Isabel intended in time to give the house a new façade, and had gloated over such of the Burnham plans as had been reproduced by the city press. These lovely plans were designed to make the city as classic and imposing as Nature had dreamed of when she piled up that rugged amphitheatre out of chaos; and Isabel had long since resolved that, if she could not be the first to plant a bit of ancient Athens upon a brown and ragged bluff, the high tide of her fortunes should coincide with the awakening of the city to the sense of its architectural guilt. She banished much of the tasteless furniture of the old time, and refitted with a stately comfort that expressed one side of her nature. She too clung to traditions—and to the long mirrors in their tarnished gilt frames, with the little shelf below; the multitude of family portraits engraved on wood, and surrounded by a wide white margin and tiny gilt frame. That they might strike no discordant note, she made use of a lesson learned in London, where she had spent a month with Lady Victoria, and had the walls and wood of the living-room painted white, covered the windows and furniture with a plain stuff of a dark but neutral blue. In the dining-room were a few paintings of her New England and Spanish ancestors, and she disturbed them only to replace the wall-paper with leather; at the same time sending the black walnut furniture to the auction-room.
Being the one practical member of her family, and the product of an earthquake country, she repaired the uncertain foundations of her house before removing the walls that had cut up the lower floor into the conventional number of rooms and hallways. The house, of no great depth, was so close to the hill-side, still rising above it, that more than one enterprising cook had made use of the natural ledges before the windows. Besides the kitchen department and pantries, there were now but three rooms on the lower floor: the dining-room, a small reception-room in the tower, and an immense living-room, broken by the white pillars that supported the storys above.
Mrs. Belmont and Mrs. Otis, in the time-honored American fashion, had made a day nest of their bedroom, but Isabel was far too modern for that lingering provincialism, and lived luxuriously in the big room down-stairs when she was not in the porch. She had reserved her mother's old alcoved bedroom with its mahogany four-poster for her own use, but the rest of the second-story rooms she had fitted for her English cousins, that they too might have headquarters in town.
Neither appeared to be in any haste to visit the city of their ancestors. Gwynne had left England in October, now nearly a year ago, but, having discovered from his solicitor that he could apply for letters of citizenship as late as the end of the third year after landing, had announced to Isabel his intention to travel slowly about the country "before settling down in its remotest part, which, from all accounts, was sufficiently unlike the rest to provincialize his point of view unless he saw something first of the East, South, and Middle West." He had written to her several times, but only on business. She had returned in January, after a round of visits in England, and had put his house in order at once. The lease had expired, and Mr. Colton had engaged a temporary superintendent, but Gwynne sent Isabel his power of attorney and she was temporarily in possession. She wrote to him from time to time that all was well, or to send him an account of her expenditures; but felt no promptings towards a friendly correspondence with one who showed as little disposition to encourage it.
From Victoria she had not heard directly since she bade her good-bye in Curzon Street, but Flora Thangue had written that her ladyship's superb health had (to her ill-concealed fury) given way, following an attack of influenza, and she would not be able to leave her doctor for an indefinite time. A few months later she wrote that "dear Vicky" was outwardly herself again, but in reality very nervous, the result, no doubt, of her illness, and of the prolonged stress of business. However, she had finally succeeded in letting the Abbey and Capheaton to advantage, and it was on the cards that she would reach California before the end of the year. Isabel hoped that, unfed by her son's exacting presence the maternal fires burned low; she had a clearly defined intention to be a factor in the new career of Elton Gwynne, and no desire for the capricious interference of his mother.
As Isabel stood in her little porch that brilliant September morning, she dismissed her occasional regret that she had not remained in England for a London season. Not only had she put the time to better use on her ranch, but no doubt her agent would have relet this house, and delayed the fulfilment of one of those dreams upon which she unconsciously fed her soul. The shrieking trade-winds and the dense white fogs were hibernating somewhere out in the Pacific. All the city, in the great irregular amphitheatre below, was sharply outlined in the yellow light; Isabel wondered if the sun renewed its stores from the golden veins to north and south. On the wide broken ledge just beneath her pinnacle was the concrete evidence of an architectural orgy to be seen nowhere else on earth: wooden mansions with the pure outlines of the Renaissance; a Gothic palace with bow-windows, also of wood; a big brown-stone house in the style of New York; piles of shingles and stones; here and there a touch of Romanesque, later French, and Italian; the majority of those plutocratic and perishable masses, of no style in particular, unless it were that of Mansard combined with the criminalities of him who invented the bow-window and the irrelevant tower. On the slopes were a few old houses in gardens, some with cottage roofs, others square, brown, dusty, melancholy. But the majority were of the "house in a row" type, radiating in all directions from the "boarding-house blocks" on the lower slopes. Then, down on the plain, came the big compact masses of stone and concrete, brick and steel, devoted to business and housing of the itinerant. The lofty domes of the City Hall and a newspaper building, a few church spires and the great white-stone hotel on a crest not far from Isabel's, were the sole pretenders to architectural beauty within her ken.
Far away she could make out the Mission Church, once called after St. Francis of Assisi, now named Dolores for the vanished lake. It was the last reminder of the work of the Spanish fathers, and looked indescribably ancient in the midst of that busy and densely populated district. At night Isabel watched the lights of the electric cars flashing about that old monument of an almost forgotten conquest—like the angry haunted eyes of the padres that had labored in the wilderness for naught. But although this old church and the Presidio, which still retained its quadrangle and a few of the original adobe houses, appealed deeply to Isabel on account of the romance of Rezánov and Concha Argüello that distinguished her family, her more personal sympathies were with the streets just below her hill-top, packed as they were with memories, tragic, humorous, gay, pathetic, of a people that had made the city great.
Even the dilapidated houses, with their sixty steps or more toppling above the cut that had widened and levelled the street, had been very hospitable in their time, and Isabel knew that her mother and grandmother had toiled up those perpendicular flights in satin slippers and ballooning skirts on many a rainy night. Mrs. Otis had told her little girls stories of all those old houses, fine and simple, more particularly of the fortunate mansions on Nob Hill's brief level. Isabel longed for the time when she should enter them and pick up the threads dropped from her mother's nerveless fingers. The Belmont house was closed, the still restless Helena occupying a palace in Rome at the moment. The Polk house had been sold to the energetic son of one of the plodding old money-makers that had fought shy of stock gambling and railroads. Nicolas Hofer belonged to the latest type the prolific city had bred: the son of a millionaire, but a keen man of business, whom the wildness of the city had never tempted, highly educated, honorable, and an ardent reformer.
Magdaléna Yorba—Mrs. Trennahan—like most of her old neighbors, still dwelt in the ancestral mansion, although she had given it a stucco façade and shaved off the bow-windows. In each, Isabel was sure of welcome, and she longed particularly to wander through the old Polk house, where one of her Spanish great-aunts had reigned for a time. Like all San Franciscans of family, she took more pride in her young-old city than a Roman in his Rome. Its forty-two square miles had seen so many changes, its story was so romantic and unique, that its age was not to be measured by the standards of Time. Her grandfather had stood on this hill after his Sunday climb and looked over and down a ragged wilderness to the city bursting out of its shell—a wretched huddle of shacks and tents by the water's edge. The bay no doubt was crowded with ships from every corner of the world, many of them deserted, unmanned, forced to lie idle until the return of the hungry disappointed gold-seekers. That was less than sixty years ago. In the first ten years of its rapid growth the city had burned seven times, millions blazing out in an hour.
