know that you are my third cousin, but, although the

second-rate grafters are brazen enough, it is not worth while to attack

them until the Boss is done for, and so far he has proved much too

clever to be caught. A college man, although of low origin, and an

accomplished lawyer of a sort, he pockets huge sums from these

disreputable establishments, for himself and his minion, the mayor, and

calls them attorney's fees. Naturally the panderers to vice won't admit

they are blackmailed: they are between the devil and the deep sea; if

the fight came on in earnest, and they gave evidence against the Boss,

and the Boss won, he would clean them all out and put others in. The

Reformers, if they won, would clean them out too; so, naturally, they

hold their tongues and hope this reform movement will peter out as so

many others have done. So do the Board of Supervisors whom the Boss also

owns and through whom he blackmails the great corporations. But--and

when they had got to this point in the talk there was an abrupt pause,

and then Hofer turned to me and said: 'Even if you don't come in and

join us, which I always hope you will do, I know a man that can keep his

mouth shut when I see him. So fire away.'

"And then they discussed the fact that one of their number had recently

gone to Washington to ask the President to send out an able man of the

Government Secret Service; they have every reason to believe that this

request will be complied with. With sufficient evidence they would then

make a quiet crusade in the hope of rousing public spirit to the extent

of forcing in a grand jury that could not be bought by the Boss.

Needless to say he has controlled every grand jury that has met during

his reign, and one might as well hope to convict a wind for unroofing a

house, even were he not master of every legal trick himself, and had he

taken less pains to cover up his tracks. In this detective lies their

chief hope at present; but what a slender hope it is, when you consider

the devil-may-care character of these San Franciscans, who would dance

on the edge of hell, with equal nonchalance, if only there were a screen

between. There is not an outstanding excuse for forming a vigilance

committee, as there was during the Dennis Kearney-Anti-Chinese riots of

1879, and there is no such aroused public spirit and indignation as

sustained the Vigilantes of the Fifties. These rascals take good care to

be non-sensational in their methods, and what the San Franciscan doesn't

see doesn't worry him. The city is rich, prosperous, famous, tourists

are pouring in, the best in drama and opera comes yearly--to be

presented in fire-traps whose owners pay toll to the Boss; they already

have the handsomest hotels in the world, the finest cooking, climate;

even earthquakes--severe ones--have moved elsewhere. What can you do

with a people like that? They are fairly insolent in their sense of

security. Let the political gang make their share. There is enough for

all. But don't bother us. Let us be happy. _Vive la bagatelle._ There

you have the motto of San Francisco.

"By the time they had threshed the subject out, explaining details and

plans to me, as if I were already one of them, I was feeling pretty

uncomfortable. Naturally, I blurted out that I could no longer accept

their hospitality and confidence on false pretences, and told them who I

was. Each got up in turn, solemnly held out his hand, and said, 'Shake.'

Then Hofer informed me that they had all been practically certain for

some time that I was myself; being good enough to add: 'We knew there

couldn't be more than one of you; and we are also able to put two and

two together, occasionally. Before we thought of it, however, you struck

us all as being a man accustomed to homage. Later we discovered that you

were choke full of seven different kinds of ability, and it was then

that the twos began to move towards each other on the board; and we

decided that we must have you here, right here in San Francisco. What

can a man like you find in a God-forsaken place like Rosewater, anyhow?

The Eggopolis! You can't afford to hail from there; it would stick to

you for the rest of your life. And we have just got to have you. We may

have some of the ablest lawyers in the country in San Francisco, and a

few honest ones, but we can accommodate one more; and a man that will

throw over a great title and an already won name for the sake of

standing on his own legs--that's the sort of stuff the old pioneers were

made of. So, here you must come, and stand shoulder to shoulder with

us.'

"I replied that I must finish my law studies with Judge Leslie first,

and have some little practice under his direction; that I intended to go

in for politics, but that for some years all the power over men I could

acquire would be through the law--and I had remarkable chances for

contact in and about Rosewater; where, moreover, if they learned who I

was it would not matter much. It might be quite otherwise in the city.

To this they agreed: that is to say, that I should remain in Rosewater

for six months or a year longer; but they asked me to promise that if

any great emergency arose, in which they believed I could be of use, I

would come at their call. And I promised."

He rose and moved restlessly about the room. "Upon my word!" he

exclaimed; and Isabel, who had not taken her eyes off him, although he

had addressed the greater part of his talk to the fire, noted that he

was paler than usual--and that his eyes were very bright; "upon my word,

I really do feel more elated than on that night at Arcot. That small

devoted band of men!--most of them with millions they might take to the

most civilized capitals of the world and spend in splendid enjoyment--I

never have met such patriotism! It is magnificent! And to find it out

here in this stranded city--that fascinates the very heart out of you,

by-the-way--I don't know that I wonder so much--I believe I shall

succumb myself in time--it is like being on another planet. At any rate

I hated myself to-night for any sickness of spirit I may have permitted

to linger--for a while my very personality seemed to melt into what may

prove an even greater cause than all that appears on the surface. The

present California may be merely the nucleus of a great future Western

civilization, so unlike the Eastern that no doubt it will dissever

itself in time and breed still wider divergences; until the old

generic term American will no longer apply to both. Moreover, it

already feels that it owns the Pacific, and faces the Orient alone.

And to rebuild this city--you have seen the Burnham plans--transform

it into the most beautiful city of the modern world--to give it a

great, instead of a merely brilliant and erratic civilization--a perfect

administration--what dreamers! What imagination! It is an inspiration to

come into contact with an idealism that money, and power, and daily

contact with the mean and base in human nature--"

"I could love you!" cried Isabel. "If you say any more, I believe I

shall kiss you again."

"If you do," said Gwynne, deliberately, "I shall neither pinch you nor

push you away. But you may regret it, nevertheless."

He threw himself once more into his chair and clasped his hands behind

his head. "It is an astonishing fact," he said--"This--I was reading the

history of the Kearney riots, only the other day. The commentator was

very severe on the Irish and German element that imperilled the city for

purely personal reasons; that was responsible for the most remarkable

and reprehensible of all the State Constitutions. That was not quite

thirty years ago. Whether any of these men, who are mainly of Irish or

German descent, are the sons or grandsons of any of those old Sand-lot

agitators I have no means of knowing; probably not, their fortunes were

no doubt already in the making, and the founders had graduated from the

class that went to sand-lot meetings and shouted, 'The Chinese must go.'

But it is certainly one of the oddest evolutions in history that it

should be the descendants of that foreign element alone that take any

real interest in this city; that are ardent to reform it, beautify it;

that are willing to devote their time and a good part of their fortunes

to that end. So far, although I have met in the clubs many old gentlemen

of charming manners and prehistoric descent--that is from '49, or even

the more pretentious East and South; and, at all sorts of places, their

sons--who are either building up new fortunes or spending old

ones--there is not one, so far as my observation serves me, that has

lifted a finger to fling off this octopus. Hofer says they have even

ceased to grumble. Their incomes are assured. Some are merely well off,

others immensely wealthy--with a sufficiency invested elsewhere. All can

command about the same amount of luxury, however their establishments

may vary in splendor. And nothing can exceed the luxury of their Clubs.

The older men at least--and they are not so old--have subsided into a

slothful content that makes them a cross between a higher sort of

carnivorous animal and the tacit supporters of the criminals in power.

These friends of mine, whose fathers may or may not have listened to

Kearney in the Sand-lots, are worth the whole lot of your ancient

aristocracy--hybrid, anyhow--and if I do 'hang out my shingle' here in

San Francisco, they are the only ones I care anything about knowing.

They are the only real Americans I have met, for that matter--according

to your own standards--" He broke off abruptly and leaned forward,

smiling at his companion. "I meant to ask you as soon as we got home to

tell me all about your first great party in your beloved city, but I

have been led away by my natural egotism. You were, by general acclaim,

I fancy, the beauty of the evening. Did you enjoy it all as much as you

expected?"

"I fancy I should have enjoyed it more if I had been up-stairs with you.

