Chapter XX: Part III (2)

It was on the tip of Gwynne's tongue to ask him bluntly what corporation he had in mind, but not only did his already boiling humor recoil from the indignity of a deliberately worded bribe, but he doubted if it would be proffered so early in the game. He had a very clever man to deal with; it was not likely he would make the mistake of a direct approach. Gwynne flattered himself that he looked as ingenuous as Tom Colton, but as he had seen through the complacent judge, it was possible that the judge might entertain suspicions of a man with his reputation. He was glad he had not spoken when his visitor rose abruptly to his feet.

"Bless my soul!" he exclaimed. "I shall miss my train if I don't hurry. And heaven forbid that I spend another night in this mud-hole. My address is on my card--when do you come down again?"

"There is a lecture at Berkeley on Wednesday--"

"Good! Now, you will dine with me next Wednesday night--and I hope on many other nights. We must have several long talks--and all about your future, young man. I am too old to talk about my own, but I remember what I was at your age. Tactful, hey? But no," dropping his voice gravely. "I want to help you. And I can. Whatever branch of the law you specialize upon, you must leave Rosewater and come to San Francisco. I can place you in an office--even should you decide upon general practice--that will carry you swifter and further than our reform friend can, because he is playing a losing game--a losing game, sir. But we'll talk of all that later. I must hasten."

Gwynne escorted him to the head of the staircase, where he resisted an impulse to kick him down, then, after a hasty glance into the dictionary, encased himself in rubber and went up the hill to the home of Judge Leslie. He was to dine there, and it was but a quarter-past four, but what he had to say and ask would not keep for an hour and three-quarters.

IV

On his way to the house he decided that he could not confide even to Judge Leslie that he had been singled out as likely spoil by the "grafters." No doubt that in a way it was a compliment to his abilities, this early-conceived determination to whisk him out of the reform field and engross his abilities, killing two birds with one stone. Probably he would be approached in a similar manner very often, until he became a definite quantity, and in time would grow accustomed to it; and callous. But at present he was hot and sickened, the more so as he felt that he had received a new impulse to believe in himself. These vast corporations--the railroad, street railways, lighting, and telephone companies, were the ones that dictated to San Francisco, and were supposed to have debauched the Board of Supervisors, all of them small laborers, elevated by the Boss to serve his ends--counted their capital by the millions; in one case, at least, by the hundred million. They had already bought much of the best talent in the country, and they wasted no time on the second-rate. Gwynne could easily guess in whose teeming and orderly brain the scheme to seduce and attach himself had been shaped, and, with the American contempt for the perspicacity of any foreigner, had selected this judge, with his breezy direct tactful manner, as certain to edge the newcomer into the fold. To Gwynne the only saving grace in the whole interview was that he had not been tempted. Had he been he should have felt utterly demoralized, disposed to take himself at the valuation of the business-like unsentimental brains in power.

He found his judge awakening from a nap before his library fire and dusting the crumbs from his beard.

"This is an unexpected pleasure," the old gentleman began, then stopped short. "What is the matter?" he asked, anxiously. "Sit down."

"What does indigenate mean?"

"Why--a purely technical term for citizenship."

"A friend of yours called upon me to-day, on the strength of having known the Otises, and remarked that it was a pity I was ever discharged from my American indigenate."

"That you renounced American citizenship upon coming of age. It is a pity."

"But I remember doing no such thing. I did no such thing. I certainly should remember it."

"You mean that you made no formal act of renunciation of your American birthright, obtained no certificate of British nationality?"

"I did nothing of the sort. It is possible that my father did it for me--"

"Your father could do nothing." Judge Leslie was staring at him. Suddenly he laughed. "You _are_ British! I am almost inclined to believe you hopeless. How did I get the impression that you had formally expatriated yourself? From Isabel, who, no doubt, woman-like, jumped at the conclusion--having known you when you were more British still. And you never brought up the subject--"

"Don't regard me as wholly an idiot. I read the Constitution of the United States half a dozen times while making up my mind to come here, and it is not likely that Article XIV.--'All persons born in the United States, etc., are citizens of the United States, etc.'--escaped me. I consulted my solicitor, and he read me from some chapter on Expatriation, as plainly as may be, that the forfeiture of native citizenship was accomplished not only by a formal act of renunciation, but followed a long severance with the relations of the government under which the person was born, or--acceptance of service under a foreign government. Considering that I had left the United States when I was five weeks old, and had fought and bled for Great Britain, besides serving in her Parliament--where, of course I took my oath of allegiance--and that I had been an Englishman to every possible intent and purpose, even wearing my titles for some weeks, it seemed to me--and to my solicitor--that I would have rather a hard time obtaining an American passport."

