One day there was a mass-meeting suddenly called to express sympathy with the orange growers of the South, who had dumped twelve carloads of early oranges into the San Francisco Bay rather than submit to the increased rates of the transcontinental railroads. Gwynne saw his opportunity and summoned his powers. There was a moment of doubt, of hesitancy, of reflection that he was rusty, and that the subject was of no special interest to him; then, at the eager insistence of Colton, he walked rapidly to the front of the platform with all the actor's exalted nervous delight in a new rôle. In a few moments there was no subject on earth so interesting to him as the iniquities of the railroads and the wrongs of the orange growers; he awoke from his torpor so triumphantly that his amazed audience, as of old, felt the deep flattery of its power over him, and he made a speech which was like the rushing of risen waters through a broken dam. Not that he permitted himself to be carried away wholly; he deliberately refrained from indiscriminate phillipics, from rousing their ire too far, grasped the opportunity to see what could be done by appealing to their reason through their higher emotions, and begged them to meet constantly and consider the question of electing men that were not mere politicians, that would deliver the State from the medieval tyranny that oppressed it; advised his hearers to employ the best legal counsel they could get, and to give their leisure moments to the study of practical politics, instead of indolently submitting all great questions to the hands of men as unscrupulous as the State bosses and corporations. With his peculiar gift he made each breathless man in the auditorium feel not only that he was being personally addressed, but that his mental equipment had mysteriously been raised to the plane of the speaker's. When Gwynne finished amid applause as great as any he had evoked in England after the expounding of great issues dear to his heart, he turned to find Colton regarding him with sharp eyes and lowering brow. He immediately took his arm and led him without.
"I am glad a climax has come so soon," he said. "Otherwise I should have begun to feel like a hypocrite. Not only are your principles and mine utterly antagonistic, but you must consider me as your rival. I can do nothing definite, of course, for nearly four years, and meanwhile you may reach the United States Senate. If you do I shall do my utmost to oust you. Nevertheless, if I can be of any service in sending you there I am perfectly willing to place myself at your disposal, for the experience and insight I shall acquire in exchange. And as you are no worse than the others, and some one must go, it might as well be you as another. But, I repeat, I shall use all my powers to oust you and take your place."
Colton stood for a few moments, his hands in his pockets, regarding the ground. Then he lifted his eyes and smiled ingenuously.
"You are dead straight, for a fact. And I think I have got just as good an opinion of myself as you have of yourself. You put me in the United States Senate with that tongue of yours—God, you can talk!—and I'll take the chances of even you getting me out. It will take more than eloquence to upset a great State machine, and before I get through I'll have the Democratic machine stronger than the Republican is to-day. You can't get anywhere in this country without the machine, and the man in control stays in control unless he falls down, and this I don't propose to do. I'll swap frankness and tell you right here that when I'm boss I may let you come to Congress as my colleague, but that you've got to do as I say when you get there. What do you say to that?"
"I'll take all the chances. At least we understand each other. I work for you now, and I break the power of both you and your infernal machine when I am a citizen of the United States."
"Shake," said Colton.
And they shook.
Isabel sat idly on the veranda of her old hotel as was her habit in the evening hour. There had been no heavy rains as yet to freshen the hills and swell the tides until the salt waters scalded the juices from the marsh grass, turning it from green to bronze and red; and the barometer was stationary. A cool wind came in from the sea with the flood, and Isabel enjoyed the beauty that was hers all the more luxuriously in her thick shawl of white wool. A great part of the valley north and south was within the range of her vision, and it was suffused with gold under a sky that looked like an inverted crucible pouring down its treasures in the prodigal fashion of the land. Facing her house and on the opposite side of the marsh, at its widest here, was a high wall of rock, from which the valley curved backward on either side, tapering to the great level in the north, but on the south halting abruptly before the mass of mountains following the coast line and topped by the angular shoulder of Tamalpais; coal black to-night against the intense gold of the West.
She had not seen Gwynne for several days, and half expected that he would come to-night. These were busy days, and she saw less of him than formerly, although he snatched an hour for shooting whenever he could, and occasionally rode over for supper; and they saw much of each other during the weekly visit to the city. Their relations were easy and sexless. He refused to talk of chickens, but they had many other interests in common. She had by no means forgotten his outbreak in the launch, and had scowled at her arms for quite a week as she brushed her hair for bed, but that episode was now several weeks old, and she had ceased to harbor resentment. But she was subtly out of conceit with herself and life, resentful that she missed any one, after her long triumph in freedom from human ties; also resentful of the respect and interest with which Gwynne had inspired her, particularly since his summary expulsion of her will from the battle ground where it was becoming accustomed to easy triumphs. She had no love for him, and she was as satisfied with the life she had chosen as ever, but she was beginning to feel a sense of approaching confusion, where readjustment would once more be necessary. The future looked longer, and she was losing her pleasant sense of finality. She had guessed long ago that the only chance of escaping the terrible restlessness that pursues so many women, like enemies in the unseen world converted into furies, was to caress and hug the present, fool the ego into the belief that it wanted nothing beyond an imminent future, certain of realization, which should be as all-possessing as the present. But she had been wise enough to do little analysis, either of her depths or of life, and her time was full enough.
"Are you asleep?" asked a polite voice. Gwynne swung himself over the low railing of the veranda.
"I did not hear your horse." It would be long before he could surprise her into any sort of emotion again.
"Good reason. I walked. I read Cooley until I had an alarming vision of the Constitution of the United States writ black upon the sunset, so I thought it was high time to walk it off. Naturally my footsteps led me here."
"That was nice of them. Mac will drive you home, or you can have my horse."
"It is like you to plan my departure before I have fairly arrived. May I sit down?"
Isabel shivered. The glow had gone, there was only the intense dark fiery blue behind the stars—silver and crystal and green; one rarely sees a golden star in California. There were scattered lights in Rosewater and on the hillsides; and the night boat winding through the marsh was a mere chain of colored lights; here and there a lamp on a head mast looked like a fallen star.
"That is the way I generally feel after the glow has disappeared," said Gwynne, abruptly. "Let us go in."
There were blazing logs on the hearth, and a comfortable chair on either side. The room looked very red and warm and seductive. As they passed the table Isabel half lifted one of the English Reviews for which she subscribed. "There is an allusion to you here," she said. "I meant to send it to you. I fancy they want you back. It is very complimentary."
But Gwynne concealed the promptings of vanity and took one of the chairs at the fireside, asking permission to light his pipe. She noted, as she settled herself opposite, that there was less of repose in his long figure than formerly, something of repressed activity, and his rather heavy eyes were colder and more alert.