To-day San Francisco was replete not only with life but with wealth, talents, and every variety of enterprise; it was as full of fads and cults and artistic groups as London itself; it had sent forth authors, artists, mummers, singers—and millionaires by the score. Many of the art treasures of the world had been brought here and hidden from the vulgar in those awful impermanent "palatial mansions." Some of the finest libraries of the world were here. It had its bibliomaniacs, its collectors, its precieux. And yet what a lonely city it was, stranded on the edge of the still half-vacant western section of the United States, with all the Pacific before it. Save for the rim of towns across the bay, which were little more than a part of itself, it watched the Orient alone, and was far too gay and careless, too self-absorbed and insolent, to keep its jaws on the alert. Tact it was much too high-handed to cultivate. It welcomed the hungry Oriental for so long as he was useful, and when he outstayed his welcome, incontinently kicked him out. San Francisco's intensity of independence as well as of civic pride was due in part no doubt to the isolation which compelled it to be self-centred, and to its unconscious dislike of the elder breeds beyond the Rocky Mountains; but largely to the old adventurous reckless gambling spirit and the habit of sleeping on its pistol. These first causes had developed individuality to such proportions that the hair of a Californian bristled when he was alluded to as a "Westerner," or even as a mere American.
And with time the patriotism of the San Franciscan waxed rather than waned. It was no longer the fashion to take one's money to New York, merely because of the higher cost of living that made a millionaire "feel his oats," and of the allure of the older and more difficult society to his women. San Franciscans still fled from the winds and fogs of summer to their beloved Europe, and country-house life gained ground very slowly, but deserters were few; and of late the rich men had shown their faith not only by investing the greater part of their capital in the city—until "improved real estate" was become a current phrase—but the best of them, including Hofer and the mayor who had preceded the present figurehead and his omnivorous Boss, were engaged in a desperate battle with the highly organized gang of political ruffians that owned and pillaged and dishonored the city in a manner with which nothing in the history of municipal corruption could compare save the old Tweed Ring of New York. For at least ten years previous to 1901, San Francisco had enjoyed a period of not only decent but honorable government. There was no "graft" in high places, the city was out of debt, it held up its head with the cleanest municipal governments in the land. But, as ever, the disinterested grew somnolent with content, and gave no heed to the burrowing of the hungry recuperated and wiser rats in that prolific underworld whence never a high-minded citizen emerges. The few that saw and warned were disregarded; and circumstances, proper in themselves, swelled the ranks of the petty politicians with thousands of greedy and insurgent laborers. San Francisco awoke one morning to find herself in the drag-net of a machine to which old Boss Buckley and the illustrious Tammany doffed their hats. But the majority still gave little heed, too content in their various blessings, and the gay light spirit the climate gave them, to foresee the time when their pleasant city would be utterly debauched, and life among arrogant thieves, prostitutes, and socialists have become as impracticable as it already was in Chinatown or on Barbary Coast.
A group of the more thoughtful and patriotic citizens, assisted by the one militant editor the city boasted, were doing all that was humanly possible to prevent the re-election of the mayor, who had already represented the worst element twice, and to break the power of the Boss. Isabel in her lonely ranch house, when her chickens were asleep, followed the fight with a passionate interest, and was tempted to come forth from her seclusion and meet at least the representative men of her city. But she was not yet ready to take up her own share of the burden, and was far too modest to imagine that she could be useful until she had become a person of importance in San Francisco. Nevertheless, as she looked down to-day on the sharp outlines of the city under the hard blue sky, almost glittering in their golden bath, she was impatient to become a part of its life, or at least to discuss its interests with some one. Rosewater, which of late years had become virtuous to excess, and almost blind and deaf with local pride, took no interest in San Francisco whatever, except as a market for eggs. When driven to the wall it confessed the superiority of the metropolis in the matter of shops and theatres; but its politics it invariably dismissed with adjectives more forcible than elegant.
It was at this point in Isabel's meditations that her eye happened to rove along the plank walk to the rickety old flight of steps that led from Taylor Street up Russian Hill. There was something vaguely familiar about a tall, thin, well-groomed, but by no means graceful, figure rapidly ascending the steps. In a moment her mind lost its tensity of projection and she was almost flying down her own long stair.
Gwynne broke into a run as he saw her. She wondered if he intended to kiss her, but he merely shook her hand for a full minute.
"I never in my life was so glad to see anybody!" he exclaimed, with the joyousness of a school-boy come home for his first holiday. "It was such luck to hear that you were in San Francisco."
"But why didn't you telegraph? In a way I am disappointed—glad as I am to see you. I intended to meet you at Oakland and take you directly up to Lumalitas, where everything was to have been in gala array. And how did you know I was in town?"
"While I was taking my lonely breakfast this morning—I arrived late yesterday afternoon—and glancing over one of your newspapers, my eye caught your name. I learned that 'the charming and beautiful young mistress of the old Belmont House on Russian Hill, who had excited so much interest of late, had come down as usual for Sunday."
"No?" Isabel flushed for the first time within Gwynne's knowledge of her. "That is the very only time I have been the subject of a newspaper paragraph—outside of Rosewater, which doesn't count—and I am as delighted—as I have no doubt you were the first time you saw your name in print!" she added, defiantly.
There was nothing cynical in Gwynne's smile. "I understand," he said; and then, as he ceased to smile, the light died out of his face, and Isabel noticed that it was older and thinner. It had lost more than a little of its aloof serenity, and his crest was visibly lowered. But on the whole he was improved, for he had cut his hair, his lilting locks having been too conspicuous a feature in the cartoons ofPunchandVanity Fair. But there was something subtly forlorn about him, and Isabel's maternal promptings, once too active, but long moribund, suddenly awakened.
They mounted the steep flight of steps to the house slowly, exchanging ejaculatory remarks. When they reached the porch she motioned to a long wicker chair.
"It is only ten," she said. "Luncheon will not be ready until one, and my California hospitality demands that your entertainment shall begin at once. Make yourself comfortable while I brew you a cup of Spanish chocolate. I have actually one of the molinillos of our ancestors."
When she returned with the frothy and fragrant beverage he was standing with his hands in his pockets staring down at the city. He turned swiftly at the sound of her step on the wood, but something was rushing to the back of his eyes, and once more Isabel had the singular impression of hearing his spirit cry: "Oh God! Oh God!" But his lips were hard pressed and his eyes became suddenly contemptuous, then smiling.
"This is jolly of you," he said. "I have a weakness for chocolate—cultivated during the winter I was in Munich with my tutor. I never cared for beer—don't like anything bitter. Do you remember the Café Luitpoldt, and all those little tables in the garden of the Residenz—"
He paused and narrowed his eyes. Isabel had turned white. "I must hear that story," he said, quietly. "You are my only friend out here. In a way you have altered the whole course of my life. I shall always have a sense of relationship with you quite different from anything I have ever known. So there must be perfect confidence and openness between us. I told you frankly the unpleasant finish of my episode with Mrs. Kaye. I hate mystery. I saw you go white once before, when I tried to make you talk about Munich; and the romantic Flora was full of surmises. Confession is good for the soul, anyhow. I want the atmosphere cleared—not out of curiosity—I don't care tuppence about other people's affairs—but I don't know you! I must know you! I am always conscious of a wall about you—and in this damned God-forsaken country I must have one friend!" he burst out.