I found it more of an effort than I had imagined to make conversation

with those young men. Of course I enjoyed being openly admired and

besought for dances. Who wouldn't? But I never deluded myself for a

moment that I was anything approaching those old-time belles. As the

conditions have passed away, however, my vanity doesn't suffer. At all

events I am going to carry out my program and rush about to everything

that is given this week, to forget Rosewater, every aspiration, all that

ever happened to me. Every girl should have one girl's good time, and

although mine is belated, it would be silly to let it pass. Besides, I

am curious to see if I really can--well, delude myself."

"So am I! I have an idea you won't. You are quite different from all

those girls, who are at the same time the brightest and the most

frivolous, the most feminine and the most modern, the most daring and

the most indifferent, I have ever met. Those that have been as carefully

brought up as our ninetieth cousin, Inez Trennahan, are simply moulds

for the future to run into. There were several young persons that looked

as if they might go pretty far in a conservatory--perhaps that is the

reason Mrs. Hofer has none. She appears to have Irish virtue in excess,

and I expect the larky would get short shrift from her. But you--you are

quite unlike them all."

"I am a Californian," said Isabel, defiantly.

"Yes, but of a very exclusive sort--to say nothing of the peculiar

circumstances that were bound to breed seriousness of mind. And you have

quite a distinguished collection of real ancestors, and intellect

instead of mere cleverness. It is only once in a while that your--let me

whisper it--Western frankness and ingenuousness leap out--the

impulsiveness, the electric passion. When a certain amount of

readjustment has gone on inside of you and your more natural elements

work their way up and take possession, I really believe I shall fall in

love with you, and marry you out of hand--if you remain as beautiful as

you are to-night."

"All right," said Isabel, pretending to stifle a yawn. "That would be

interesting. All the clocks are booming something. Let us go out and see

if the sun is rising."

She wrapped herself in her cloak once more, and they climbed to the

crest of the hill and watched the sun rise behind the Berkeley mountains

and bathe San Francisco in trembling fire. It routed what was left of

the fog, although for a time the walls and waters of the Golden Gate

looked darker than before, and Tamalpais was a mountain of onyx. In a

few moments the smoke that wrapped the San Francisco day in a brown

perpetual haze began to ascend first from the little chimneys and then

from the great stacks. But until then every steeple, every tower, the

great piles of stone and brick in the valley, the old gardens full of

eucalyptus-trees and weeping willows, the strange assortment of

architectures on Nob Hill, even the rows of houses on the tapering

half-circle of hills beyond the valley, miles away, stood out as bright

and sharp and shadowless as if caught and imprisoned in a crystal ball.

It was the drifting smoke that seemed to bind all together and make the

city fit for humanity.

Gwynne pointed to a spot far to the southeast, in the valley between

Market Street--the wide diagonal highway that cut the city in two, and

ran from the ferries almost to the foot of Twin Peaks--and the high

mound known as Rincon Hill. "There," he said, "are the hovels and shops

that cover the block belonging to my mother and myself, and that is to

make us rich. Half is practically sold, and the proceeds, and the money

raised on the other half, will erect a building that is to cost some two

hundred thousand dollars. The insurance rates will be enormous, but even

so the income should be really a great one. If all goes well, the

foundations--of reinforced concrete, although they still laugh at

earthquakes--but Mr. Colton is a monster of caution--will be laid in

about six weeks, and then I shall watch the steel framework rise with a

very considerable interest."

"That means the beginnings of a millionaire. Do you really care so much

to be rich?"

"I know the value of money," said Gwynne, dryly. "I have no intention of

buying men after the fashion of your friend Tom Colton, but it is a

mighty good background for personality. Now you had better go in and get

some beauty sleep."

XXXV

Miss Montgomery called as Isabel and Gwynne were sitting down to

luncheon at two o'clock. She was not in the best of tempers, for she had

renewed her youth briefly the night before, her old admirers had shown

her much gallant attention, and if she had gone home with a song in her

heart and a flame in her eyes, she had been but the more conscious of

the wooden spoon upon awakening. She had risen with no very keen regret

for her vanished claims upon men long since married and consoled, for

she had never been what is called a marrying girl, but with her mind

inclined to gloomy meditation upon lost opportunities far more dear. She

had never ceased to believe that, the fates conspiring, she might have

become one of the great musicians of the world; for although she was

willing to admit the defect of will that had reduced her to the ranks,

she had not grasped the historic fact that the born artist accomplishes

his fulfilment in spite of all obstacles, imagined or real. Her

obstacles had been purely sentimental, for her family were commonplace

selfish people not worth considering, and, her endowment being just

short of distinguished, a misplaced sense of duty and the stultifying

influences of her home were responsible for her profession as caterer at

the age of thirty-six. Her people had belonged to the type that held in

aristocratic disgust the "woman who did things," "showed herself to the

public"; moreover, as Isabel had told Gwynne, they worshipped the

flower-like artistic young creature, and would let neither the world nor

man have aught of her. She was twenty-eight when her family died, and

knowing that as a music-teacher she could not hope to compete with

finished instructors, she had looked ever her other talents and found

that the only one which promised immediate returns was a certain knack

for sauces and sweets. All her friends rushed to her assistance, and

while broiling over a hot stove, stirring jam, wished that dear Anne

were not so proud and would accept a check without any fuss. But Miss

Montgomery quickly graduated from this amateur stage. She set herself

deliberately to work to become a _chef_, and, from offerings to the

Womans' Exchange, she was soon supplying choice dishes for luncheons,

and finally entire dinners. She had a warm friend in the then Leader of

San Francisco Society, and her own cleverness and indomitable

perseverance did the rest. She sometimes reflected that if she had found

the iron in her nature sooner she might have been fiddling in Vienna;

but perhaps her highest gift had really been culinary, perhaps she

needed the enthusiastic encouragement which she found on all sides when

she embraced that appealing art; at all events she succeeded, was

educating a promising orphan relative, and laying by for her old age.

Another friend, no doubt, was the massive family silver which had

escaped the wreck. Many of the new people, Mrs. Hofer among others, did

not care for the responsibility of a luxury so tempting to thieves, and

for which they had no innate predilection; they were more than willing

to pay a reasonable sum for ancestral decorations upon state occasions,

and to dine from artistic plated ware meanwhiles. Not but that there

was a sufficiency of solid bullion to be seen on many a San Francisco

table, and there were several golden services in the city; but rich

people have all sorts of economical kinks, and Miss Montgomery found

this one profitable. Another thing, no doubt, that had contributed to

her success, was the business-like attitude she had assumed as soon as

she felt herself a professional. She accompanied her refections to the

kitchen door, although the front was always open to her, and

philosophically pocketed the customary tip.

And she had struggled valiantly against becoming an embittered old maid;

in the main, had succeeded. To the world, at least, she rarely turned a

scowl, and she had never lost a friend. But there were times when she

hated her parents. Since Isabel's return she had had more than one

rebellious hour, for Isabel had taken her life in both hands, snapped

her fingers at restraints and small conventions, and, so far, at least,

had made good. And the younger girl's development, to one that had known

her always, was extraordinary. On the other hand, she exulted in the

prospect of a member of the old set coming prominently to the front once

more. She had spent a week with Isabel at Old Inn, and received a

certain measure of confidence. She hoped that Isabel would really make a

fortune, and urged her to follow Gwynne's example and put up a modern

building on her San Francisco property. Money was easy to raise, for

change and improvement possessed San Franciscans like an epidemic, and

few but were not anxious to convert "South of Market Street" into a

great business district. Although she was grateful to the new people,

particularly Ada Hofer, who, to use the lady's own expression "made

things hum," in her heart she disliked the breed, and deeply resented

the fact that the old set, even those by no means impoverished, to-day

formed little more than a background. They were to be seen everywhere,

they were still a power in a way, but they were by no means prosilient.