The judge nodded. "Quite right. All the same, I can't understand why your father did not bring the question up when you attained your majority, or why you, an ardent Britisher, did not think of it yourself."

"You would understand if you lived among us for a few years. In the first place my being born in the United States was such a mere incident that it was rarely mentioned, and then in the most casual manner. I don't suppose my mother ever volunteered a piece of information in her life, and my father rarely gave a thought to any matter but sport. My grandfather probably disliked the idea--he detested America--at all events he never alluded to the subject, and was far too British to dream that the child of British parents could be other than British were he born in heaven itself. I don't think the matter had entered my mind for ten years, when the subject came up the first night of Isabel's visit to Capheaton--and I stupefied every one by announcing that I had been born in America; but otherwise it made no impression upon them. It is quite possible that had there been any prospect of my becoming the heir, when I reached my majority, some member of the family would have recalled the fact of my birthplace; but Zeal was well then, his wife was bearing children rapidly, there was every reason to suppose she would have half a dozen boys. Do you mean to say that I have never been an Englishman?"

"Oh, you are all right as far as the British law goes. And you were a good and bona fide British subject for thirty years. Don't feel any discouragement on that score."

"Then am I an American citizen? Is there to be no long period of waiting and of comparative inaction?"

"I am not so sure. There is no provision of the Constitution so open to various construction. And none has been so variously construed. I could cite a hundred instances--that is, I could read them to you to-morrow. But I recall two, and they are fair samples. One child, born in the United States, of French parents, returned to France, and after serving his term in the French army wished to become an American citizen, and obtained his passport without difficulty. A full-grown American citizen went to Mexico and fought for Maximilian, and lost not only his own citizenship, but that of his children, who had been born in the United States. There you are, and there you are again, as dear old Dickens would say. But I must think a minute." He transferred his gaze to the coals, and was silent for a few moments.

"There is a pretty strong case on both sides," he resumed, in a musing tone. "You left this country when an infant, you practically forgot it, you entered the service of Great Britain heart and soul, and achieved high distinction. You inherited a title and wore it as a matter of course. For thirty years you never set foot on American soil, nor at any time demanded the protection of the United States, as you might easily have done in your foreign wanderings. There is hardly a doubt that if England had gone to war with us at any time during the last ten years and needed your services you would have given them. However, that contingency did not arise, so let it pass. But with an unsympathetic State Department and an active enemy or two, all the other points cited would make up as clear a case of voluntary expatriation as any on record. But there is a pretty good balance on the other side. You _were_ born in the United States, you _did not_ renounce at any time your allegiance, you have the blood of two Presidents in your veins, and--here is the important point: you have been one of the heaviest tax-payers in California for thirty-two years. Now, as I have intimated, these expatriation cases have all been decided on their individual merits. I should advise you to go at once to Washington, and enlist the influence of the British Ambassador to get you personal and private interviews with the powers that be. Then plead your own case. One of two things will happen. Either there will be much hemming and hawing, and much virtuous and judicial weighing of your peculiar case, article by article, or the President himself will decide one way or another off-hand--he being what he is. For that reason I think it would be well to approach him by degrees, let him digest it a bit. He may be delighted that you have thrown over your titles and your brilliant and promising career to become an American citizen, invite you to take the oath of allegiance forthwith, and order the State Department to issue a passport. On the other hand he may fly off at a tangent and be righteously indignant that a man with the blood of the Otises and Adamses in him, who had the good-fortune to be born on American soil, hesitated a moment after reaching man's estate--more particularly that he never gave the matter a thought. Nothing could be more problematical. I wouldn't bet a twenty-dollar gold piece either way. But, I repeat, you must go yourself. Otherwise the affair would hang on interminably. Moreover, you must tell no one the object of your journey. Tom Colton would pull every wire within his reach, and he is no mean rival, to postpone your admission to citizenship, and so, I fancy, would others."