Isabel had quite recovered herself. "I will tell you everything, but not now. We must be in the mood. This moment I am interested in nothing but yourself. Sit down. What has happened to you in all these months? Something not altogether pleasant. Have you had any adventures? Have you been recognized?"
He had finished his chocolate, and he clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, giving the railing a slight kick.
"No," he said, grimly, "I have not been recognized. At first I avoided all the big hotels, lest I might be; then growing more secure, and disliking the inferior ones, I became quite reckless. The second time I visited New York I went to the Waldorf-Astoria, and the third time to the St. Regis. In the smoking-rooms of all the hotels and trains I talked with any one whom I found disposed to conversation. Not that I was; but I was perambulating the country for an object and determined to accomplish it. As you had told me to improve my manners I did my best, and have reason to believe that, if not effusive, I am almost cynically approachable. In New York I was at times repelled with a haughty stare or a negative frigidity which no duke I know could compass. But in Boston they were more friendly, and farther West so expansive that I was frequently invited to houses before I had presented my modest card. Very often I had long talks with newspaper men, and made no attempt to conceal the fact that I was a Britisher. Once or twice that fact was commented on, but taken as a matter of course. There are a good many Britishers in the United States. My identity was never suspected. I never saw a newspaper paragraph about myself."
He laughed, but looked at her between lids so narrowed that she could not see the expression of his eyes. She nodded, smiling; and she could make her smile very sweet and encouraging.
"The time came when I felt like a shipwrecked mariner. Stranded! Abandoned! Forgotten! Finally—take all the circumstances into consideration and make due allowance—I felt that I would risk everything to see my name in print once more. I arrived in Chicago late one night. There had been a break-down that doubled the time of the beastly trip. I went to its first hotel and registered myself as Elton Gwynne. The night clerk, with the haughty indifference of the stage duke, or the New-Yorker who fancies himself, called a bell-boy and turned his back on me. I remained in Chicago three days. Not a reporter sent up his card. Not a line appeared in a newspaper. It was the most chastening experience of my life. No doubt it did me good. My ego has actually felt lighter." He smiled. But he added in a moment: "It left a scar, nevertheless."
"Never mind," said Isabel, consolingly. "All that will read delightfully in your biography. What on this difficult globe is not difficult, first, last, and always? The only thing for you to do is to snap your fingers at everything, as we do out here, and see nothing in the future but success. How do you like the land of your birth?"
"I hate it!" he said intensely. "Washington is a crude unwieldy village. New York is like one of those nightmares a certain class of writers project and label 'Earth in the Year 2000.' Chicago is the entrails of the universe. The small interior towns and villages of the Eastern States are open mausoleums for people so old and so dried up that their end will be not death but desiccation. There is nothing picturesque in those old towns, for they were dead before they were civilized. Some of the cities and villages of the South are certainly attractive to look at and have a background of a sort, but they are as lifeless as their negroes. The cities of the West are hives, and when you have seen one you have seen all. Its smaller communities are horrors, pure and simple. Much of the country is magnificent. The Adirondacks, the Hudson River, Yellowstone, those great prairies and deserts, atone for a good deal. The last three weeks I have spent in southern California. It seemed to me—below Santa Barbara, at least—little more than a reclaimed desert—and with nothing of the wonderful atmospheric effects of the great interior deserts; nothing but dirt and a hideous low shrub caked with prehistoric dust. Precious little of it reclaimed at that. I am glad that ranch is in good hands. I never want to see the place again. That eternally grinning sky! That dead atmosphere! It blunted my nerves for the time, but the reaction is all the worse. However—" He stood up and leaned over the railing. "I did not expect the earthly paradise. I am not going to treat you to a continued diatribe—"
"But you must like California—love it!" cried Isabel, in alarm. "Of course you have hated everything—natural enough—but not California! It is your State, your home, your future. You must begin by liking it, at least."
"Very well, mentor, I shall do my best. One might certainly indulge in an illusion or two up here. I thought as I walked—climbed—through the city, guided a part of the way by a messenger-boy, who ejaculated at intervals, 'Say, mister!' and described Nob Hill as the 'millionaire bunch,' that I had seldom seen so many ugly buildings together; but from this perch of yours it looks quite beautiful. Still I long for the country. Can we go to the ranch this afternoon?"
"Why not?" Isabel stifled a sigh. She had intended to ride all round the city on the electric cars; but she felt as if she had an adopted homesick child on her hands, and he was a responsibility that she had deliberately assumed. Moreover, she felt deeply sorry for him.
"You can express all your luggage but a portmanteau, and we will go in my launch. It is down on the bay side of the Hill. We must start at four to catch the tide. You have no idea how cosey and pretty your ranch-house looks, and I have sent out my uncle's law—and farm—library. I have arranged everything with Judge Leslie, and you enter his office at once. He is the first lawyer of northern California. I wrote you that it would be impossible to conceal the truth from him, as his firm has done all the legal business of the estate for the last thirty years, and he knows your mother has only one son. But he is the more interested. No one else knows but Mr. Colton and his son Tom—your Rosewater bankers and agents. Your secret is safe with them. Gwynne is not an uncommon name in California, although some of its letters have been dropped. Lumalitas has been leased for so many years that your name has ceased to be associated with it in the public mind, and the deeds are so deeply buried in the archives of St. Peter—the county-seat—that the most curious would hardly attempt to unearth them. Of course most townspeople all through the State take in a San Francisco paper, and your name has doubtless appeared now and again in the telegrams. But they are not the sort that take the least interest in the career of a young Englishman—those that do, at all events, are few and far between. Judge Leslie is deeply interested; so is Tom Colton, the only son of the bank, so to speak. He is a Democrat, by-the-way—but I don't suppose you have made up your mind—"
"I have quite made up my mind. In practice one party seems about as bad as the other, but at least the Democratic ideals more nearly correspond with my own. Besides, the Democratic party is the under dog, and that always appeals to me, to say nothing of the fact that it is weak in strong men, that all its salient leaders are what you so elegantly term 'blatherskites.' If I go in for American politics, I must fight so hard that I cannot help becoming absorbed body and soul; with only the present and the future—no past. Let us take a walk over these hills."
"Do you run this thing yourself?" asked Gwynne, as they boarded the launch, which was at anchor by the end of the sea wall at the foot of Russian Hill.
"Rather. How do you expect me to make a fortune in this paradise of the labor-union if I don't do things myself? I have a hard time being economical, and I suspect that where I save once I spend twice, but I try not to think about it. Theories make life so palatable! This old launch belonged to Uncle Hiram. I had it repaired, and take my eggs to the hatcheries and my produce to Rosewater three times a week. There I deal direct with the San Francisco buyers—and in this launch; it serves me very well as an office. Then I come down in it every week. The railroad is exorbitant, and the boats are too slow. It may be that gasolene and repairs cost more than a railroad fare once a week, but I have abstained from making a comparison. The trip is so delightful!"