Therefore, as she sat in the old dark dining-room on Russian Hill and

listened to Isabel's praise of the interest that Hofer and his set took

in the political and artistic regeneration of the city, she was moved to

break out tartly:

"Are you giving them credit for altruism? They have their millions

invested here, naturally they crave a reasonable prospect of retaining

them--also of increasing them by filling Fairmont, and other projected

caravansaries for the rich, with winter tourists from the East; possibly

Europe. They not only fear the corporation cormorants--whom they can

never reach so long as the Board of Supervisors is controlled by the

Boss--the Boss himself and all his devouring horde, but the greatest

menace of all: that San Francisco will in time, and before very long, be

owned body and soul by the labor-unions. Then, even if they managed to

save their wealth, the city would be intolerable for the socially

ambitious or even the merely refined."

"You are unfair," said Gwynne; "for these men all have enough to pull

out and invest elsewhere. They could go to New York and buy a big

position, as so many of their predecessors have done. Or to London. Of

course no man ever lived that was wholly disinterested, unless he was a

fanatic, but it is vastly to the credit of these men that they love

their own city, stand by it--determined to make it livable, not only for

themselves, but for future generations; instead of moving away and

becoming millionaires of leisure."

"Oh yes, I don't deny that they have enthusiasm--the remnant, no doubt,

of what in their European ancestors was temperament. Americans don't

have temperament. Or if we have we are far too self-conscious to show

it. In the East it has been quite eradicated. Out here where gambling is

still in the blood--and that blood is mixed--where the air is full of

electricity, and the very ground under your feet none too certain, we

are a little more primitive; we have an excitability that makes

strangers find us more like the Latin races of Europe than our relatives

beyond the Rockies. And although the set you admire does not drink, nor

live the all-night life, it has its own demands for spice and variety,

and its own ways of gratifying them. Love of change, love of any sort of

a fight, is in the blood of your true Californian--particularly here in

San Francisco, where all the great gambling fevers, from the days of '49

to the wild speculations in Virginia City stocks in '76, have raged up

and out. Your friends are merely playing a big game. Successive defeats,

and the formidable front of the enemy, make it the more stimulating.

They have that fanatical love of San Francisco that every one out here

has who doesn't hate it, and they find it more exciting to stay here and

gamble for big stakes than to watch their wives spend money in New York,

and console them for snubs. Another point--they are far more

enterprising than the rich men's sons that preceded this generation--or

set, rather. They keep on making money, you may have observed. And

fashions change. New York Society is no longer the Mecca of the worldly

San Franciscan, and it has also become the fashion to invest huge

amounts here; in many cases, entire fortunes. These men really could not

pull out without great loss of income, and they all know how safe it is

to leave one's interests in other people's hands. In this town, at

least, no one has ever done that without regretting it."

"If the fashion has changed I dare say it is these men that have changed

it. I always bow to feminine logic, but nothing you have said so far has

changed my attitude. Besides, I admire their taste. This is the only

part of America that has made any appeal to me, and there is no question

that if they force through the Burnham plans, this city, with its

wonderful natural advantages, will be as beautiful as ancient Athens.

Surely you must admit ideality in men that can conceive such an ideal

and cling to it, no matter how forlorn the hope."

"That's just what I object to. The least imaginative of us realizes that

nature gave San Francisco a beautiful face and that man has done all he

could to scar it. But even did these men obtain control--which they

can't short of lynch law--it would take half a century to remove the old

city piecemeal. Do you imagine property-owners are going to change their

natures and sacrifice profitable office buildings and shops for the sake

of widening streets and making boulevards and parks? Do you realize what

it would mean in the way of individual sacrifice to build winding roads

about these hills instead of the improved and perpendicular gullies we

have to-day? Not even your own would do it. They merely dream and talk,

although, no doubt, they would make all the changes that promised large

personal profits. I suspect that the secret of their zeal is the desire

to deflect the tourist tide from south to north."

Gwynne laughed. He was a stubborn idealist, and having found something

at last to admire he purposed to hug it. "You belong to the pessimistic

camp. I discovered that when you honored Old Inn. And I have lived here

long enough to learn that it is full enough. But you are all different

from other Americans, and for that reason I find the most discontented

of you interesting."

But Miss Montgomery suspected that he was quizzing her and would not be

drawn further. Instead, she proposed a walk, and Gwynne in his turn

suggested that they go over and look at his property, which he had

visited once only. Miss Montgomery knew the history of every house old

and new, and told them many anecdotes as they walked down the steep

hills or along the cross streets to Kearney, at the base. The new houses

had fine gardens, the old ones were gloomy with eucalypti, or ragged

with palms, but everywhere were flowers, even at this season, giving an

immediate relief to the eye from the long dull perspective. On six days

out of the seven the streets were torn with wind when they were not

drenched with rain, and in the dry season the dust was intolerable;

although San Franciscans vowed it was a part of the picture and missed

it when abroad. But gay as certain sections of San Francisco was at

night, its residence districts always had a deserted air, and on Sunday

nothing could exceed the brown desolation of the shopping streets. From

a variety of causes San Franciscans were averse from too much

pedestrianism, and one could walk for blocks and pass nothing but an

occasional carriage, or the trolley-cars shrieking up and down the

hills, or emptying themselves into Kearney and Montgomery streets with

the racket of a besieging army.

But this Christmas Day it was clear and warm, and the wind drifted about

as if its wings were tired. All the world was on the cable and trolley

cars, but bound for park and sea, and in the opposite direction from the

three on their way to the valley south of Market Street. Kearney Street

would have looked like a necropolis had it not been for several patient

horses standing with their feet on the pavement, their ears cocked

towards a saloon, or establishment for "rifle practice"; and even Market

Street, on week-days barely passable with its trucks, four lines of

cars, and a mass of humanity, was almost deserted. They walked past the

Palace Hotel, down Second Street, and by many dingy peeling low-browed

and entirely hideous shops and flats, with glimpses into unsavory cross

streets, until they came to the block owned by the Otises since the

early Fifties. Even in its present condition the rents were

considerable, and as it was but a stone's-throw from several other new

office buildings, there was no question that in the course of a few

years the land value would be doubled, and Gwynne regretted being forced

to sell a portion of his share in order to be able to erect a building

large enough to pay. What was left of Hiram Otis's portion, inherited by

Isabel, stood on the opposite corner, and now yielded only ground rent,

the old buildings having crumbled on the stock-market. But the land

could be sold conditionally, and once more Miss Montgomery suggested

building. Gwynne turned to Isabel with interest.

"Do!" he exclaimed. "Come in with us, and we'll put up a larger

building. Sell your land and I'll borrow money on one of the ranches,

and sell out my Consols. Then I can hold on to all this, and we'll none

of us have so long to wait for large returns."

"I am afraid of fires," said Isabel, dubiously. "The most vivid memories

of my childhood are standing at my window on the Hill in my night-gown

and watching whole blocks down here in flames. The wonder is that yours

have never gone. Now I get my ground rent, no matter what happens." But

before she had finished speaking she had made a sudden movement towards

Gwynne. "I will do it," she said. "It will be better--all round."

"Good! And I intend to put on outside shutters of asbestos, so, with

walls of concrete and steel, and as little wood inside as possible, we

should weather anything short of subterranean fires."

Then Miss Montgomery took them through South Park, the oval enclosure,

surrounded by high brown sad-looking houses looking down upon a bit of

dusty green, and pointed out the long-deserted mansions of the

Randolphs, the Hathaways, the Hunt McLanes, and of others who had

dispensed the simple lavish hospitality of the Fifties and Sixties. She

was intensely proud of the fact that her mother had been born in South

Park, and pointed with a sigh, not all unconscious affectation, to the

stiff three-storied house that had come, with so many others, "round the

Horn" in the Fifties. Beside it, looking like an old man with his arms

hanging and his jaw fallen, its windows vacant and broken, its paint

long unrenewed, and cobwebs on the very doorstep, stood the Randolph

House, the theatre of the most poignant of all an Francisco's initial

tragedies. Isabel had told Gwynne the story of Nina Randolph, and as

Anne repeated it he recalled the name of Dudley Thorpe, and remembered

that he had left the reputation of a good parliamentarian and M. F. H.