"It all seems a thousand years ago," he said. "I am John Gwynne. I doubt if I shall ever love your California, but I am interested—this mass of typical Europeans not yet Americanized—no common brain to work on, no one set of racial peculiarities. And the law has me fast. I have become frightfully ambitious. Talk about your Hamilton. I too walk the floor till the small hours, repeating pages aloud. My Jap thinks me mad, and no doubt is only induced to remain at his post by the excellence of my tobacco, and the fact that his education is unhindered by much service. While I am packing my own brain cells I infer that he is attending a night school in St. Peter, for I hear him returning at all hours; and he certainly shows no trace of other dissipation. We have never exchanged ten sentences, but perhaps we act as a mutual stimulus."
"Don't you love California the least little bit?" asked Isabel, wistfully. "Or San Francisco?"
"I have liked San Francisco too well upon several occasions—when I have run down to spend the night at the Hofers—or have fallen in with Stone on my way back from Berkeley, and been induced to stay over. Hofer and that set seem to be content with living well; they are too serious for dissipation. But Stone! Of course such men die young, but they are useful in exciting the mind to wonder and awe. I don't think I am in any danger of becoming San Franciscan to the point of feeding her insatiable furnaces with all the fires of my being, but there is no denying her fascination, and it has given me a very considerable pleasure to yield to it. Whether I shall practise law there—change my base—I have not yet had time to think it out."
"A country lawyer's is certainly no career."
"This is a good place to begin politically. San Francisco is too hard a nut to crack at present. If I could become powerful in the State, the Independent leader they need, then I might transfer my attentions to that unhappy town. Even Hofer and all the rest of the devoted band seem to be practically helpless since the re-election of the mayor. What could I do—at present?"
"With a big legal reputation made in San Francisco you could travel very fast and far. And you would be learning every thread of every rope, become what is technically known as 'on'; and then when the time came—"
"I hate so much waiting! The shortest cut is here in the country. I shall manage these men far better than Colton, who is the crudest type of American politician. Nothing could be simpler than his program: abuse, promise. Nothing simpler than his ambition: all for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. I have yet to hear him utter a sentiment that betrays any love of his country or desire to serve her, any real public spirit. Those are the sentiments I am trying to cultivate for this accidental land of my birth, for without them ambition is inexcusable and endeavor a hollow sham."
"And can't you?" Isabel left her chair and stood by the mantel-piece. It was the first time he had spoken of himself with any approach to confidence since the day of his arrival. "Sometimes I repent the share I had in your coming to America—not that I flatter myself I had much to do with it—" she added, hastily. "But my being there may have turned the scale. You might have gone off to rule a South American Republic—"
"I should have done nothing so asinine, and you had everything to do with my coming here. Not that I hold you responsible. You gave a hint, and I took it."
"And you don't regret it?"
"Why waste time in regret? I can go back any moment. Not that I have the least intention of doing anything of the sort."
He was pleasantly tired in mind and body, and the warm homelike room caressed his senses. He settled himself more deeply in Hiram Otis's old chair and looked up at Isabel. She had laid aside the white shawl, but wore a red Indian scarf over her black gown. The gown was cut out in a square at the neck; she always dressed for her lonely supper, and she had put a red rose in her hair, in the fashion of her California grandmothers. With her face turned from the light, her eyes with their large pupils looked black.
"I shall stay in California, like or no like," continued Gwynne. "But I did not walk five miles to talk politics with a woman after a day of law and the citizens of Rosewater. Where did you get that curious old-fashioned scarf?"
"I found it in a trunk of my mother's. Doubtless it belonged to her mother. I also found this." She indicated a fine gold chain and heart of garnets that lay on her white neck. The humor in his eyes had quickened into admiration; he reflected that the various streams in her composition might not be so completely blended as would appear upon that normally placid surface. The feeling of uneasiness which he had peremptorily dismissed stole over him once more. She looked wholly Spanish, and put out the light of every brunette he knew. Dolly Boutts, whom he still admired at a distance, although he fled at her approach, was a bouncing peasant by contrast; and several well-bred and entertaining young women of the same warm hues that he had met during the past few weeks in San Francisco suddenly seemed to be the merest climatic accidents beside this girl who unrolled the pages of California's older past and afforded him a fleeting vision of those lovely doñas and fiery caballeros for whom life was an eternal playground. That they were his progenitors as well as hers he found it difficult to realize, he seemed to have inherited so little of them; but they had flown generously to Isabel's making, and to-night she gave him that same impression of historic background as when she turned the severity of her profile up on him and suggested a doughtier race.
"It was about the same time," he said, abruptly.
"What?"
"While our Spanish ancestors were playing at this end of the continent, our 'American' forefathers were bracing themselves against England. It was in 1776 that the Presidio and Mission of San Francisco were founded, was it not? Curious coincidence. Perhaps that is what gives you your sense of destiny."
"I have no sense of destiny."
"Oh, but you have. Now I know that you are quite Spanish to-night. It is your more ordinary mood of calm unvarnished—not to say brutal—directness that gives you your greatest charm as a comrade—even while you repel as a woman."
"Do I repel as a woman?" Isabel had placed one foot on the fender, one hand on the mantel-piece, and as she leaned slightly towards him, the red glow of the lamps and the mellow old scarf softening her features, the small square of neck dazzlingly white, and the position revealing the lines of her figure against the high flames of the logs, she looked more lovely than he had ever seen her. Like all racial beauties, bred by selection, she needed the arts of dress and furnishings to frame her. It is only your accidental or peasant beauty that can defy "clothes"; and Isabel's looks in ordinary ranch and riding costumes made no impression on Gwynne whatever. But to-night her appeal was very direct, although he had not the least idea whether she was posing or was entirely natural in an unusual mood. He had no intention of being made a fool of, however, and answered with the responsive glow in his eyes due a pretty and charming woman:
"Sometimes. Not to-night. If you would remain Spanish with no Revolutionary lapses, I make no doubt I should fall in love with you, and then perhaps you would fall in love with me merely because of my own lack of picturesqueness, and we should live happily ever after."
"What a bore." Isabel sniffed, and moved her gaze to the fire. But she did not alter her attitude.
"Are you really happy?" asked Gwynne, curiously.
"Of course. So much so that it begins to worry me a little. My puritanical instincts dictate that I have no right to be quite happy. What slaves we are to the old poisons in our blood! I live by the light of my reason, and all is well until one of those mouldy instincts, like a buried disease germ, raps all round its tomb. Then I feel nothing but a graveyard of all my ancestors. I don't let them out, and my reason continues its rule, but they keep me from being—well—entirely happy, and I resent that."
"I should say it was not the Puritans but your common womanly instincts that were thumping round their cells. You have no right to be happy except as Nature intended when she deliberately equipped you, and that is in making some man happy."