The launch was about twenty feet long with a small cabin and a fresh coat of brown paint. It shot lightly over the smooth water, and Gwynne sat on top of the cabin above Isabel swinging his long legs, and looked with some envy at the hundreds of yachts that skimmed the bay. They appeared and vanished about the corners of the Islands and promontories like birds swooping after prey. The Islands and all the mainland had lost their greens long since, but the burnt grasses shone in the sun like hammered gold; were tan and brown and fawn on the shadowed eastern slopes. The chain of mountains beyond the towns across the bay and facing San Francisco glittered like bronze, but the lofty volcanic peak of Monte Diablo, farther still, was a pale and misty blue. North of the Golden Gate and high above the mountains of Marin County, Mount Tamalpais was so intense and hard a blue, and was cut against the fleckless sky with so sharp an outline, that it produced in Gwynne a vague sense of unreality and uneasiness. The Marconi poles on the summit looked like the masts of a mammoth ship, and every window of The Tavern, close by them, shone like a plate of brass.
They steered for the southern point of Angel Island, and Gwynne looked about him with much interest. The mainland of the great northern cove and the eastern side of the Islands were thick with trees: oaks, buckeye, willows, madroño. And almost as thickly set, although sometimes half hidden, were the villas: light and airy of architecture, gayly painted, with broad verandas and overhanging vines. At the foot of Belvedere and the little town of Tiburon were house-boats, in which people lived for eight months of the year.
And everywhere, people, people, people. They swarmed in the yachts, on the house-boats, on the driveways, the verandas. Gwynne twisted about and looked at San Francisco. The palaces were on the heights and in the Western Addition—out towards the Presidio and the Golden Gate; but hundreds of tiny dwellings clung to the precipitous sides of Telegraph Hill and Russian Hill as if their foundations were talons. And each had its bit of garden, or its balcony full of flowers. Telegraph Hill, the great bluff where the city turned almost at a right angle from north to south, was given over largely to Mexicans and Italians, and was uncommonly vivid. And the streets were full of people. The city had turned itself inside out. Everywhere were bright gowns and parasols, whizzing cars packed to the rails.
And the wealthy class by no means monopolized the bay with their yachts and luxurious launches. There were fishing-smacks filled with whole families of Italians and Chinese; in fact every tongue floated over the water in the course of a brilliant Sunday afternoon. And at the docks there were steamers, sailing vessels, from all the ports of the world, a forest of spars and funnels; odd little Italian craft and even a Chinese junk. A man-of-war was coming down from Mare Island. Gwynne had seen a big Australian liner flying the Union Jack enter the Golden Gate as the launch rounded Angel Island. It made him homesick, and he was not sorry to lose sight of it.
They passed steamboats crowded with holiday seekers coming home from a day's outing in Sausalito, San Rafael, Mill Valley, sporting parks; the majority noisy and vulgar, but a mass of color. It was a scene of surpassing variety, life, gayety, prosperity, importance. Gwynne, as the light electrical breeze began to prick his veins, experienced a sensation of pride in the country where his lines were cast, in those ancestors of his that had memorably helped to develop its vast resources: a tremendous concession, for he had barely acknowledged these ancestors before. A slight meed of resignation descended upon him. He smiled down upon Isabel, who was frowning at the sun and sighing for her forgotten veil; she had a tender regard for her complexion. Gwynne thought her very pretty in her smart crash suit and sailor hat, not nearly so severe and fateful in appearance as when she had adjusted herself to the formalities of Capheaton; although he remembered that he had heard much discussion of her beauty and had not been unappreciative himself. But he liked her far better here in California. Her eyes were more alert, her voice was less monotonous; and those little black moles looked particularly fascinating on the ivory white of her skin, fairly luminous in the sunlight. He fancied they would drift into matrimony; and that she appeared to be as indifferent and passionless as she was handsome and clever but the better suited his present mood. His love for Mrs. Kaye had died a sudden and violent death, but it had left him callous, somewhat contemptuous of the charms of woman. He doubted if his heart would ever beat high in his breast again, but in the course of events he should need a partner, and Isabel seemed to him fashioned to be the helpmate of a busy and ambitious statesman.
But all he said was: "You have a little freckle on your nose. I saw it come."
Isabel shrugged her shoulders and sniffed. He lost interest in her for the moment, for he distrusted a woman without vanity. He knew girls too little to suspect that the most business-like were often smitten with a desire to pose; and were as likely to forget the pose of to-day in the naturalness of to-morrow. Secretly, Isabel was grievously afflicted at the thought of the freckle, and did not speak for some time, recalling the antidotes of her early girlhood, when she and Anabel Leslie experimented in secret with various beauty recipes cut from the newspapers. She smiled as she recalled that Anabel, who had pretty golden hair, had washed it with lye to acquire a reddish tinge, and been forced to retire for a month; and a semi-tragic experience of her own—smothered from crown to toe in a blanket taking a hot-air bath for the benefit of her complexion, the spirit lamp, in a wash-basin under the chair, exploded, and there was one interminable moment of panic, and several days of discomfort. She quite forgot her companion in these lighter reminiscences of a period that seemed far more than ten years agone.
Gwynne had discovered at Capheaton that one of his cousin's charms was her absence of effort in conversation and a corresponding indifference to effort in others. They did not exchange a syllable as they sped up the wider expanse of the bay east of the Islands, and he watched the hills and mountains close on his left, with their bright little towns and sombre depths of forest. Many of the rounded cones of the foothills were bare, and so was the rocky crest of Tamalpais, but the old redwoods still held triumphant possession of several of the slopes and all of the cañons. Here and there factories and warehouses marred the almost primeval beauty of the scene, but to-day at least there was no smoke to cobweb the radiant sky. Even the Chinese shrimp-pickers were lounging on the beach before their little shack village.
They passed the last of the towns. Towers and sharp roofs rose above the mass of cultivated trees in some private park; the trees a motley collection of pines and palms, eucalyptus and oak, madroño, laurel, locust, and acacia. The gardens were full of children and birds. On the roads horses in old-fashioned buggies danced at automobiles whizzing by. In the yachts even the men had laid aside their keen anxious look—as peculiar to the young San Franciscan of business as to the New-Yorker or Westerner—and were bent upon absolute relaxation for the day. One millionaire was alone in his big luxurious launch, a broad grin on his homely ingenuous countenance, and even his mouth open to inhale the clean and sparkling air. His hands were clasped on his curves.
"He inherited," said Isabel, in reply to Gwynne's comment that he did not look as if he ever expended his energies in the piling of dollars. "And he doesn't want any more. But they all look well enough. It is not only the climate but the cooking."
They left San Francisco Bay and Isabel steered more carefully: the channel in the Bay of San Pablo is narrow and the current treacherous. When they reached the drawbridge they were not only alone on the wide silvery expanse of water, but there was scarcely a country-house to break the wild loneliness of mountain and cañon. After they entered Rosewater Creek the mountains with their broken and multiplying ridges were more imposing still, and before long another range began to taper northward on the opposite shore. They were in the great tidal marsh now, green, where all the rest of the world was burnt and dry. At times the creek was as wide as an ordinary river, at others so contracted that one could gather grass on either side. Isabel told Gwynne to "watch out for other boats," for the creek wound and twisted and doubled like a mammoth brown snake into an infinite perspective, broken here and there by sailing boats that had the effect of skimming the land. It was a scene reminiscent of Holland, but far more beautiful, with the wild primeval character of the landscape and the grandeur of the mountains.