They went up to Rincon Hill, once the haughty elder sister of South

Park, now looking like a lonely island in a dirty sea covered with

wreckage. There still remained several handsome old ivy-covered

mansions, and many beautiful as well as picturesquely dilapidated

gardens. Rincon Hill had contributed two peeresses to England, Lee

Tarlton and Tiny Montgomery, and Gwynne not only knew them both, but was

the more interested, as Cecil Maundrell's sudden elevation to the

earldom of Barnstaple during his active youth had served as an

object-lesson to himself. Mrs. Montgomery's old home was in good repair,

but she was in Europe as usual, and Randolph Montgomery, now in the

diplomatic service--too independent for the machine, he had been driven

out of politics some years since--preferred the more central comforts of

a hotel when he visited San Francisco. Two old family servants were

sunning themselves in the garden. The window-curtains were presumably

packed in camphor, and the dim panes suggested a cobwebbed and desolate

interior. Gwynne glanced across the ugly shabby but teeming valley to

the symbols of stupendous energies concentrated on its edge, and the

variegated magnificence of the hills, piling like roughly terraced

cliffs above it; then west to the mountains by the sea, green, unclaimed

by man as yet, although the dead were thick on the hills just below. It

was a city struggling out of chaos, but perhaps more interesting than it

would be a century hence, when it had fulfilled its destiny and become a

great metropolis of white marble and stone. A century? Nowhere had era

succeeded era with such startling rapidity, nowhere in one short

half-century had the genus American passed through so many phases. The

evidences were all before him. Once again he had the impression of

standing in the presence of hoary age--ugly premature age--was that the

secret of the vague suggestion of an unthinkable antiquity that so often

rose like a ghost in his mind?

The girls announced that they should ride back, and they walked over and

took a Third Street car. It was almost empty when they entered, but was

invaded at the next corner by a belated pleasure party bound for the

Park, a noisy disreputable crowd of flashy men, and girls with bold

tired eyes, a thick coat of the white paint which has made the fortune

of the San Francisco chemist, and gaudy cheap attire. Known in the

vernacular as "chippies," they bore a crude Western resemblance to the

Parisian grisette, and what they lacked in style they made up in sound.

They were the class that monopolized boats and trains on Sundays,

screaming steadily through the tunnels, and returned late, no longer

happy because no longer able to make a noise. One of the young women

pointed a finger at Gwynne, screaming, "I choose you!" and plumped

herself on his lap, to the suppressed delight of Isabel and Miss

Montgomery. But Gwynne looked blankly at her ill-buttoned back and the

immense buckle of her belt, while the rest of the party, those that sat

and those that swung to and fro at the straps, mocked her for choosing

so unresponsive a knight. The car stopped to accommodate another relay,

and Gwynne by a deft movement transferred the lady to his own seat, and

engineered the girls out of the car, before two hoodlums, who were

working their way up from the lower door, could reach them.

They found a garage and a good automobile, and spent an hour or two out

on the ocean boulevard. When they returned to town, Miss Montgomery

alighted at one of the hotels where she was to dine; and, the chauffeur

announcing that he could not "make another hill," Gwynne and Isabel

started for home on foot.

The city rose in a succession of hills from the level, and they climbed

slowly, talking little. Suddenly Gwynne laid his hand on Isabel's arm

and stopped, directing her gaze upward. They were at the foot of one of

the narrow almost perpendicular blocks that rose between Pine and

California streets. On either side were brown old-fashioned houses,

several of them set back from the street, and surrounded by trees and

high close fences. It was almost dark, but a moon was due, so the street

lamps were not lit. Crawling down from the street above, on one side

only, and clinging to the upper houses, was the advance guard of the

fog. It had come in stealthily and halted for a moment, taking strange

shapes. It looked like the ghost of an ancient fog, and the very houses,

in which not a light had appeared, might have been deserted for a

century. In a moment it began to crawl down the side of the street,

seeming to fill the whole city with silence. It was a scene

indescribably gloomy, haunting, forbidding, and to Gwynne, who had

studied the city in many lonely rambles, to whisper of the unrelieved

gloom of lives behind that stage where the most famous of American

Follies danced for ever in her cap and bells. The spirit of sympathy was

in the fog and the brief darkness for the thousands of broken dogged men

and women that rarely caught sight of the cap and bells. For them the

ashes, the embittered memories, the blasted hopes, a quiet sullen hatred

for the city that had devoured their hearts and left them automatons.

This was a phase of the city's life of which the enthusiastic shallow

tourist had never a hint. It took a man of genius like Gwynne to feel

the genius of the city in all its sinister variety. He had hardly pieced

his impressions together as yet, but he told Isabel a little of what his

subconscious ego had formulated, and she had never liked him so well as

when she took his arm and they ascended into the sudden downrush of the

fog.

XXXVI

Gwynne returned to Lumalitas on the following day and Isabel moved down

to Mrs. Hofer's. This had seemed a rather superfluous proceeding to Miss

Otis, but Mrs. Hofer would take no denial, and lodged her guest in a

suite the luxury of which at first delighted and then stifled her. She

liked splendor and luxury in the abstract, but some lingering shade of

Puritanism in her resented the enthralment of the higher faculties. Her

rooms were upholstered with satin from floor to ceiling, the

toilet-table was bedecked with gold, and the furniture had been made for

some favorite of Napoleon during the First Empire. Isabel was haunted by

a vague sense of impropriety, which she ridiculed but could not stifle.

And for the first time in her life she became weary of flowers. When she

arrived there was an abundance of the more costly in her boudoir--those

that were raised in hot-houses that the rich might not be balked in

their laudable desire to spend--and before the week was over, her rooms,

as she wrote to Gwynne--chuckling on his veranda--looked like a

florist's shop and smelt like a funeral. Everybody she met, and several

that she did not, sent her the floral tribute. The bell rang every hour.

When the imperturbable footman finally appeared with a box that looked

like a child's coffin, Isabel told him pettishly to throw it into the

back yard. All Americans send flowers to a pretty girl as a matter of

course, but the San Franciscan indulges in an avalanche where his more

economical Eastern brother is content with good measure, pressed down,

but not running over.

But the offerings were by no means confined to the young men that Isabel

met at the functions of the week. "Old friends of the family" were

interested to welcome to their midst the beautiful daughter (albeit

somewhat eccentric) of Jim Otis and Mary Belmont. Enthusiastic maidens,

and others--anxious to proclaim their delight in this sudden invasion of

their preserves--sent roses with stems four feet long and chrysanthemums

that looked like painted cauliflowers. After a tea at the Presidio,

given in the open square, and in honor of the descendant of its most

historic Commandante, Don Jose Argueello, that reclaimed precinct being

singularly prolific in flowers, the offerings arrived on the following

day in an ambulance.

It was an energetic week. When Mrs. Hofer was not herself entertaining,

she and her guest lunched and dined out daily, attended several teas

every afternoon, a _cotillon_, a skating masque, and five balls. Two of

the luncheons were at Burlingame and Menlo Park, whence they motored as

valiantly as if the roads were European. How so much was crowded into

one short week Isabel never understood, but finally came to the

conclusion that the rush at its worst was better than remaining for two

consecutive waking hours in the Hofer mansion. Mrs. Hofer was always

amiable and charming, but she was overwhelming. Her energies demanded

the safety-valve of constant speech, and she was one of those American

hostesses that hold that to neglect a guest is an unpardonable breach of

hospitality. She even gave up bridge for the week. Moreover, Isabel was

not long discovering that she contributed her part towards the

sustenance of that wondrous buoyancy, those eternal high spirits, that

glorious _joie de vivre_. The woman was an unconscious vampire. Men did

not feel it, and saw only her irresistible youth, but she squeezed women

as she did her morning sponge, and had no real intimates; although few,

herself least of all, understood the secret. If she had liked Isabel

less, it would have been more endurable, but she had never liked any one

more, to say nothing of the fact that she was determined to give her

"the time of her life." She descended upon her helpless guest with a

rush of silken skirts--that sounded like wings--and a torrent of bright

chatter, during every unoccupied hour or moment. Isabel's only

experience of hospitality heretofore had been in England, where a guest

might die and be resurrected between the formal hours of reunion and the

hostess be none the wiser. It had never occurred to her that visiting

might become hard labor, and as she had met few people whom she had

liked as spontaneously as Ada Hofer, she had come to her without a

misgiving. But she was soon hiding behind the curtains of the big rooms

down-stairs, and, upon one memorable occasion, took refuge under the

library table, while the sweet rapid voice of the hostess clarioned

throughout the house. She was drawn guiltily forth by a deep chuckle

from the arm-chair in the window. Mr. Toole regarded her with a twinkle

in his bright old eyes, and no resentment.