"That is one of those superstitions I am trying to live down while I am still young. Your mother is unhappy, under all her pride, because she has outlived youth and beauty and all they meant to her—she made them her gods, and now they have gone, and she doesn't know which way to turn. Ennui devours her, and she is too old to turn her brains to account, too cynical for the average resource of religion, and too steeped, dyed, solidified, in one kind of womanism to turn at this late date to any other. But there are so many resources for the woman of to-day. The poor despised pioneers have done that for us. Of course it has not killed our natural instincts, and if I had not fallen in love when I did, no doubt I should still be looking about for an opportunity. It is my good-fortune that I was delivered so soon. I wish all women born to enjoy life in its variety could be freed of that terrible burden of sex as early as I was."
"I suppose you would like to rid men of it too."
"I do not waste any thought on men; so far as I have observed they are able to take care of themselves."
"A woman incapable of passion is neither more nor less than a failure."
"I have seen so many commonplace women capable of it! Look at Mrs. Haight and Paula."
"I never look at Mrs. Haight, but as for Mrs. Stone I can quite conceive that if she had better taste she would be almost charming. She embodies youth properly equipped."
"For reproduction, you mean. That is the reason that the silliest, the meanest, the most poisonous girl can always find a husband if she is healthy. It is no wonder that some of us want a new standard."
Gwynne laughed. "Schopenhauer suits you better when you are out on the marsh in rubber boots and a shooting-jacket. Do you realize that if you persist in this determination to camp permanently in the outer—and frigid—zone, you will never be the centre of a life drama? That, I take it, is what every woman desires most. You had a sort of curtain-raiser—to my mind, hardly that. First love is merely the more picturesque successor of measles and whooping-cough. In marriage it may develop into something worth while, but in itself amounts to nothing—except as material for poets. But the real drama—that is in the permanent relation. This relation is the motive power of the great known dramas of the world. Life is packed with little unheard of dramas of precisely the same sort—the eternal duet of sex; nothing else keeps it going. Now, it is positive that a woman cannot have a drama all by herself—"
"Not a drama in the old style. But that is what we are trying to avoid. Are there not other faculties? What has civilization done for the world if it is to be everlastingly sex-ridden? What is the meaning of this multitude of faculties that progress has developed? What is the meaning of life itself—"
"Oh, are you aiming to read the riddle of life?"
"I mean to pass my own life in the effort. Men have failed. It is our turn. But if I say any more I suppose you will pinch me again."
"No," said Gwynne, smiling. "I feel much more like kissing you—ah!"
He had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes blaze. His pipe was finished; he clasped his hands behind his head and almost lay down in his deep chair. "I am just tired enough to be completely happy, and if I can look at you I am willing to listen like a lamb all night."
"And be convinced of nothing." Isabel tossed her head and returned to her chair. It faced him and he could still look at her. They watched each other from opposite sides of the hearth with something of the unblinking wariness of a dog and a cat, and no doubt had they possessed caudal appendages they would have lashed them slowly.
"I don't say that," he replied, in a moment. "I believe I intimated that I came here to-night with a purpose. It was to tell you that I have thought more or less about what you said in the boat that morning, and that I can understand, if I cannot agree with you. No doubt the times have bred a certain class of women too good for mere matrimony. I have seen many that were miserably thrown away; although I will confess that the only remedy that occurred to me was a better man. But if you and your like—are there really any others?—if you, let us say, are groping towards some new solution of life, some happiness recipe that will benefit the few that deserve it, far be it from a mere man to—well—pinch you. You—you individually—have so many highly developed faculties that I can conceive your finding sufficient occupation through them, a filling up of time;—and no doubt idleness and the vain groping after sex happiness are the principal reasons for the failure of so many women. But work does not give happiness; it merely diminishes the capacity and opportunities for unhappiness. I take it that you, with all your gifts and the immense amount of thought you have bestowed on the subject, are striving for something higher than that. Besides, I had your lucid exposition of your mission. I now have an additional reason for remaining in California—to watch the new century plant flower. Like other commonplace mortals, however, my instincts fight for the only solution of happiness I know anything about. I still think that as the wife of some ambitious public man you would find a far better market for your gifts than to stand as a sort of statue of Independence on the top of Russian Hill with only San Francisco to admire. And if you passionately loved the man—"
"Now you are spoiling everything. But it is handsome of you to admit that I am not a fool; and that you have thought my theories worth turning over in your busy mind is a compliment I duly appreciate."
"Even a sneer cannot spoil your loveliness to-night, so I don't mind the sarcasm in the least. But it is true that in my few unoccupied intervals—as, for instance, when Imura Kisaburo Hinamoto is shaving me, and I have, by an excess of politeness, made sure that he will not cut my throat—I have had visions of you on that ungainly pedestal with all San Francisco kneeling at the base. It is quite conceivable. I am a born leader myself. I recognize certain attributes in you. The town is on the qui vive to know you. Mrs. Hofer is determined that you shall be the sensation of her ball, and no doubt that will be the commencement of your illustrious career. When you are really grown into your pedestal like one of Rodin's statues, you are certain to have a most illustrious and distinctive career—and accomplish much good. But you will be terribly lonely."
"I should not have time. And if I am a born leader, how, pray, could I yoke comfortably with any man? I should despise a slave, and the same roof will not shelter two leaders."
"I am not so sure of that, if both were working to the same end. It takes two halves to make a whole. If women have so far been the subordinate sex, no doubt it is merely the result of those physical disabilities which enabled man to gain the ascendency during the long centuries of struggle with nature. But your sex is rapidly altering all that. We shall see woman's suffrage in our time—and be better for it. I have never been opposed to it—and that is proof enough of the progress the idea has made, for I am arbitrary and masculine enough. Then—now, no doubt—women will be as much partners as wives, and I grant the relationship might be vastly more interesting than marriage in the old style. And I will even concede that it may be the only sort of marriage for a man of my type—with a pretty woman, of course; hanged if I could marry the finest woman in the world if she were ugly; and if this be true—if men really need women enough to make such a concession as I am making this moment, then I fancy that women will retain enough of their original generosity to meet our demands."
"You do not need any woman. In England I fancied that your mother meant a great deal to you, but I don't believe you have missed her at all—or that you will mourn when she returns to England. I was more than ready to take her place; you actually stirred my maternal instincts when you arrived, you looked so forlorn. But you spurned me, and now you have grown too independent even to illustrate your own theories."
"I did not spurn you. Some day I may tell you why I did not come to you in my dark hours, but not now."
"Why not now?"
"Because I do not choose to. And seductive as you look I am not to be made a fool of to gratify one of your whims—of which you are quite as full as the least emancipated woman I ever saw."