Isabel indicated an island well out in the marsh. It was crowned with a white house shaded by many trees. Men in duck trousers, and coatless, were lounging in the shade.
"That is a country club," she said. "Tom Colton will put you up. But if you are still disinclined to sociabilities you can shoot all the ducks you want on my place."
"Shoot what?"
"Best duck-shooting in the world is out here—canvas-back, teal, English widgeon—fancy your not knowing that. It begins on the fifteenth of October. I have not rented my marsh-lands this year, and intend to shoot ducks for the market. You can help me and we'll go halves."
Gwynne's eyes were sparkling. He had expected to kill his bear and deer, but any variety of sport new or old gave him joy. Isabel pointed to many little shanties on the edge of the marsh.
"The more enthusiastic sit in those and wait for the tide to come back. I avoid being left high and dry, for if the ducks go elsewhere it is rather a bore."
The mountains on the left diminished in height, turned off abruptly to the northwest, following the coast line. Those on the right took form in the pink mist that enveloped them, for the sun had set. All the lower sky was pink, melting imperceptibly into the still pale blue of day. Far to the north other mountains seemed suddenly to heave from the level, villages appeared, with great stretches of farming land between. Then the glow faded into the gray of twilight and the vast landscape took on a sudden aspect of desolation; as of a country stranded, forgotten, with a heap of stones here and there to mark some ancient civilization.
"There is Rosewater—over there where the lights are coming out; and here we are," said Isabel.
Gwynne turned with a start and found that Isabel had run her launch up to a little pier. Behind it was a cluster of low hills set with narrow fields and tiny white houses. In the foreground was a large house of two stories and no architecture whatever, although the roof was mercifully flat. It was painted white and surrounded by a broad veranda. The garden was full of bare rosebushes and blooming chrysanthemums, but save for two mournful eucalypti and a naked acacia, there was not a tree in sight. Just behind were many out-buildings, stark and white.
"Is this where you live?" asked Gwynne, wonderingly. He had vaguely pictured her in a romantic setting, a bit of California epitomized.
"It was like Uncle Hiram to sell off the prettiest parts, but I don't bother about anything I can't help, and I have a lovely view opposite. Where is that boy?" She raised her voice and called, "Chuma! Chuma!" and in a moment a Japanese boy came running down to the pier.
"The two men spend Sunday in Rosewater, but I have trained my Jap to do a little of everything," said Isabel, as they walked up to the house. "He is one of the willing sort; most are not. Chuma is my cook and butler and chambermaid—"
"Do you mean that you live here without any other woman?"
"Why not? No girl would stay in this lonely place. I should have to send her in to Rosewater every night and get a second girl to keep her company. Mac—who was with Uncle Hiram before I was born—sleeps in the house. It was a hotel forty years ago, by-the-way, and is still known as Old Inn. That was in the days of picturesque ruffianism, and there are terrible stories about the house, but no ghosts."
It had been decided that Gwynne should dine with Isabel and spend the night at the hotel in Rosewater. Isabel had telephoned to her patient Jap, and there was a log fire in the "parlor"—now transformed into a comfortable living-room. Gwynne looked about him with considerable curiosity while Isabel was up-stairs dressing. The walls were "ceiled" with redwood and hung with the photographs she had accumulated in her travels, a motley collection of many climes, from the snows of the Alps to the patios of Seville; all, she had informed him, with a personal association: "she was no photograph fiend." Several artist's sketches arrested her guest's attention and he wondered what her life in Paris had been. He fancied that her three years abroad were full of curious chapters, most of them untold; but although she mystified him he could not associate her with license of any sort. There was even a hint of austerity about her, as if she drew strength from her Puritan forefathers.
It was patent, however, that she felt herself entitled to physical comforts after the labors of her day. There were half a dozen easy-chairs and a big divan covered with cushions. The carpet and cushions were red, but although the room was delightfully comfortable and homelike it might have been a bachelor's, so entirely were lacking all the little devices of femininity. The only ornaments in the room were an odd assortment of Tyrolese pipes and Indian baskets. On a shelf above the divan, however, were many books, and Gwynne ran his eye over them. They included masterpieces of the modern Russian, German, French, and Italian schools; only three or four volumes of English criticism. A set of shelves opposite was filled with the standard English and American histories, essays, and novels, many of them old and bound in calf. The upper shelf was devoted entirely to the Russian novelists, and the bindings were new.
When Isabel came down, looking very pretty in a blue evening frock, simple enough to make her guest feel at ease in his travelling-clothes, but carefully selected with an eye to effect, she sent him up to her room to make his own simple toilet.
"I suppose I should furnish a spare room," she remarked. "But if I did I should have Paula—my adopted sister—and her family here whenever they happened to want to come, which would be always when I didn't want them. But you won't mind."
Gwynne made a wry face as he sat down before the dressing-table that he might reflect his visage while he brushed his hair. Nevertheless, he cast about a curious and apologetic eye, in the belief that a woman's bedroom must reveal some secret of her personality. This bedroom was so simple and girlish that it gave him a vague sense of pleasure. The windows and dressing-table were covered with white muslin, and there was a canopy of the same above the little brass bedstead. The flounces were so full and fluffy that he held his knees back nervously lest he should disturb a puff. There was no other furniture in the room but two rocking-chairs, and the only color was in the blue Japanese rugs scattered over the white matting, and in two immense bows above the dressing-table and bed. He decided, as he ran down the stairs to the warm room below, that she understood both taste and comfort, and looked forward to his own lonely ranch-house with more equanimity than when he had paid the bill.
There were two miles between Rosewater and Old Inn, but although Isabel rode briskly and was sensible as ever of the keen buoyant quality of the morning air that so often filled her with a pagan indifference to the human side of life, her thoughts were with the pleasant evening by her fireside, the supper in the low raftered room which once had been the office of the hotel—a supper of fried chicken, transparent asparagus, and soda biscuit, which Gwynne had disposed of with a school-boy's enthusiasm—the hundred and one impersonal topics they had discussed in a cloud of smoke before the logs, until Abe, the second hired man—who was to drive Gwynne in to Rosewater—had opened the kitchen door three times and coughed. Not since Isabel's return to California had she sat at a fireside and talked to anybody; nor, indeed, with the exception of her father in his lucid intervals, and her uncle in his rare moments of expansion, had she ever talked with any one that covered the large range of her own interests. Gwynne had snapped the lock on his unquiet spirit, but in that comfortable domestic environment, half lying in an easy-chair, with his gaze travelling indolently between the fire and the animated face of his cousin, he had talked of her favorite books and told her much of lands she had never visited. He had transferred himself to the buggy with a grumble of disgust, and begged her to come for him early in the morning. He refused to pay his first visit to his ranch without her; and she had promised that Abe should go early for his saddle-horse and meet her at the hotel.
Pleasurable as the evening had been, Isabel was not in a sentimental frame of mind; she was stirred at the prospect of a companion, and wondered that she had been content in her solitude so long. Solitude and complete liberty might be indispensable elements in her ideal of mortal existence, but desultory companionship might be as necessary to intensify them.