"I won't tell on ye," he said. "I feel like it meself, at times. Ada's a

good child, as good as a born egoist can be, but--well--we are not all

made on the same plan. And this life don't suit you. You're a dreamer. I

know one when I see one, for I've that side to meself, and now that

life is easy it's most the only side I've got left. Sit down in that

corner behind the bookcase and I'll read to you from one of the old

poets, Byron, belike. If Ada finds us, I'll send her kiting. She didn't

bring me up."

When Isabel, in the solitude of her bed, found time to think, she

concluded that if she could eliminate all men from her week except Mr.

Hofer and those of his particular set, she might still enjoy herself.

The San Francisco society youth has always been a failure. Except in

rare instances he has not been outside his native State, has read

nothing, and is casual of manner. Although more young men of the favored

class attend the home universities than formerly, the students that

derive the full benefit of these institutions are rarely those that

intend to make a business of dancing, and calling on Sunday afternoons.

It is yet too soon to weld cultivation with leisure, and, for the matter

of that, most of the society youth have their living to make, combining

business and fashion with a moderate success. Like Wellington's puppies,

they have proved themselves of sound metal when put to the crucial test,

but as an intellectual diversion they might as well be mechanical toys.

The leader has not yet arisen that can permanently combine the older and

younger sets. They mingle at great functions, but the dancing set

monopolizes the season's stage.

Of this set Mrs. Hofer was an enthusiastic member, and even at dinner

rarely entertained any other. Occasionally, and once during Isabel's

visit, she invited some friends of her husband, who never went to

parties, and often entertained when his wife was elsewhere; but these

men did as much talking as listening, and that was no part of Mrs.

Hofer's system. Isabel had flashing vistas of small groups of men and

women, distinguished socially as well as mentally, that entertained each

other, or met at a new club through which Mrs. Hofer whisked her one

night,--a club where the best of Bohemia met the more intellectual

members of society; and she knew that in these groups she might find

also the higher class business and professional men, and a few of

leisure that enjoyed life without either dancing or drinking. But Mrs.

Hofer, although far too well satisfied with life and herself to be a

snob, loved brilliancy, splendor, constant excitement, dancing, chatter;

and only her chosen set could provide the banquet. She could dance every

night from ten until two, and awaken in mid-morning as fresh as a rose.

She had the wardrobe of the storied princess, and her guests and friends

must contribute their share to the brilliancy of all gatherings. She

detested shabbiness; it was the only thing that depressed her spirits.

Proud as she was of her husband, his aims, and his position in the

community, his friends and their themes frankly bored her. She liked

talk, not conversation. She really loved him, however, and was far too

clever to let him feel neglected. He was inordinately proud of her, and

grateful that she permitted him to give his time to his own interests,

instead of dragging him about to groan against the wall. She had her

little crosses and disappointments, for she had many servants and

dressmakers; but, on the whole, Isabel had never seen any one so

persistently happy, nor with more reason. Even her three children were

as sturdy as young calves, and although they yelled like demons for an

hour every morning--reawaking to the sense of a vague something life

still denied them, and infuriated at the thought--Mrs. Hofer merely

turned over on her pillow with an indulgent smile. It never occurred to

her that the rest of the household might be less indulgent; and the

nursery above Isabel's room was not the least of the causes that

contributed to a frantic longing for the thirty-first of December.

XXXVII

But it was not until four o'clock on the day of release that she found

herself actually alone in her chilly and chaste boudoir on the higher

hill; Mrs. Hofer escorted her home and remained for many last words.

Then Isabel fell into a chair before the mounting fire and shut her

eyes. Lady Victoria was out. Gwynne was not expected until the evening

train. She wished that she had not promised to dine with the Stones at

seven. The house was as silent as a tomb; but while she was still

rejoicing in the sudden cessation of sound and motion, the door opened

and Gwynne entered. She gave him a surly nod, and he explained that he

had come down in the morning, in order to be at hand to welcome her; had

even meditated going to her rescue. Isabel deigned no reply, and he took

possession of a deep chair, settled himself on his backbone, and

regarded her attentively.

"I am sorry you have not enjoyed your week as much as I have done," he

observed. "The weather has been magnificent, and I have spent all the

days out-of-doors, riding, walking, duck-shooting--taking liberties with

your boat, and even your launch. I never enjoyed myself more--after such

close study, and all the rest of it, I suppose. I must say you don't

look very fit. You are pale instead of white, and--well--cross. Judging

from those models of literary elegance and Christian charity, the San

Francisco weekly society sheets--with which I whiled away that infernal

train journey--you have been feted like visiting royalty, photographed

by the foremost in his art--which would appear to be the equivalent of

painted for the Academy--and your family history seems to have been

written up from old files, with even more picturesqueness than

accuracy--"

"I wish you would keep still. You didn't talk half so much in England. I

shall hate you if you become wholly American."

"I am a born egotist. Ask my mother. Or my long-suffering friends and

constituents. You did all the talking at Capheaton--or gave me a wide

berth. But here my mother neither talks nor listens--" He paused

suddenly and lowered his voice. "Is anything the matter with my mother,

do you think? I never saw any one so changed. Do you suppose she hates

California and is staying here only on my account?--I have offered more

than once to pay her bills; and she is used to them, anyway. For

heaven's sake persuade her to go back and enjoy herself in her own

fashion. I really don't need her--haven't time. And in spite of your

liberal thorns and maddening incomprehensibilities, you can always put

homesickness to flight. Sometimes I think she is ill, and then again she

looks as fit as ever."

"She has developed nerves. All women get them sometime or other. And

there is a certain order of women with whom beauty and fascination are a

vocation. When those pass they hate life."

"What rot. No doubt she's a bit off her feed and restless. Probably the

climate doesn't suit her. Heaven knows it is nervous enough. But I don't

pretend to understand women. What's up with you? Didn't you enjoy being

a belle, after all?"

"I was not a belle. I was a distinct failure."

"What?" Gwynne sat up and forward. "If you want to psychologize, fire

away. It always interests me."

"I have no intention of psychologizing. I haven't had time to think. But

I do know that a life lived all on the surface--and at lightning

speed--doesn't suit me a bit." She gave him a rapid sketch of her week.

"I was with them, but not of them; no doubt of that. Old Mr. Toole told

me one day that I was a dreamer, and I am afraid that is the solution. I

like to imagine myself doing things, but I don't like actually doing

them. I found that out over and over again in Europe. I can't tell you

how I have longed for a girl's good time here in San Francisco--denied

all these years, and my birthright. I was bored everywhere. I cannot

make talk; I can only talk spontaneously when I am interested. I

couldn't even enjoy the dancing--for the prospect of entertaining those

brats between times. And they were all afraid of me. I never could be a

belle like either the old ones or the new ones; the fault lies wholly in

myself, not in circumstances or materials. _I don't really want it._ No

girl can be a social success unless she cares tremendously for it.

Merely pretty girls are often popular, simply because popularity is the

breath of life to them. I wouldn't try it again for anything on earth. I

long to be at home watching the marsh, and not a soul to talk to. That

was all I was made for. A dreamer! I am terribly disappointed."

"But Society is a mere phase. So is Stone's Bohemia. The town is full of

clever people. You can select and form your own set--when you are

ready."

"I am afraid I don't care about it. I dislike the actual effort. So long

as Mr. Hofer and those men are talking I am interested, but even so I

have enjoyed--far more--thinking about and planning to know them. I am

nothing but a dreamer."