To this Isabel deigned no reply, and a silence ensued. She transferred her gaze to the fire, and her mind revolved in search of new arguments, but it was tired and worked slowly. She concluded to change the subject and offer to read him the article in the Review, so complimentary to himself; but she turned her head to discover that he was sound asleep.
She laughed, half vexed, half amused. Then she laid a rug lightly over his knees, and softly replenished the fire. The room was deliciously warm, her own chair very comfortable. She too fell asleep.
She was rudely awakened. Gwynne was shaking her by the shoulder, and his face was white with consternation.
"Good God!" he exclaimed. "Do you know what time it is? It is two o'clock! Why did you let me sleep? Those old tabbies—"
"They must be asleep too," said Isabel, indifferently. "Come out, and I will hold the lantern while you saddle Kaiser."
Mrs. Haight was hastily putting her parlor in order for the "Ten o'Clock Five Hundred Club." She was without a servant, having had four hired girls and three Japs in the past month; during the last three days she had cooked for herself and Mr. Haight, "done all the work," and attended seven card parties. Mr. Haight, who had not had his dinner the night before until nine o'clock, and whose steak this morning had been burned and his coffee muddy, had gone down-town in a huff, threatening to move to the hotel unless his wife found a servant or her sanity.
Mrs. Haight, who wore a red flannel wrapper trimmed with black lace, which she believed became her style, shook up the sofa-cushions on the divan, where she longed to receive her guests reclining in Oriental voluptuousness, but had never dared, and dusted the table as if she were slapping an enemy's face. The bed was not made, nor likely to be before night, and she too knew the penalties of burned steak and bad coffee, enhanced by the irritability of the insomniac. She had her redeeming virtues, no doubt; all have, even burglars and murderers, until they slip into the region of pathology; but this morning she looked and felt like a she-wolf; and few mammals are so dangerous, particularly a she-wolf that has never suckled young.
Her expected guests arrived promptly, glowing with the light dry cold, some wearing furs because they became the season, others thin cloth jackets over their shirt-waists. One had bundled herself into a broché shawl and "run over" hatless. Each, as she entered the parlor, cast a critical eye upon the silver spoon standing in lonely glory on the mantel-piece, and nodded or scowled, according to her bent. Mrs. Haight was far too cunning to detain them from the tables they fairly rushed at as the last member arrived, and it was not until they had "scrapped" and wrestled and stormed at and abused each other for at least two hours, not until their ugly passions were in full possession, and they threw down their cards with loud indignation that a substitute should be allowed "to compete for a prize, anyhow"—the substitute having won the spoon—that the hostess, with the peculiar slow fire in her eyes that marks the beast of prey in sight of its quarry, suddenly let it be understood that the high tension was to be relieved with a choice bit of scandal. It was some time since they had had one; propriety, like business honesty, being almost inevitable in a community little larger than a throne.
Mrs. Wheaton exclaimed: "Your eyes look like two burnt holes in a blanket, Minerva. What is it? Hurry up. I must run home and supervise a new Swede that speaks ten words of English. She asked me if I wanted young children for dinner. I suppose she meant chickens, but one never knows, and Anabel's babies are just over the fence."
"It's this, and it's no joking matter, Sarah Wheaton. I saw Mr. Gwynne pass this house at three o'clock this morning, and on Isabel Otis's horse. Now, I saw him going out to Old Inn,walkingbefore sundown. He had plenty of time to say what he had to say and get home at a decent hour—which is long before half-past ten, and that's what it's been many a night. This thing has become a scandal to the community, and I for one won't stand it any longer. Its downright immoral, and I'm not using too strong language purposely."
"Oh my!" exclaimed Dolly Boutts. "You could never make me believe anything against Isabel. He's studying terribly hard—the judge told pa—and likely as not has insomnia. Englishmen are so terribly dull to talk to I shouldn't wonder if it was hard work for them to learn anything."
"Insomnia!" cried Mrs. Haight. "I guess I have insomnia and I guess I know what I am talking about. What does a kid like you know of the wickedness of the world, or insomnia either? But this has gone just as far asIintend to permit it."
"It certainly looks very bad, very bad," muttered Mrs. Wheaton, whose own light eyes were glowing. "What steps shall you take, Minerva? Or what should you advise me to do? I am sorry I had forgotten the girl. I should have kept the eye on her that I intended."
"It's a matter for all, not for any one of us. I intend to bring it up at the Club Meeting this afternoon, and I expect you all to back me, for the thing's a disgrace to the community, and all our girls will be talked about. In my opinion the best thing to do is to tell her to leave and go and live in that hot-bed of wickedness, San Francisco."
"Why Minerva, you're a regular old Puritan witch-hunter!" exclaimed Mrs. Colton. "You never could make me believe that child had any harm in her—"
"It isn't what one believes. It's what is. I know. I've studied human nature. If I don't know anything else I know that. She'll get out of Rosewater, or I'll hit her in her weak spot. I'll write her up for the San FranciscoIlluminator. They'd give hundreds, and they can have it for nothing—"
"Why, Minerva Haight, I'm ashamed of you!" cried Mrs. Colton. "It's like persecution, and you have no proof. Why should you know more of the world than we do, I'd like to know?"
"I do, that's all. And I don't see her doing every mortal thing she wants, while others have to walk a chalked line through life. It's all or none. That's my creed. She'll soon wilt when she sees we mean business—either go, or take a chaperon, or marry the man, whichever she prefers. I don't care, so long as she ain't allowed to do as she pleases and no questions asked and no penalty paid. But she'll knuckle, for it's my opinion she's just making money to spend it in San Francisco—cut a dash there like her mother did before her. Probably wants to become a society leader and have a string of lovers. Nice product to hail from Rosewater. I think she ought to be sent back to Europe where they don't mind such goings on. The things you do read about the English aristocracy! It's my opinionthatLady Victoria ain't any better than she should be. She looks it—and through us, just as if we were window-panes."
"You are real crude, Minerva," said Mrs. Colton, crushingly, as she rose to go. "I thought Rosewater was near enough to the metropolis for us not to be as provincial as some folks farther up the line, who haven't the same advantages."
"I guess we're all crude enough, if it comes to that," retorted Mrs. Haight. "I'd like to know what's cruder than a man's staying at a girl's house till two o'clock in the morning—and for all the high and mighty way he carries himself—and him the born image of Hi Otis. It's too ridiculous. I'd like to bring him down several pegs, too."
"He bears only the most distant resemblance to Hi Otis," said Mrs. Colton, indignantly. "I never could endure Hi; he didn't have the manners of a car-conductor, and this young man's real polite and kind, besides having amuchmore high-toned face. I don't believe you can run him out, either. He looks the kind to stay or go, just as suits him. And I'd advise you to think this matter over before you give it publicity. I might go out and speak to Isabel quietly—"
"Not much she don't get off as easy as that!"