It was nearly a year since her return, and outside of the bank parlor and Judge Leslie's office, she had held naught but business converse with any man. Nor with any woman. Although Rosewater society offered her nothing and she was glad to live out of town, still she liked her old school friends and had expected them to call on her. But weeks had passed and not one of them had paid her the mere civilities. She met them sometimes on Saturday afternoons, when all the world of Rosewater shopped on Main Street, and they invariably greeted her with effusion, and assured her they were "going out soon." Finally, busy and absorbed as she was, she fell a prey to curiosity. She knew that the young men had always rather feared her, as she had a forbidding reputation in the way of "bookishness"; and as most of them had either left Rosewater or married, in the four years of her absence, she had expected nothing from them. But the girls? The young married women, who had been her comrades at the High School? Did they resent her three years abroad and the sense of superiority implied? It was patent from their manner that they resented nothing. Did they disapprove of her becoming so energetic a business woman? It was true that the girls of California's country towns, except when forced by poverty to work, were the laziest mortals on earth. But nothing could exceed their good-nature and entire indifference. Isabel might have started a race-track or opened a livery-stable and they would have vaguely admired, and been thankful that themselves were as God made them. Her friend Anabel Colton was in the south with an ailing child, and Mrs. Leslie was with her, or the problem would have been quickly solved.
One morning she met the beauty of Rosewater on Main Street, Miss Dolly Boutts, a girl who had been half grown when she left, but one of her own rapturous admirers. Main Street was crowded, but Miss Boutts rushed up and kissed her, protesting that she had been trying for two months to get out to see her. Isabel guided her firmly to an ice-cream table in the candy store, and while Miss Boutts, who was a superb specimen of animal beauty with a corresponding appetite, disposed of two saucers of the delectable and a plate of cakes, Isabel dived to the heart of the mystery.
She began by dilating upon her pleasure in being home again, and then congratulated her handsome friend, with a touch of sarcasm, upon the overwhelming gayeties of Rosewater.
Miss Boutts stared. "Gayeties?" said she.
"What else? I never knew people so absorbed, although I fail to see why I should be wholly excluded. Or have the fashions changed, and was I expected to call first—"
Miss Boutts, who was not particularly quick of apprehension, here threw back her head and gave a musical laugh, which was out of tune with her drawling nasal voice and abundant slang.
"You innocent!" she cried. "Where have you been? I suppose you have been imagining us at dances and dinners and teas and things. Why, we have only danced twice in two whole years. It's cards, my dear. We are card mad, the whole bunch of us, old and young, women and girls. Mrs. Leslie and Anabel Colton are about the only exceptions, at least in our set. But I fancy the whole town has got it. We play morning, noon, and night—literally. Those who have no servants—and that question gets worse instead of better—don't make their beds for days, and their husbands get dinner at any old hour. Those who have a servant or two belong to six clubs at least. I belong to every one of them, and two meet in the morning."
It had been Isabel's turn to stare. The older people had always played bézique or whist, but rather somnolently of an evening. She wondered if the old gambling spirit had broken out again, and asked if they were playing poker or monté. Miss Boutts looked at her with positive scorn.
"You girls that go to Europe and stay there too long get fearfully behind things. Poker! Monte! We play bridge and five hundred." Then her genuine affection for Isabel overcame her contempt. "We have spoken often of asking you to join the clubs," she added, sweetly. "But there isn't a vacancy at present."
"I couldn't think of it. Chickens and cards don't rhyme. What do you play for—money?"
"No!" The scorn returned to her voice. "We are still too provincial for that. San Francisco is ahead of us there. We don't even have real big prizes—just a dinky little spoon sitting up on the mantel-piece to excite us as if it was a tiara. I've won a whole bunch of them. They're better than nothing and mean a lot of fun. I'm as proud as punch of them."
"And the men?" asked Isabel. Did they play, too? Miss Boutts replied that they were too busy in the daytime, but were asked once a week to a "bang-up" affair. Their other evenings they spent at the lodges—"or any old place," added Miss Boutts, who had no brothers, and a very busy father. When Isabel asked her if she had not the natural yearning of her age and sex for beaux, she shrugged her shoulders and replied:
"Rather. But where are you going to find them here? Pa won't live in the city, and all the young men run away. Once in a while I visit in San Francisco, and we go down to all the new plays, so I suppose I'll meet my fate in time. Meanwhile, as there's nothing doing in that line here, cards are a mighty fine substitute for beaux, and no mistake."
Isabel had been glad to be rid of her, and of her other old friends, who did call in due course. Anabel had not returned and was the worst of correspondents. So it had fallen out that she had held no real converse with youth until Gwynne's advent, and she accepted it with delight, and shook her head with young triumph in being able to interest him—or in joy of the sparkling air; she hardly knew which.
As Gwynne left his room the Japanese "chambermaid," who had been about to knock, informed him that Miss Otis awaited him below. He ran down-stairs and found her still on her horse. Abe held another horse by the bridle.
"It is nine o'clock—" began Isabel, but Gwynne interrupted her, rarely apologetic.
"I hardly slept. There was such an infernal racket. A theatrical troupe—"
"There generally is. How do you like your horse?"
Gwynne examined the horse, and was good enough to remark that it was a credit to California. Then he added: "It did not occur to me last night—my luggage is expressed to the ranch and I haven't my riding-togs—" Then he reddened at Isabel's gay laugh and Abe's suppressed smile.
"Oh, well," said Isabel, as she sprang from her horse. "The bloods will be too busy to notice as we ride down Main Street, and after that it won't matter."
She went with him into the dining-room of the hotel, a room scrupulously clean, but with no attempt at decoration beyond the various advertisements of beer on the white walls. There was a long table down the middle of the room and a great many small ones. Most of the latter were empty, although two beside the door were covered with steaks and eggs and coffee and rolls. One man, who had evidently finished, had swung his chair about, tipped it against the wall, and was addressing a political monologue to his toothpick.
Gwynne led Isabel to a table in a corner by a window, and indicated the company occupying more than half of the long table.
"'Busted,' was the word they used, and I cannot think of a better one to describe them. I talked with the men in the bar, and later wandered into the parlor where the women were, some tearful, others indignant. One had an infant, and there were several small children running about, although it was midnight. The soubrette was chewing gum and anathematizing Rosewater as the 'jayest town on the slope,' and others were calling for the blood of the manager, who had absconded with the receipts of an unprofitable week. They interested me, as all your weird specimens do, and I found them a surprisingly decent lot, considering that it is the cheapest sort of a vaudeville troupe. That poor little woman with the red eyes and the parti-colored hair is the mother of the infant. I saw one of the children carrying it about the hall as I left my room. She wears spangled tights—she told me with a lively regret at the prospect of pawning them—and shoots balls from the head of that young man that looks like a parson. And the soubrette—all my ideals are shattered! Look at her."
The soubrette had a lank young body neatly attired in a store suit and shirt-waist. Her face was sallow and her black hair as lank as her body, but her eyes were keen and bright, and she was indisputably respectable. She was drinking her coffee with both elbows on the table and listening with a sort of indifferent sympathy to an elderly untidy woman who was sniffling.
"Drop it," she shot out, finally. "'Tain't worth it. The landlord's given us a free breakfast, anyhow, and it's more'n most of 'em does. We'll get back to 'Frisco somehow, and will run into Jake first thing. I'll give him a slice of my mind right in the thickest of the Tenderloin. You just shut up and be thankful you ain't got no kids."