"And you have just discovered that?" asked Gwynne, curiously. "I may not

have made an exhaustive study of woman, but up to a certain point I know

you; and I have not waited for Father O'Toole to enlighten me. I could

have told you that you would hate all this sort of thing. You had a mere

taste of it in English country-houses, where entertaining has reached

such a point of perfection that a man never feels so much at home as

when in some one's else house. If you had waited for a London season you

would have been as quickly disillusioned. You have the most impossible

ideals--"

"I can realize them when I am alone," said Isabel, defiantly. "I shall

be as happy as ever on the ranch, the day after to-morrow."

"That sort of happiness will do very well for a while--living in your

imagination and all that. But what is it going to lead to?"

"Lead to? It is enough in itself."

"You can't live on moonshine for ever. I told you before that I

understood your particular form of idealism; but although I believe that

man will certainly be happier when he lives more within that structure

of infinite variety, himself, less and less dependent upon the

aggregations Life has devised for amusing and tormenting him, still we

must reach that condition by very slow degrees; if we take it with a

leap the result will be an ugly and disastrous selfishness. If you can

prove to the world that you have found happiness in the cultivation of

the higher faculties, you will serve a purpose in life, for you will

encourage a certain class of women born with such serious lacks, in the

health or the affections, or even in the power to endure the mere

monotonies of married life, that they are better off alone; but who

often feel themselves a failure and drop into morbidity and decay. That

means contact for your highness, however. If you sit down by your marsh

for the rest of your life and dream, you miss the whole point. And when

time forced you to realize the uncompromising selfishness of such a

life--where would your happiness be then?"

"Now you are talking by the book. Why are we so sure that it is a part

of our duty to make others happy? That may be but one more superstition

to rout. If we manage to be happy ourselves, and through the exercise of

the higher faculties alone, we may be serving an end decreed from the

beginning; by some subtle process, as incomprehensible as even the

commonplaces of life, add to the sum of happiness, and so serve life far

better than by scattering ourselves all over the surface. But I told you

something of this before and have not forgotten the result."

"Neither have I, but one can get accustomed to any idea. What I want to

know is--do you leave youth entirely out of your calculations?"

"Oh--youth! Well--it is possible I might not if I had not lived through

its tragedy already--for which I am thankful."

"You have had romance and tragedy, and you are a very experienced young

woman, but you have not had happiness," said Gwynne, shrewdly. "That,

too, is a birthright, and sooner or later you will demand it. Social

conquests have palled in seven days. In time chickens also will cease to

satisfy, and books, and dreams, and sunsets, and liberty. The peculiar

conditions and events of your first quarter-century demanded an interval

before beginning again; and filled with all you have deliberately

chosen--all, that is, but chickens, which are a work not of God but of

supererogation. But intervals come to an end like other things. When

this finishes you will suddenly demand happiness--the real thing."

"You mean that I will fall in love again, I suppose."

"I mean that you will love."

"Now you are hair-splitting. Are you qualifying to contribute

fictionized essays to the American magazines?"

"I am stating facts and don't care a hang about sarcasm. Just now you

have spasms when some aspect of nature exalts you. I have watched you

with considerable amusement. But it is natural enough--merely a sort of

forerunner of what will happen when nature establishes her currents with

your own interior landscapes. Then there will be earthquakes and

hurricanes--your cultivated realism and inherent romanticism will become

hopelessly mixed, and you will be really happy."

"More likely, such moments are the forerunners of a state which shall be

an eternal exaltation. Personal immortality is only to be desired if it

insures the lifting of our faculties to their highest power of

expression. Anything else would mean a boundless ennui. As for my

present inertia, is it not the duty of some few to pass their lives in

appreciation of the past? Heaven knows there are enough looking out for

the present. And I am sick of the superstition that love is all. I told

you before that the happiness of women, at least, depended upon

relegating it to its proper place. Once I regretted that Prestage did

not die while I still believed in him, so that I could have lived my

life with his memory, as Concha Argueello did with Rezanov's. But even

that would have been a species of slavery, and I should have chafed at

the bond; never had this divine sense of freedom."

"I pass over the majority of your arguments--I must sleep on them. But

when have I maintained that love was all? If that were my doctrine

should I be reading my head off, investing in Class A buildings, talking

politics to farmers, and revolving plans for the conquest of California?

I should be making love to you. That is what I should like to do,

however, and what I propose to do when I am ready."

"Are you in love with me?"

"I hardly know, but I suspect that I shall be. If I deliberately choose

you now as my life partner, you cannot complain that I am the mere slave

of passion. I don't fancy I look it at this moment. I have had those

fevers, and am willing to admit their brevity. No doubt if I had not

been so occupied of late I should have had another. As it is, I am

blessedly permitted to foresee it; and to keep my brain clear enough

meanwhile to think for both of us."

"Very cousinly, but I can think for myself."

She had risen, but he stood with his back against the door for a moment.

"Another thing--" he said. "You need a buffer. You have remarkable

powers, and you might realize some of your dreams if the prospect of

initiatives did not alarm your secretly feminine soul. The two of us

together could conquer the world. Now go ahead and dream until dreams

pall and I have more time."

XXXVIII

"Ibsen will live, not as a dramaturgist, but as the greatest professor

of dramaturgy the world has ever known." "Only one way left to be

original--never write about Italy." "When we say that a man is a high

type what we really mean is that he is the great exception to the type."

"That progressive type of bore--the man with a grievance." "San

Francisco is the cradle and the grave of more genius than ever was

packed into any city, ancient or modern. It is like our money, 'easy

come, easy go.'" "And more Hell." "An epigram is only to be forgiven

when a memorable thought is packed into a phrase that sticks."

As Isabel and Gwynne escaped from the little Italian restaurant into the

blare and glare of the street, their heads were ringing with much

brilliant if somewhat affected talk. They had sat with their hosts at

the "newspaper table." It was the fashion at the moment to express life

in paradoxes, and with a nice adjustment of commas and colons. There had

been no talk of politics in this Bohemia, nor of society; nor yet of

other subjects that commanded its attention when the long day gave place

to the shorter night: the women present were respectable, many of them

wives, and not a few went into society when they chose. There was much

talk of the fads with which the world was ridden, never a reference to

the literature or art of the past; and there was something almost

pathetic in the prostration of these brilliant young men, who had never

crossed the boundaries of their State, to European groups, some of whose

members were already passe, but still loomed gigantic from the far edge

of the Pacific. Few American writers are popular in California, however

they may be read; and the reason, no doubt, lies in the mixed blood to

which all Europe has contributed, and which is full of affinities little

experienced by the rest of the country. Even the famous cooking is

un-American. The French, Italian, and Spanish restaurants are exactly

what they claim to be; their very atmosphere might have been imported.

The many that prefer restaurant life even to the excellent cooking to be

found in the average home, give their highest preference to the legacy

of the Spaniard; they eat hot sauces and Chile peppers with every dish;

and _tamales_ are sold on the street corners. This is enough to make the

San Franciscan an exotic, and it contributes in a great measure to his

fatal content. These young men had no real knowledge of the world, but

they had their own world, and were by no means provincial in the

accepted sense. But the majority were satisfied to coruscate to an ever

applauding audience--for a few years; with money easily got and

delightfully spent; to regard Life as a game, not as a business.

Afterwards the rut, the friendly pocket--nowhere so open as in San

Francisco--a job now and then, more than one way of forgetting that in

times gone by a fellow was one of those "coming men" the wanton heedless

city turns out with the same profusion that gorges her markets and

flaunts her sun for eight months of the year.

To Gwynne they seemed like some primitive race flourishing before its

time. He no longer argued with them, for he had the disadvantage of

being a scholar, and it interfered with his tolerance of fads on the

rampage; but they saddened him, made him feel almost elderly--and

abominably healthy. To-night, although some of the complexions of these

young men were green, and others red, they had been brilliant without

undue hilarity. They intended to get very drunk later on--if only as a

compliment to the New Year--but they were far too accomplished for

precipitancy. Stone, alone, refilled his glass so often that Gwynne

announced abruptly that they were missing the fun in the street, and

Paula promptly took possession of his arm. Stone followed, rumbling

disapproval, with Isabel. This arrangement was not to Gwynne's taste,

but he had developed subtlety in such matters and bided his time.