Mrs. Wheaton nodded approvingly. "It's a case for the Club," said she. "We'll talk it out this afternoon and decide what's best to do."
And all the others, save Mrs. Colton and the loyal Dolly, cordially agreed with her.
The Rosewater Literary, Political, and Improvement Club met on the first and fourth Thursdays of the month, in a large room on the top floor of the Town Hall, and across the corridor from the Public Library. Saving only the business section of Rosewater, rejuvenated by the fruitful Leghorn, there was no such centre of activity within forty miles. Rosewater, once as disreputable as San Francisco in the Fifties, now contributed but an occasional drunkard or burglar to the languid powers on the first floor of the Town Hall. The reading public was largely confined to young girls with the taste for romance fresh on the palate. The new books wandered in a year after the rest of the world had forgotten them, and rarely in couples. One copy was quite able to quench the thirst for "keeping up," and was often read aloud in the intervals between cards. The standard works were well represented, however, and a reasonable amount of history. "All Rosewater's good for," quoth one of the biting wits of St. Peter, "is to die in. If you're born there people never forget it; it sticks to you like a strawberry mark on the end of your nose. And if you live there you might as well be dead, anyhow." Rosewater retorted that if St. Peter had a better library it was because she had nothing else to do than read, and, for all its court-house, was nothing but a suburb of Rosewater, anyway; or at the best a mere headquarters for drummers.
On the afternoon following Mrs. Haight's card-party the large sunny room with its outlook upon marsh and hill was filled promptly at two o'clock; for the word had flown about town that Minerva Haight was on the war-path and that the scalp she pursued was Isabel Otis's. The President, as she rapped for order, betrayed no ruffling of the humorous imperturbability that had made her a power in Rosewater. Mrs. Leslie, although of "the old Southern set" of San Francisco, had none of the external elegances of Mrs. Wheaton, Mrs. Boutts and Dolly, or even of her own daughter. She was generally to be seen in a rusty black frock and bonnet, a pair of eye-glasses in black frames bestriding the bridge of her nose. But her eyes were very black and bright, her mouth was as firm as it was kind and humorous. Beside her sat the Treasurer, Mrs. Wheaton, whom Mrs. Leslie understood as thoroughly as she did every member of the flock that was really hers, although in matters of mere society she disdained to lead it. Mrs. Wheaton, for all her petty airs and evil-scenting profile, was really a woman of high ideals. Her severity to others was due to the secret knowledge that these ideals were beyond her personal accomplishment, and the satisfaction to be derived from audibly rating the failings of her neighbors. Her highest ideal was self-control, particularly in relation to the weaknesses of the flesh; but after a period of stern abstinence, she indulged inordinately in oysters, fried chicken with cream gravy, and ice-cream with cocoanut cake; and sipped a night-cap upon retiring. Her passion for cards had long since routed her will; but she intended to reform wholly in time, for she walked in fear of the Lord. If she judged the young harshly, she persuaded herself that she had only their well-being at heart. She was one of the pillars of the church and gave liberally to its support.
Mrs. Haight, who, as we have seen, enjoyed one of those purely fortuitous reputations for cleverness, was Secretary of the combined wings of the Club, and sat on Mrs. Leslie's left. Mrs. Wheaton's portly person was sheathed in purple velvet, and there were handsome strings between two of her chins, but Mrs. Haight wore a battered hat of Neapolitan straw bedecked with a ragged bunch of carnations. It sat on one side of her ill-kept head, giving her a singularly rakish and definite appearance. She was furthermore attired in an old Paisley shawl belonging to her grandmother—what better way to advertise a grandmother?—over a blue alpaca frock made by her own unskilful fingers. Mr. Haight was the most prosperous druggist in Rosewater, but his wife had sounding virtues.
The other members of the Club, some sixty in number, were as variously dressed as became their pockets or proclivities, decently for the most part, for there was no poverty in Rosewater. Mrs. Leslie took no notice of the charged atmosphere, but proceeded to business as methodically as if engaged in her morning housekeeping. The minutes of the last meeting were read by Mrs. Haight, in the cultivated tones of one who had recited upon the stage of her youth, "Curfew shall not ring to-night," and "The Wreck of the Hesperus." The huskily strident voice trembled slightly, but she read several pages of foolscap without a break, and finished with a flourish. Then Mrs. Leslie, in spite of scraping chairs, asked Mrs. Colton, Chairman of the Improvement Inspection Committee to read her report on the condition of the new concrete pavements, of several homesick palm-trees in the public squares, and on the prospect of removing tin cans and soda-water bottles from the picnic grounds. This resort was near the marsh, and it was the pet project of the ladies of Rosewater to extend it into a boulevard as far as Point Santiago, so that "public picnickers" should find an additional reason for spending their money in Rosewater, and extend the fame of the town. They had endeavored to extract the funds from their stingy lords by private subscription, failing an appeal to the City Fathers, who found other uses for the public funds; but even the civic Mr. Boutts was not ready for such an outlay. The women—who had accomplished so much, having literally transformed Rosewater from a broken-down pioneer country town into one of the prettiest spots in California—had by no means despaired; and when Mrs. Colton finished her report, Mrs. Leslie remarked:
"Our boulevard may be nearer than you think. Mr. Gwynne has conceived a project for reclaiming the marsh-lands, and converting them, by means of levees and those tremendous dredges and pumps, into arable land—like the reclaimed islands of the San Joaquin River; and has persuaded Tom Colton to present a bill to that effect at the next meeting of the legislature—asking for an appropriation for the levees, at least. He has himself promised a handsome contribution for the boulevard, convinced that it will add materially to the wealth and importance of the town. He has even talked over Mr. Boutts—an important conversion"—nodding smilingly at Mrs. Boutts—"and Isabel Otis, who has forty-five acres of marsh, has promised that if the bill goes through she will also contribute a thousand dollars. She not only realized at once that the boulevard would bring more capital to Rosewater, but she means to sow the reclaimed land with asparagus—and we all know the profit in that. Her attitude and comprehension of the matter have gratified me extremely, almost as much as her continued residence in Rosewater after all her fine experiences abroad; to say nothing of engaging personally in a lucrative business instead of playing with it and leaving the actual work to dishonest help. She is an example I wish more of our young women would follow. But as regards Mr. Gwynne: I think he deserves a vote of thanks. He comes here a total stranger with an immense estate, from which he could derive a sufficient income for his pleasures, and he has already devoted a considerable amount of his time and splendid mental abilities to the welfare of this little town. A few of our older men have some public spirit, an idea or two beyond lining their pockets, but we do not boast a single young man who cares whether we have camellias or cabbages in the public squares. I feel sure that Mr. Gwynne will supply this deficiency and be a host in himself. I have talked with him several times, and he has said, in so many words, that as he intends to make this county his home he purposes to accomplish something in the way of general improvement. This means that he will, for my husband says that he not only has remarkable mind and will, but that he is a young man of incorruptible honor—and I know of no combination that we need more. So, ladies, I propose that we pass a vote of thanks to Mr. Gwynne, thus not only showing our appreciation of his interest, but securing his friendship for the Club."