"She is positively discouraging," said Gwynne, as he attacked his excellent breakfast. "I thought that the frozen surface of the American woman thawed on the stratum soubrette."
"The class is not always remarkable for its asceticism," said Isabel, dryly. "I often lunch here, and see many varieties. The leading lady is generally a large voluptuous person with a head like a hay-stack seen through the wrong end of an opera-glass, and some of the soubrettes are all hats and eyes and wriggling grace. The men are what we call 'tough,' which is not exactly what you mean by 'toff.' Occasionally, however, there are the most respectable family parties, including the children whom they won't be parted from. We have three places of amusement, including quite a fine opera-house, so they do very well, as a rule. Was it your sympathy that kept you awake?"
"I am not an ass. But they were in and out of one another's rooms all night, and of course the baby cried. Then my room was over the bar—well, what will you? Such is life. I am sorry you cannot eat another breakfast. This seems to be the land of good cooking. If I did not scorn to be unoriginal I should dilate upon the pie and doughnuts I had for breakfast on the other side of your continent."
He seemed still light of heart at the sudden end to his wanderings and isolation, and they forgot the troupe and chatted about his ranch. He had much to ask and his sponsor more to tell.
The theatrical party appeared to finish their breakfast simultaneously. Three, including the soubrette, reached under the table, dislodged the morsel of gum they had mechanically attached to the under side of the board, closed on it with a snap, and filed out. Most of them looked quite cheerful. Several bowed to Gwynne. The soubrette gave him a haughty suspicious nod.
"She looked at me like that last night," said Gwynne, complainingly. "What designs does she attribute to me? I never treated any one with more respect."
"They are all like that when they are respectable. Their fierce Americanism resents any hint of patronage. Later on they invite it. You will find these waitresses—the class, as a rule, is thoroughly decent—much the same in manner."
Two girls, white clad, their extended arms loaded with dishes, were stalking about the room, anæmic, disdainful. A portly woman, whom Isabel knew to be the mother of a brood, was far more anxious to please. She came up to the table in the corner and asked Gwynne affably if his coffee was "all right" and if he was a stranger in "these parts." He was under Isabel's amused eye, but he acquitted himself with credit; and when he rose from the table she thanked him indifferently for his tip, but her eyes glowed softly. It was rarely thought worth while to tip a mere waitress.
As they rode slowly down the hill towards Main Street Gwynne examined his cousin from head to foot, but, he prided himself, out of the corner of his eye. She wore a dust-colored habit with divided skirt, and a soft felt hat and gloves of the same shade. Her horse was a very light chestnut, and he was obliged to confess that the effect was harmonious, although this Western style of riding by no means pleased his fastidious taste.
Isabel shot him an amused glance. "You don't approve of women riding astride," she said. "We invented it; although it is now the fashion in many other parts of America. Necessity is the mother of most fashions. Wait till you see our mountain roads. They are a disgrace to civilization—so broken and narrow that even in summer it is dangerous for a woman to ride a side-saddle, and in winter impossible. I have forgotten how, and that is the reason I never rode in England.... Here is the centre of your existence for several years to come. Main Street is to this section of the country what Wall Street is to the United States."
They had entered a street that turned abruptly in from the country a block below them, and rose gently for several hundred yards, when it straggled unevenly along a higher level, to melt into the older residence district and then out into the open country again. There was nothing quite like this Main Street in California. At its southern end was a long double hitching-rail—as old as the State—already flanked by several dusty wagons and big strong horses. The long unbroken block had as many and as various stores as are generally spread over the entire area of a town. Jammed against one another like cabins opening out of a steamer's gangway, and yet of no mean size, were banks and saloons; stores for chicken feed, groceries, fruit, candy, jewelry, clothing, hats, fancy goods, stationery; and five drug stores with tiled floors. Many of the windows made a brave display that would not have disgraced San Francisco. The entire west pavement was roofed, making a promenade like a ship's deck against rain or the severities of summer; and from this roof depended an extraordinary number of signs, often eccentric of color and design. Above the buildings of the opposite side of the street rose the spars of several fishing-boats; the creek finished at Rosewater. Gwynne glanced about him with an interest that nothing else Californian save the Mission and San Francisco had inspired. Here was a bit of a civilization of a building era, that was almost old, everything being relative. At all events it was old-fashioned. It was thoroughly countrified and yet suggestive of the concentrated activities of a city. Isabel, after leaving the hotel had made a detour, giving him a brief glimpse of the town. On the higher streets—Rosewater lay on a cluster of gentle hills—between Main Street and the "residence" district, he had noticed several modern buildings of brick or stone: offices, churches, school-houses, a solid little opera-house of colonial design, a fine City Hall, and one of those forlorn "Carnegie Libraries" in a state of arrested development for want of funds, but with an imposing façade and the name of the "donor" conspicuously advertised. All this had interested him little, although he had thought the town on its slopes looked very pretty and quiet; but this——the word "pioneer" suddenly came to him, and he looked up and down with a keenness of interest that was almost like a reviving memory. This beyond question was a remnant of the old thing, and here, no doubt, the great-grandfather whose first name he had forgotten, had been a familiar sight; his fortune and enterprise had helped to lay the very foundations of this landmark of a wild and stirring time.——Then they rode past a square park high on a terrace, walled up with stone most modernly, the green shaded with pines and palms, acacia and oaks; and the dream passed. At the same moment he became aware that his partner was talking.
"Rosewater is the financial and trading centre of an immense farming district. There are four banks, as solid as the best in the world. Three are as old as American California. The farmers come in daily for feed and supplies, the chicken-ranchers with their produce for the San Francisco buyers, and eggs for the great hatcheries. Many, like myself, find the last less trouble and expense than bothering with incubators. Something like four thousand dollars change hands daily in Rosewater, and it has less than five thousand inhabitants."
Having parted with her information she relapsed into silence, and, the town lying behind them, he transferred his attention to her. She looked severe, remote again, and he wondered if she would grow quite hard and business-like in time. In the hotel office as he paid his bill he had overheard one man say to another that she was "as good as the best, and no man could get ahead of her." In this sexless get-up and with her features set she looked hardly a woman. She certainly had capacities for good-fellowship, and yesterday she had been almost tender. He had just decided that he would as soon marry a portrait of George Washington, when, in response to a light call behind them, Isabel wheeled about with the pink in her cheeks and eyes wide with pleasure. She galloped back to an approaching buggy, in which there was an extremely pretty golden-haired young woman, and as she and Isabel simultaneously alighted and flew into each other's arms, Gwynne also descended, prepared to raise his hat when his existence was recognized. For some moments the girls talked a rapid duet, then Isabel turned suddenly and beckoned.
"This is my oldest friend, Anabel—Mrs. Tom Colton," she said, apologetically. "She only returned last night—just caught sight of us, and followed."
Gwynne's disapproval vanished as he shook hands with the blooming young matron and met her bright laughing eyes. She was a small imposing creature and received him in quite the grand manner. Her accent of America was as slight as Isabel's, and she used no slang. There was about her something of the primness that characterizes American women in the smaller towns, but her simple linen frock had been cut by a master, and she looked so warm, so womanly, so hospitable as she welcomed Gwynne to Rosewater, that he liked her more spontaneously than he had liked anybody since he crossed the Atlantic, and was almost enthusiastic as he rode on with Isabel.