Kearney Street from Telegraph Hill to Market Street, a mile or more, was

a blaze of light, and crowded with people. It was a very orderly throng,

for it was composed of the respectable element of the city, and if they

had laid dignity aside for the moment, they were not distractingly

noisy. All were throwing confetti, and many had tin horns. Isabel saw

the Hofers, arm in arm, tooting vigorously. Half of society was there;

and many staid and strenuous business men were promenading with their

wives and daughters, more than one with his neck encircled by paper

ribbons of many hues. The street-cars had stopped, but there were a

number of automobiles filled with masques, singling out their friends on

the pavement and hurling confetti.

But it was not until Stone and his party reached the great central

highway, Market Street, that the scene was characteristic. Here the

windows of the Palace Hotel, and all the other buildings, great and

small, were illuminated and filled with people. And the entire city

would seem to have emptied itself not only into Market Street, but into

those streets on the north side that completed the "all-night district."

The people in the windows wore their gayest attire, and there was often

music as well as light behind them. They threw down confetti by the

bushel on the masses below. And the masses! There was no polite

restraint here. Largely recruited from the immense South of Market

Street district, they were out for a good time, and its inevitable

expression was noise. They were in the best of tempers, but the din was

terrific. They hooted and yelled, and every one of the several thousand

had a tin horn and blew it with all his might. Every undefended ear was

victimized. Isabel pressed one of her own against Stone's shoulder and

covered the other with her hand. But she stared at the crowd with all

the interest of the secluded for the mass. There were painted ladies of

all grades, and hundreds of shop-girls, covered with white paint or

lavender powder, their figures exaggerated with the corset of the

moment, and violent plumage on head and waist, although they had

prudently left their best skirts at home. Many of them were

astonishingly pretty, and no doubt more respectable than they looked.

Mrs. Paula was in her element. She wore her red hat and blouse, waved

her hands to the windows, exulted in the showers of confetti that

descended in response, and shouted into Gwynne's ear that she was

singled out for special attentions. In truth she received more than her

escort relished. Her natural affinity with the class above which she had

risen so high had never been more patent, and kindred spirits looked

from many approving eyes. Suddenly both cheeks were painted black by a

too fraternal hand, and then a man tried to kiss her. This was more than

even Paula could stand, and she flung herself into her husband's arms,

daubing his shirt with black and red. He dropped Isabel and struck out

furiously. There was an immediate scuffle, during which Gwynne basely

drew Isabel's arm through his and pressed forward into the thick of the

crowd.

"We have had enough of them, and no doubt they have had of us," he said,

comfortably. "Now we will enjoy ourselves."

"Well, if they blacken my face don't notice them. One would think Lyster

would know how to play the game by this time."

"He is always ready to fight after the fifth glass of champagne. I have

had lively experiences with him."

Conversation was impossible in the din. Isabel's face was smudged more

than once, but no other liberty was attempted. Gwynne also looked like a

chimney-sweep, and was addressed as "darling" several times, but the

crowd was inoffensive until a chain-gang of hoodlums dashed irresistibly

through it, pushing many off the sidewalk, and rousing a lurid

accompaniment. One man, solid and stolid, stood his ground on the edge

of the chain and administered a hearty kick upon each ankle as it

passed. There were angry howls in response, but none could retaliate

without breaking the chain, nor indeed could they control its momentum.

"That is one of those things one would like to have thought of one's

self," said Gwynne, admiringly, rubbing his ribs, for he had hastily

swung Isabel outward, and received much of the impact. "We might as

well get out of this."

They slowly made their way into one of the cross streets that seemed to

leap like a blazing meteor down from the darkness of the heights. But

the crowd was still as dense, and the street but a third the width of

Market Street. Not even an automobile attempted to force its way. Saloon

doors were swinging. Policemen stood in front of them, but there was no

further disorder. Gwynne and Isabel pressed back against the wall of a

shop and watched and waited. They were to celebrate the birth of the New

Year with the Hofers at a restaurant on the block above, but there was

no prospect of reaching it at present.

The sky was cloudless. If the evening chill had come in from the

Pacific, it was routed by the mass of humanity and the downpour of heat

from the electric lights. All the great signs were blazing, many in

colors. And there was music in all the saloons and restaurants; it rose

and fell with the noise of the tin horn and the hoot of the happy. The

people in the windows here threw down not only confetti but flowers, and

stacks at each elbow added to the mass of color. Even the men had tied

bright silk handkerchiefs about their necks, and they were bestrewed

with bits of gold and silver paper, and festooned with colored ribbon.

Gwynne and Isabel were quickly singled out and pelted with balls that

opened with the impact and tangled them together with the endless paper

streamers.

It was eleven o'clock before the crowd began its retreat to their

restaurants, and Gwynne and Isabel were able to make their way up to the

celebrated resort where the Hofers awaited them. They were shown to a

dressing-room where they could wash their faces, and then to the gallery

above the body of the restaurant which was divided into boxes, and

occupied by all sorts and kinds of people, including many of their

friends. In Hofer's box was a large bottle on ice and a table set for

supper. Mrs. Hofer, looking less approving than earlier in the evening,

sat half-hidden by a curtain, but her husband, in common with most of

the other people in the gallery, was throwing confetti upon his friends

below. He seized Gwynne and dragged him to the front of the box, and the

new arrival was greeted by shouts from every man, it seemed to him, that

he had met in San Francisco. The large hall with its tables of all sizes

was as densely packed as the streets had been.

"Ever see anything like this before?" demanded Hofer. He paused with a

gasp and dislodged a ball of confetti from his throat. "Look with all

your eyes, old man. There are the best and the worst--all who can pay

the price: the reformers cheek by jowl with the mayor and the Boss, by

Jove! The matron and the other kind of matron, the fair young girl who

hopes to buy a rich husband, and the sort that has to give more and take

less; the family man and his family, not a bit afraid of contamination,

enjoying himself to the limit; financiers, millionaires, corporation

bosses and curb-stone brokers, newspaper men, artists, politicians big

and little, society youths and girls severely chaperoned. See that crowd

with the queens of the Tenderloin? Ever hear what one of our local wits

said about them: 'Pity the worst of men should be named for the best of

fish!'"

Hofer, who felt it his duty as a good citizen to empty his bottle with

the rest of the world on New Year's eve, rattled on. Mrs. Hofer gave an

occasional warning cough. Like most San Francisco women of her class

there was a good deal of prudery under her gayety, and no instinct

whatever for Bohemia. She had come to the restaurant because her husband

had urged it, but she took no part, and threw only an occasional glance

at the floor. But as Isabel was manifestly interested, she presented her

arm and hat to the gaze of the crowd, that her guest might partake in

the doubtful fun if she wished.

Isabel and Gwynne, still tangled in the paper streamers and vigorously

pelted from below, leaned eagerly over the railing and flung handsful of

gold and silver bits upon the already glittering throng. It certainly

was an astonishing sight. There was little seeking after

inconspicuousness, even in the boxes. All were there to celebrate the

birth of the New Year, and to "play the game," however chastened they

might feel on the morrow. All were drinking champagne and growing more

hilarious every moment. One girl modestly dressed, and known to Mrs.

Hofer as an entirely respectable young person, although not of her own

class, was sitting on the knee of the man she was to marry, and drinking

from his glass. The ladies of the lower ten thousand were nicely graded.

Some were dressed with a severe and simple elegance, and painted as

delicately as a miniature. These were very quiet, the carven smile on

their crimson lips not disturbing the careful arrangement of their

features; and their eyes never lost their jewel-like immobility. They

were attended by what is vaguely known as "men about town," men with

money to spend and no position to lose. It was no longer the fashion

among conspicuous men to flaunt their mistresses, but these indefinite

persons kept the old traditions alive. Still other women blazed with

paint and jewels and excessive richness of attire. In attendance were

the big sleek brutes, whom all other men held in contempt. But all were

happy to-night and asking no man for his respect.

At a table in the very middle of the room was a young, buxom, and very

naughty-looking damsel, who evidently was a belle: the circle of black

coats about her round table was unbroken save by herself. What dress she

wore was black, and on her golden head was an immense black hat covered

with feathers. Her abundant diamonds were almost overwhelmed. Every time

one of her escort raised his glass to his lips he toasted her, and she

rose to respond, presumably to give the company the benefit of the tiny

waist that tapered off the white acre above. She was irreverently

hooted, but imperturbably rose and fell like a jack-in-the-box.