Mrs. Haight rose, sallow and trembling. She felt her sails flapping about her, but none the less was she determined to reach her goal if she had to get out and swim. She knew the President well enough to control the hissing of her venom, but as she turned to address the chair she found it impossible to imbue her tones with the suavity proper in a baleful counsel for the prosecution.
"Mrs. President, Ladies!" she began, clearing her throat. "Before passing a vote of thanks to Mr. Gwynne I think it my duty to ask you dispassionately if you really think he is a person from whom we can afford to receive favors. And above all, if Isabel Otis should be permitted any sort of contact with the Club she has scornfully refused to join. That is not the point, however. The point is that I maintain that neither of them is fit for respectable people to associate with." She felt that her summary was precipitate, and drawing herself up defiantly looked hard at Mrs. Leslie. The President was regarding her impassively.
"Why not?" she asked.
"Because! As you force me to say it, Mr. Gwynne is out at Old Inn until all hours of the night. I have seen him riding home as late as half-past ten again and again. And I happen to know that beforethatLady Victoria came, they were practically alone in the house on Russian Hill one whole night. Mrs. Filkins, as you know, lives on Taylor Street, and she saw Paula Stone pass her house in the afternoon looking as mad as a hornet—she was sure she wasn't going back, and found out afterwards that she hadn't; and she saw Mr. Gwynne come down those steps at seven o'clock the next morning—going to catch the seven-thirty boat—looking as pleased with himself as Punch. But I might have stood all that for a while yet; I might have given Isabel the benefit of the doubt, since she hadaskedPaula to chaperon her, and might have found out too late that she had gone—for she was gallivanting herself all day; I might have overlooked his staying so often till ten-thirty—although I maintain that an unmarried girl living alone on a ranch without even female help is a disgrace to any community—yes, I might have swallowed that for a while longer; but this morning—at three o'clock—I saw—with my own eyes, ladles—Mr. Gwynne riding home from Old Inn on Isabel Otis's sorrel horse Kaiser. Now I, for one, don't stand for such goings on. I propose that instead of passing a vote of thanks to Mr. Gwynne we pass a resolution tocutboth of them, and show them what a decent community is."
She sat down in her flounces, and Mrs. Wheaton rose and seconded the motion. The others looked rather frightened, although alert and interested, and Mrs. Colton rose hastily and proposed that before putting such a momentous question to the vote, the whole matter should be thoroughly investigated.
"We must also have the advice of our President," she added. "For my part, although I do not approve of young unmarried women living alone, still I cannot believe such dreadful things of anybody, let alone Isabel Otis. I am glad Anabel is not here. She would never listen to any insinuation against Isabel, and might be tempted to disrespect of her elders."
"And you, Mrs. Boutts?" asked the President.
"As a woman of the world I have not that implicit faith in human nature that some people are still so happy as to cherish. My daughter—who refused to come to-day, knowing the subject to be discussed—is indignant at these reports; but of course she is a mere child, and very much fascinated by Miss Otis. I do not by any means approve of the drastic methods proposed by Mrs. Haight—I should hope that California had takensomeof the old puritanical spirit out of us—but I do think that Miss Otis should be given to understand that she cannot import European fashions into Rosewater, and that she must have a chaperon. Let her feel that she has acted unwisely, at the very least, by not inviting her to any of the young people's gatherings in the future."
"As there are no more except for card-playing, and as she has recently been the only hostess at an evening party the town has boasted for two years, your virtuous wrath bids fair to blow past her unheeded. Mrs. Plews, will you address us?"
Mrs. Plews was the wife of the pastor of the aristocratic Episcopalian church, a pretty fluffy young woman, who visited the sick and made excellent ice-cream for the church festivals. "Oh, I don't know!" she exclaimed, deprecatingly. "It is all too dreadful! I no longer regret that Miss Otis does not come to church. I had thought of remonstrating with her once more—but when I recalled the last time! Now, it is indeed well that she has not been associating with our young folks. I am sorry this was not known before her party; I must really talk to Mr. Plews before I can say anything further."
"Mrs. Toffitt, I am sure that you have something to say—and an opinion of your own."
Mrs. Toffitt, a buxom highly colored woman of forty, who, since her husband's death, the year before, had continued his business—a general feed store—with striking success, and who was one of the most popular women in Rosewater, with her abounding good-nature, her high spirits, and her utter independence of speech, sprang to her feet.
"I have this to say," she cried. "For a lot of puritanical, prying, spying, detestable old hens, we take the cake. Isabel Otis minds her own business. Why, in heaven's name, can't we mind ours? Does she owe anybody anything? Has she taken anybody's beau away? Anybody's husband? Does she walk the streets doing nothing but show herself, or go buggy riding with one fellow after another? Does she ever refuse money for charity, or for our improvements when it's asked of her? Was she a credit to the town with her record at the High School, or wasn't she? Are we proud of her travels in Europe, her high-toned connections, her business sense, the way she acted to that old reprobate of a father, or ain't we? That's what I want to know. And she's got real intellect instead of just the average American brightness; that's the secret of the whole trouble. What if she does sit up all night talking to a man who's got something besides chickens and dollars in his head? I'd do the same if I had the chance. Just make a note of that. If Mr. Gwynne likes to transfer his attentions to me I'll sit up all night right on Minerva Haight's doorstep, and talk about any old thing he wants. If I was as young and handsome as Isabel Otis I'd keep the best man going to myself, bet your life on it! And I repeat, it's nobody's business." She whirled upon the pallid Minerva with a flaming face. "Nice business you're in—sitting at your window all night watching for other people's slips. You'd make one fast enough if the Lord would let you, and that's what's the matter with you. Now, put that in your pipe and smoke it."
She sat down amid much laughter and applause. Mrs. Leslie rapped vigorously for order, although her mouth was twitching.