"Anabel is a perfect dear," said his companion, whose eyes and cheeks were still glowing, and who looked like a mere girl. "I am much fonder of her than I am of Paula, although we haven't a thing in common. She was domestic and wild about children before she was done with dolls. Of course she married at once. When we were at the High School together she regarded my ambition to be first as a standing joke, and has never read anything heavier than a classic novel in her life. Why I am so fond of her I can't say, unless it is that she is absolutely genuine, and that counts more in the long-run than anything else. Besides, she was my first friend when I came here as a little girl. Her mother—Mrs. Leslie—belongs to one of the old San Francisco families, and had always known my mother. I love her as much as ever, but I am bound to confess that I have missed her little. I suppose complete happiness comes when you miss nobody."
They rode on in silence, for the heat was increasing and the dust lay thick on the road and swirled about their heads. There had been no rain since March, and the sea that sent its daily fogs and breezes to cool San Francisco and the towns about the bay was forty miles from Rosewater.
"Never mind," said Isabel, as Gwynne mopped his brow for the third time and ostentatiously rubbed his face. "The nights are cool and the hot weather will soon moderate down into the mellowness of October. When the rains come—well it is a toss up, which is worse—the dust or the mud."
"Heavens knows what we have swallowed," muttered Gwynne, who had served on sanitary boards and heard much talk of germs. But Isabel only laughed and told him to go to Anabel, who had a nostrum for every ill. A moment later the road led up a hill-side, and at the summit she caught his bridle and reined in.
"I brought you this roundabout way on purpose," she said. "Is it not what the poet would call a fair domain?"
Below them was a vast flat expanse bounded opposite by a mountain chain, that rose abruptly from the level, breaking into much irregularity of surface above, but all its hollows blurred with woods. Beyond a dip rose, far in the distance, a huge crouching formidable mass—St. Helena, named after a Russian princess, the wife of the last of the Russian governors of northern California. On the plain were golden fields, orchards, compact masses of the eucalyptus-tree planted as shelters for the cattle in time of storm or unbearable heat. Many cattle were roaming about; on the grazing land in the far distance towards the town of St. Peter—a mere white cluster in the north at the base of the range—were the horses. Over the mountains lay a shimmering haze, blue or pink; it was difficult to define whether the colors flowed through each other or subtly united.
"It is all yours," added Isabel, emerging from the rôle of the mere cicerone. "Are you not proud of it?"
Gwynne did in truth dilate, but hastily assured himself that it was at the beauty of his estate, not at its paltry nineteen thousand acres. Had he not shot over many an estate as large? Had not his grandfather come into four times that number? True, most of them had not been entailed, and this at least was his, his own. He quite realized it for the first time; even as a source of income he had barely given it a thought; even after Isabel's descriptions he had never exerted himself to picture it. As a resource in his crisis it was all very well, but not worth while shaping into concrete form until he could avoid it no longer.
But now, as he gazed down and over the great beautiful expanse—for even the mountain-side and much beyond was his—he felt a sudden passionate gratitude to that Otis whose first name he had forgotten, pride fairly invaded his chest; then, as he realized that it was visibly swelling under Isabel's intent gaze, he blushed, laughed confusedly, turned away his head. But his annoyance was routed by a speechless amazement, for Isabel suddenly flung both arms round his neck and gave him a hearty kiss.
"There!" she exclaimed. "I never really liked you before, though I never denied you were interesting enough. Men are nothing but overgrown boys, only some are nice and some are not. You are. I'll really adopt you now, instead of merely doing my bounden duty. Now look at those mountains in the south."
More disturbed than he would have believed possible at the young warmth and magnetism of her embrace—although it was disconcertingly evident that she would have kissed a small boy in precisely the same manner—he composed his features to indifference and followed the motion of her whip.
In the dim perspective of the south she indicated Tamalpais and Monte Diablo opposite, vague dim blue masses behind San Francisco. "Monte Diablo and St. Helena are both old volcanoes," she continued. "I never say dead volcanoes after the history and performances of Vesuvius and Pelée. I wish one of our volcanoes would liven up. We might have fewer earthquakes—although, to be sure, ours are supposed to be caused by faulting—in so far as they know anything about it."
"Do you think of nothing but earthquakes out here? You have made at least three casual allusions since we met twenty-four hours ago, and in southern California they are a part of every tradition."
"If you had been brought up on earthquakes they would never be far from your own mind. There is a theory that the reason for Californians taking everything as it comes with a happy-go-lucky philosophy, lies in the electrical air and the eight months of sunshine; but I believe it is due even more to the earthquakes. If we can stand those we can stand anything. It is in tune with the old gambling spirit that still colors the country; no doubt has kept it alive. We never know what is going to happen next, and we don't care.Vive la bagatelle.We have more to be thankful for than the rest of the world, anyhow. Well, let us go down to the house."
The house with its out-buildings stood below them on a high knoll, three sides surrounded by a grove of white oaks, the other open to the mountains, although the front veranda was shaded by several spreading trees, far apart. The large soft leaves and the pendent moss of the oaks were gray with dust, but the shade was cool and delicious. Down in the valley an old comrade here and there helped to tell the story of the time when all these miles of valley and mountain were unbroken forest, known only to the red man. And that was not a century ago.
The house was frankly ugly, like all the farm-houses of its era, although vastly to be preferred to the "artistic" structures succeeding them. As the couple gave up their horses to a stately Jap, who had been engaged by Isabel as butler, chambermaid, valet, and footman, and entered the large living-room, Gwynne generously gave voice to his approval. There were books to the ceiling, easy-chairs, the photographs of friends that had decorated his rooms in London and Capheaton. His eyes contracted as he saw a pile of London newspapers on the table, and he turned away hastily and remarked that he was glad the fittings were red, as it would be more companionable in winter; the rest of the year he should live out-of-doors. The veranda, which surrounded the house, was quite wide enough to live on, and below it was a border of garden full of old-fashioned flowers. The bedrooms, gayly furbished with chintz and matting, were up-stairs.
"I didn't think it worth while to furnish a dining-room," said Isabel as they returned to the lower floor. "It has always been the custom to eat at the end of the living-room—when they didn't eat in the kitchen. And what more dreary than to take your meals in a big country dining-room by yourself! All the rooms here are large."
She took him into the kitchen and introduced him to his cook, a stout Mexican woman, who received him with excessive dignity, and wore nothing but a single calico garment open to the chest. Then they mounted their horses again and Isabel escorted him down to the great hay-barns, the dairy, and cattle-sheds, introducing him to his hired men, who looked him over frankly, but, somewhat to his surprise, addressed him as "sir." He commented upon the unexpected deference as they rode back to the house.
"Oh, these country folk are naturally polite," said Isabel, dryly. "They are not yet entirely corrupted by the yellow press, although independent enough, as you will discover. Tact will manage any one. I have been managing people all my life, and have prepared this force to like you. Now I must be off. I am to lunch with Anabel."
"You are not going to leave me!" cried Gwynne, in dismay.
"The tragic moment must come sooner or later," she said, gayly. "And you have forgotten your mail. It is somewhere under all those newspapers. I'll ride out in a day or two and see how you are getting on."
She gave him a cavalier little nod, touched her horse with the whip, and a moment later was lost in a cloud of dust. Gwynne, angry and disappointed, looked after her a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and went in to his mail.