Hofer finally sat down to supper with his guests, but they had barely

finished when every clock in town began to boom the midnight hour and

there was a wild ringing of bells all over the city. Down-stairs one of

the young men ran to the orchestra, whirled the leader from his seat,

flung off his own coat, and led the crashing music with a tin horn.

Hofer and Gwynne went to the front of the box, glasses in hand. All

below had sprung to their feet and were waving and clicking their

champagne-glasses, singing, catcalling, tooting, cheering. Even Isabel

and Mrs. Hofer leaned forward. In the turmoil they did not notice that

the young woman in the centre of the room was standing on her table, her

befeathered head flung back, draining her glass; but they turned just in

time to see one of her admirers rifle her bodice and wag his trove at

the company.

"This is too much!" cried Mrs. Hofer, furiously, and running to the

back of the box. "Nicolas, I insist!" But Nicolas was enjoying himself

immensely and paid no attention.

Isabel had been about to follow Mrs. Hofer when she lost her breath and

nearly fell over the edge of the box. Lady Victoria, accompanied by a

man who was unmistakably a pugilist, had entered by a side door.

Isabel's brain seemed to eliminate every thought it had ever possessed

and hurriedly to remodel down to one agonizing point. The pair were

endeavoring to force their way forward to a table that evidently had

been reserved for them. Gwynne was leaning over the railing drinking to

Mr. and Mrs. Trennahan. In a moment his interested eyes would rove over

the crowd again. Isabel suddenly fell on him, bearing him backward.

"Take me out--quick!" she gasped. "I am horribly ill!"

Gwynne, grasping his hat, was fairly borne out of the box. As Isabel was

ghastly and trembling he assumed that she was really ill, and made no

protest, but half-carried her down the stair. They attracted no

attention and reached the sidewalk in a moment.

"If we can only find a carriage!" he said, solicitously. "You never can

walk up those hills. What an atmosphere that was! I don't wonder you

came a cropper. I hope the Hofers won't mind--"

"Nobody minds anything."

She took his arm and they walked up the street. The bells were still

ringing, horns tooting, but the street was comparatively empty. At the

corner a Salvation Army corps was singing hymns to a flabby and penitent

congregation. Just beyond was a row of hacks awaiting the weary

reveller, and in a moment Gwynne and Isabel were driving rapidly along a

dark and deserted street.

"Do you feel better?" he asked.

She did not answer for a moment, afraid of breaking down. Gwynne was

sure to offer prompt consolation, and even if he assumed the brotherly

attitude, she had no wish to be taken in his arms. In spite of herself

his calm reiteration that he intended to marry her had forced its seed

into her brain, for ideas projected from bold determined minds are

insistent things. But never had love and all connected with it been so

hateful to her as at this moment. He peered into her face.

"You are not going to cry!" he exclaimed. "You!"

"No, I am not! But I never was so nearly overcome. Such noise! Such

sights! Such heat! It was too bad to take you away, though. Shall you go

back?"

"Not I! May I smoke? We shall be an hour reaching the base of our cliff

at this rate. He is apparently going out to the cemeteries under

pretence of avoiding the hills."

He elevated his feet to the opposite seat and lit a cigarette.

"I wish my mother had come home before we left. It was a pity for her to

miss this. Even if she would not dine with us, I could have returned for

her."

"I saw her in the crowd with a party of people. I might have told you,

but my mind has been in as many pieces to-night as a bag full of

confetti. I am sure she has seen it all."

"Good. It was what you might call a trifle variegated, but not to be

missed. Great old town, this! No wonder they think California is the

world, out here. It is what they say of the London flats:

'self-contained.' I like Hofer better than ever. The man whom champagne

transforms into a big silly boy is the right sort. Is there really a

workaday world, a city to reform, and two ranches up the valley?"

XXXIX

They reached home sooner than might have been expected, but there were

many fares below, and the hackman galloped down the hill as recklessly

as if a slip would not have been the death of himself and his valiant

beasts.

Isabel went directly to her room and persuaded Gwynne to go to his,

arguing that some one of his mother's party would be sure to bring her

home. As he was to take the 7:30 train he made no protest. Even were he

still awake when Lady Victoria returned, the fog was rolling in; nor was

he likely to be leaning from his window.

Isabel heard her come in two hours later, and it was another hour before

she slept. She had determined to ask her wayward but still awesome

relative to leave San Francisco before her son found her out or she had

time more fully to disgrace him. But how to approach the most

unapproachable woman she had ever known with so delicate a proposition

was a question that made her toss about her ancestral bed and kept the

blood in her brain. She recalled the slip of paper announcing a

prize-fight, and wondered at her stupidity; for she had heard something

of the resources of blasee women ere this.

Finally she fell asleep. She was awakened by a sharp earthquake--grim

herald of the coming year! She was too well seasoned to have felt

anything more than a passing annoyance, had she not heard Lady Victoria

give a piercing scream and run from her room. Whereupon she rejoiced

wickedly, flung a wrapper across her shoulders, and went into the hall.

Gwynne was standing in his doorway, looking more asleep than awake, and

intensely disapproving. Lady Victoria was leaning against the wall, her

eyes wide with terror. Isabel took her firmly by the arm, marched her

into her room, helped her into a dressing-gown, and, pushing her into a

chair, took one opposite.

"How dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Victoria. "I had forgotten about

earthquakes--"

"Earthquake!" said Isabel, contemptuously. "That was a mere vibration.

We had sixty-two of those last winter. If you only stay long enough we

will show you what California really can do. Every ten years or so we

have a good hard shake--enough to bring the plaster down; and every

half-century or so she gets up and turns over. I have made a specialty

of earthquakes, and could tell you extraordinary tales of some of the

great ones of the south--"

"Please do not. I prefer to forget. But don't leave me. Fancy Angelique

sleeping through such a thing!"

"Doubtless she is not in the house. All the world was out last night."

"Was it?"

"I think this as good a time as any other to tell you, Cousin Victoria,

that I saw you last night--just as the clocks were striking twelve."

"Did you?"

Her trained features did not betray her, but Isabel saw the figure under

the loose gown grow rigid and brace itself against the back of the

chair. And as Isabel stared at her, with the desperate courage born of

the sudden plunge, it seemed to her that she felt a vibration from the

nausea, the disgust, the hatred of life, the death-rattle of great

passions dying hard. She wondered again, if, given the same conditions,

she would have differed much from the woman she had brought to bay. Her

early trials and provincial upbringing had developed her Puritan

inheritance, but she had had flashing and startling glimpses of her

depths now and again. For a moment she felt the waters of an immemorial

ennui rise high in her own soul, then drop to the grinning skulls and

sparkless ashes of old pleasures. She shuddered back, and raised her

eyes once more to the haughty mask opposite.

"I think I understand," she said, gently. "But you must go. I kept him

from seeing you to-night. But he would find out in time. As you know how

he believes in you, you can imagine the consequences. I suppose you have

not done anything so public before, or I should have heard of it. I

vaguely recall that women can look on at prize-fights from private

boxes. Last night, it isn't likely that any one noticed. Or if they did

they would question the evidence of their senses in the morning, the

best of them. So please go."

She paused. Lady Victoria stared at her without the slightest change of

expression. Isabel continued imperturbably. "London is so vast--if you

must have that sort of liberty, for heaven's sake go where it is most

likely to be overlooked--and where libel laws are operative. For all its

license, San Francisco is one of the most censorious and unrelenting

societies in the world, and has more old-fashioned people than New York.

If you become the talk of the town, and those awful weekly papers find

you out, Elton will be a long while living it down. It will make

ridiculous all his efforts at reform. Perhaps he would no longer care. I

fancy it would affect him that way."

She rose, and Lady Victoria rose also and walked to the door. As she

opened it she smiled grimly. "You have courage," she said. "I am more

than ever convinced that you are the wife for Jack. I will go."