"Now, ladies," she said, suavely, "if you have all relieved your minds I will say a few words. First of all, I wish to state that I shall refuse to put the matter to a vote. It is a question that does not come within the jurisdiction of the Club, which was not organized to supervise morals as well as streets and sewers. You can all act towards Isabel and Mr. Gwynne exactly as your consciences dictate, but for my own part, I have this to say: I am astonished to find that the Club life, a life which women the world over have prided themselves upon as the greatest factor in broadening and elevating that their sex has ever known, seems to have done, in our case at least, so little to eradicate certain Oriental instincts and traditions. The cities are full of young women living alone, and self-supporting. Why should not a girl have the same privilege in the country? Because she is handsome and distinguished? I fancy that a good many girls in analogous circumstances are passing unnoticed. I have not the least doubt that a very respectable percentage of very respectable young women, living alone in their city flats, sit up late and talk to men that are interesting enough to keep them awake. I am quite sure that were I young in these emancipated times I should take full advantage of them. And emancipated is what we pretend to be—although the word itself is somewhat outmoded; a healthy sign, proving that we are no longer labelled. And if that does not mean personal liberty, freedom from the old ridiculous restrictions that were an insult to womanhood itself, what does it mean? It is a part of our mission to make woman as free and independent and happy as men, and without the slightest danger to the old high moral standards; for no woman that has had it in her to go wrong ever waited for the permission of her own sex. We are, in fact, we Club Women, the great sieve that separates the wheat from the chaff; the chaff has no more use for us than we have for it, and we are too wise in our own sex to waste any time on it. The women that were born to be the playthings of men are in a class apart—to be dealt with, to be sure, by Societies organized for and experienced in that purpose; and we have not even considered them in the stupendous effort we have made to secure the freedom of the higher order of women from the old miserable social thralldoms. And what we have accomplished is historic.
"I have seen extraordinary changes in my time. When I was young a woman was an old maid at twenty-five. There was no appeal. To-day there are no old maids. Twenty years ago, in that old exclusive set of San Francisco led by Mrs. Yorba, Mrs. Montgomery, and for a little while by poor Mary Belmont, it was almost unheard of for a girl of the better class to walk alone on the street. If a man joined her the city fermented. Now, what with the influx of all these new people, the social laws have been modified to such an extent that my old friends must turn in their graves; although, of course, and very properly, a certain amount of chaperonage for young society girls is still demanded. But it is a mere harness of flowers, worn as a sort of a joke for most of the people in society to-day have flown upward on happy golden wings from strata where as much was known of chaperons as the American newspapers know about handling British titles. But, for my part, I find the whole change a vast improvement. Nothing could be duller than a girl's life in my time. And if society—the world of mere fashion—has broadened, how much more should be expected of us, who are the vanguard of our sex? who have set out to free women from every sort of senseless bondage they had endured for centuries, and no more from the tyranny of the physically stronger sex than through their own silliness and cowardice.
"We are struggling to enfranchise our sex. We would like to try our hand at regulating the affairs of the nation. Here, in these smaller towns, all over the country, we have proved a far greater power for improvements of all sorts than men. Rosewater owes to us, and to us alone, its beautifully paved and shaded streets—we have no difficulty in remembering what a barren mud-hole it was—the trees that shade the poor horses at the hitching-rails; the beautiful squares, the tropical plants and trees, the improved sewerage system, the cleanliness of the marsh border, everything in fact that has transformed Rosewater from a mere set of roofs and walls into a delightfully habitable town. Moreover, we have raised both the moral and the intellectual tone, for although I at least have always discouraged too much interest in people's private affairs, the higher interests, and the increased intimacy among women, have done much to keep them out of mischief. Until this card fever descended upon the town, it was generally regarded as occupying a high place among communities of its size. Cards, however, I regard as a passing madness; it merely means that even yet we have not enough to do.
"And—so it seems!—in spite of all that we have accomplished, in spite of our long and ofttimes disheartening struggle to lift ourselves above the average female woman, we are as ready to tear reputations to pieces as ever, to judge by mere appearances, to discount general character and behavior, to forget our ideals and give unlicensed rein to the mean and detestable qualities we still cherish in common with the mass of unenlightened women. I do not assert that I have never heard gossip from men; but it has always been from the men that spend their lives in Club windows, never from men that had some better way of filling their time. From my husband I have never heard a scurrilous word of any one, and he has a temper of his own, too. Now, so far as I can make out, we have not only been trying to usurp the time-honored prerogatives of men, but to attain their highest standards. While I deprecate violence of statement, I am inclined to agree with Mrs. Toffitt that a woman belonging to this Club, a Club which stands high in the Club life of the State, should have something better to do than to spend the night at her window spying on her neighbors. If she cannot sleep she can improve her mind or sew for the poor. If a man engaged in such nefarious night work and brazenly admitted it, I will venture to say that his Club, or his Lodge, at all events, would ask for his resignation. It would be quite in order with our avowed principles that we reprimanded Mrs. Haight instead of Miss Otis, but we will let the matter pass this time with a mere hint. One point is, by-the-way, that the latter not being a member of the Club it would be the height of impertinence to take her to task. But in any case I personally refuse even to consider the question of anything being otherwise with her than it should be. There is, no doubt, some wholly commonplace explanation of Mr. Gwynne's passing through Rosewater on her horse this morning. As for their constant companionship, what more natural? They are closely related, and she has been a very necessary sister to him. Nevertheless, I shall make it my unpleasant business to tell her that we are still the same old females, still incapable of conceiving of aught but one relationship between unmarried members of opposite sexes, that our imaginations and our positive knowledge of life are alike undeveloped. Then she can take a chaperon or not as she pleases. She will always be welcome in my house; and as for my daughter, she will only laugh at this tempest of her elders in a tea-pot. That is all I have to say."
She finished amid much applause, some shamefaced, some hearty, but there were a number of lowering brows. When adjournment was declared a few moments later, she left at once, but the others remained to talk the matter over. The ingrained love of finding our sister worse than ourselves is not to be eradicated by a few years of Club life, and although the majority decided that Mrs. Leslie was quite in the right, several announced their intention to cut Isabel Otis. There was no informal resolution taken to ignore the matter, and, on the whole, Mrs. Haight went home with her crest up, and Mrs. Wheaton fasted for three days.
Mrs. Leslie was a brave woman, but when the judge suggested that it would be better for him to talk the matter over with Gwynne, obtain his explanation, and delicately hint the attitude of the town, she was nothing loath to renounce her mission. "The dear child," the friends of her mother all remembered, had once possessed a temper that only the peculiar circumstances of her life had chastened, and they had an uneasy suspicion that it still smouldered beneath the well-bred insolence with which she had so far received much friendly advice.
By this time—mid-December was nigh—the judge and Gwynne had discussed many subjects besides the law. Mrs. Leslie, whose hospitable instincts were too deep to be blighted even by the servant question, had placed a room at Gwynne's disposal to be used when it rained, or he talked so late with the judge that the long ride home was not worth while. He dined with them several times a week, and found both these simple old-fashioned people delightful. And with Judge Leslie, alone of all his neighbors, could he discuss the affairs of the great world, get away from the politics and the small local interests that absorbed every other man in Rosewater. Moreover, Judge Leslie was well acquainted with his past career and often manifested a keen desire for details. Gwynne was not sure that these lapses were good for him, but certainly it was pleasant, stretched out there by the big fireplace in an old room full of books, English for the most part, to talk of himself and his achievements. Isabel rarely referred to his past, never encouraged him to talk about it. His mother had become as silent as a mummy; old man Colton might have lost his memory, and for Tom Colton British politics had no existence.
But Judge Leslie understood and had much sympathy for his pupil—possibly believed in the virtue of the safety-valve. Certainly Gwynne invariably went to bed after these long talks content in mind and body; and the next day he was far too busy to trot out his ego and sit down with it. And his mind at least was happy in its new sense of expansion and acquisition, its increasing and developing powers. His studies had the further effect of moderating the purely personal viewpoint of the United States that had tormented him, and of enabling him to withdraw far enough to command glimpses of the New World as a great abstraction. And his contacts with the strange medley of small farmers and mechanics, with local politicians in back offices and saloons, even his acquaintance with the San Franciscans that were attempting to reclaim that bawdy borough, did not affect the universal idea he had at last succeeded in focussing. He had cast out disgust and disapproval as youthful and unphilosophical, resolved anew to play his part in the history of the country, letting the unborn events of his term of enforced quiescence determine what the part must be. He had not yet reached the stage of enthusiasm, but he had at least mounted to that of interest; and he had even caught himself wondering if, should a law pass in Great Britain, reducing the House of Peers to an elective body, or permitting peers of his grade to sit in the House of Commons, he would return? There was little doubt that there was more good to be accomplished in the new country.
His English great-great-grandfather had been historically active in the reforms of 1832; a great-uncle had devoted his services to the passing of the Reform Act of 1867; and a cousin to the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883. Reform was in his blood, and as, after all, the United States was as much his own as Great Britain, he hoped in time to feel for it the same passion of affection he had cherished for the country that had given him fame and honors with both hands. And he knew that his other hope of being of practical service to the United States in accordance with his own ideal was no idle dream, for it was quite apparent from the newspapers and reviews that the best men all over the country were awake at last to the perils besetting the Republic, and that a bloodless revolution was slowly making its way over the country. He had unmitigated contempt for the revolutionist of the red shirt, insatiable for the notoriety so easily obtained by appealing to the passions of men a shade more ignorant than himself; no blood revolution was possible in the United States during its present condition of prosperity. No country can be universally roused to revolt with any weapons more deadly than words until it has long felt the pinch of hunger in its vitals, and watched millions starve while hundreds consumed the fat of the land. No doubt there was grinding poverty in the crowded tenement districts of the Eastern States, but those men were not the stuff of which revolutionists were made, if only because they deliberately elected the rigors of the town rather than supply the crying demand for labor and servants throughout the country. It was only the idle that foregathered and talked anarchism or even socialism; not those that cared to work.
Here in California there was practically no such thing as poverty, or if there was, the pauper, if fairly able of body, should be set up in a public pillory. With a scale of wages the highest in the world, a corresponding cheapness of every necessity of life, with the bare exception of coal, needed in excess during one short season of the twelve-month, sun for eight unbroken months, and a soil so fertile that in many places it yielded two crops a year, there would have been no discontent had it not been for the rapacity of labor unions, and the systematic agitations of men like Tom Colton. In every human heart there is the germ of discontent, no matter what the conditions, but Gwynne recognized the possibility of diverting this uneasy parasite from imaginary personal grievances to the public good, to measures which would benefit the mass, subtly elevating man's opinion of himself in the process, and so taking the first long stride in the direction of general political reform. It was only by making the masses see their own part in the abominable political corruption that made "graft" universal, and permitted the rapid concentration of the country's wealth into a few insolent hands, that the decapitation of the swarms of professional politicians could be accomplished. In no part of the United States could such reforms be attempted with anything like the same prospect of success, as in this State with its traditions of contempt of money for its own sake, and its almost primeval sense of independence. It was true that there was no superb indifference to money in the small towns, but much of the old spirit lingered among those that lived close to the soil; and Gwynne had never seen such uncalculating lavishness, such a humorous contempt for economy as in San Francisco. He was himself generous by instinct and habit, but this gay reckless openhandedness, whether a man had anything to spend or not, had already stirred some deeper instinct still, possibly his pioneer, perhaps his Spanish, and he had never enjoyed anything more in his life than certain nights in San Francisco, when he had sallied forth with his pockets full of gold and returned to Russian Hill on foot for want of a five-cent piece to pay his car-fare. He had himself too well in hand ever to give permanent rein to any such latent propensities, and he had no intention of impoverishing himself, but the fact that the genius of the city was in his blood warmed it to the strange, fascinating, wicked, friendly, young-old city on the rim of the Pacific.
As it happened, he was not in the humor for reading on the morning after the meeting of the female clans, nor were there any clients in the outer office, and he uttered some of his impressions aloud to the judge who was sitting restlessly by the window, ostensibly watching Main Street. Gwynne had wondered at the old gentleman's sudden idleness, but fell easily into conversation this languid morning that was more like spring than belated winter.
"I can understand the fascination of San Francisco for anybody," said the uneasy judge. "I wonder—" with a sudden inspiration, "if it wouldn't be better for you to go into the law-office of a friend of mine down there for a while. I mean—" in response to Gwynne's look of astonishment, "of course I should hate to lose you—quite as much as I hated to lose my own son, and yours is the only society in which I have found any positive refreshment for years. But—well! in fact it would be as well for you to leave Rosewater for a while—until all this talk has died out."
"What talk?"
The judge felt what courage was left in him oozing under Gwynne's icy stare.
"Oh Lord! It's just this, Gwynne—just fancy I am really your father. There are a lot of infernal old hens in this town—where don't they roost, anyway?—and they have been exercising themselves over your going out to Isabel's so much, especially at night. They've got the idea into their empty heads that Isabel has come back from Europe, where she lived by herself, with all sorts of free-and-easy notions. Perhaps the real truth is that they distrust any girl as handsome as that who won't marry. The talk didn't amount to much until yesterday morning—"
"Ah!" Gwynne stood up and took his hat from the little private rack. "Suppose you ask Mrs. Leslie to tell the hens that I have spent a great many futile evening hours, the only ones I have at my private disposal, trying to induce Miss Otis to marry me, and that yesterday evening, after the fourth or fifth refusal, I borrowed her horse, having walked out, and rode half-way to San Francisco to steady my nerves. Love and the law combined are somewhat of a load to carry. I will go out now and try my luck again. Perhaps this talk will influence her a bit. In fact I promise that it shall."