He shot a keen glance at Gwynne. "I think I know who your visitor was, to-day, and what he came to Rosewater for. That speech of yours, and its effect on the crowd, never escaped the attention of the party bosses, and of course you are a marked man in this small community--to say nothing of your intimacy with the reform set in town. The judge, who started somewhere in this neighborhood as a poor boy, rose from various minor situations to be the secretary of Colton's bank, saved his dimes and studied law. So far so good; the average self-made American. The law leads a good many of us into politics and it wasn't long leading him. He was an invaluable party man, with that bluff honest exterior, that superabundant magnetism, and that twinkling eye. The world always associates a fine upright nature with a twinkling eye. I have one myself and I believe that is the main reason why I have always been afraid to do wrong. Well, our friend got the bench when he wanted it, and he has been a mighty good friend to the corporation that put him there. And it has done well by him. He owns a fine house in San Francisco, entertains, goes into the best society, has visited Europe several times, and, although he is now rising sixty, continues to fool all but a few. He might climb higher and become a United States Senator, but the corporation finds him too useful here. He rather resents that, but they make the sacrifice worth his while. I can well conceive they have spotted you, and you may be sure there is little about you they don't know. Of course they have made up their minds you are erratic, and have not the least doubt that they can manipulate that loose screw. They have bought thousands, these ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- (it was not often the judge swore, but when he did he took some time). Grafters, that are debauching the country and will soon make it impossible for an honest man to live; and although they will no doubt have the grace to approach you with less brutal directness than commonly, I knew that was what they were after the moment that old rascal began to talk to me this morning. He never fooled me. Well, we'll fool him. You go to Washington and get your passport, and if you can't hasten matters don't let an outsider know what you are after. Plunge into society and let them think you need a change from California. Of course you will give your real name. Cat's out, anyhow. Perhaps they will think you are on your way home to England. Flirt with the girls and be a frivolous young blood. The judge asked you to dinner, I suppose? I thought so. You would meet more than the judge; if not the first time, then the second and third. Write him a note, telling him you are obliged to go south to take a look at your mother's ranch. Then obey a sudden impulse and go East by the southern route. In Washington be seen as much with your ambassador as possible. I don't think these rascals will suspect, for they take for granted that you were duly 'discharged from your American indigenate'--I can hear him! If they did there would be the devil to pay, but I don't think they will. However, don't waste any time."

Gwynne was staring at the fire, his inner being chaos, but he replied in a moment that he would start for Washington on the following day.

V

There had been no stormier night during the winter. Isabel's old house creaked and rattled and groaned like a ship in a whole gale, and the wind sent great waves of rain along the veranda. A northern window had been blown in and hastily patched. Although but nine o'clock the sky was as black as midnight. For several days there had been merely a quiet steady fall, but during the afternoon the northern rain belt had sent down another great storm and it had been rising ever since.

Isabel, unable to go out, had washed her hair, and was still sitting on the hearth-rug, drying it, when she heard a shout outside, then the slam of a door at the back of the house, and voices in the kitchen. She was too warm and comfortable to be interested. If it were a tramp he was welcome to the shelter of the house; if a burglar there were two men to dispose of him, and her jewels were in a safe-deposit box in San Francisco. She loved a storm and had given herself up to one of those moods of pure delight in the present moment, although she had been in anything but a good-humor of late, and solitude had palled. But a raging storm, the sense of the absolute dominance of nature and the littleness of man, always exalted her. She knew that the old house was secure on its foundations, and, but that she loved comfort and warmth, she would have liked to be out on the marsh in a boat; tense with the difficulties of keeping the channel and avoiding the shoals and mud-banks obliterated by the risen waters. It amused her to imagine herself out there, while dwelling pleasurably, in a doubled consciousness, upon the warm red tints of her room. Her dreams were barely disturbed by the unknown interloper, but they were shattered a moment later by Gwynne's voice and rapid step in the hall.

She had intended to greet him with a cool hauteur after his neglect of nearly a month, but she could not rise in time; and, enveloped in a mass of hair, spread over a yard of the floor, it was impossible to be dignified. So she resolved to be charming.

"I had to come in the back way like a tramp and leave my oil-skins in the kitchen," he announced, abruptly, as he entered. "Don't get up. I have always wanted to see your hair down. So did Jimmy, I remember. Did he?"

"Certainly not. Neither would you if you had not chosen such an extraordinary time to call. I am delighted to see you once more after all these years, but--what on earth possessed you?" His eyes were glittering, although he had dropped his lids, and he did not sit down, but moved restlessly about the room.

"Your mother is much better," said Isabel, tentatively.

"Oh yes, and she is looking forward to her motor trip, and telephoned this morning that her room was a mass of flowers. I fancy she is a bit touched by so much kindness, for she has not been half decent to any one but the Trennahans."

"Does she say anything about returning to England? She had it in mind--just after the earthquake."

"She has made one or two casual allusions to her return, but she never plans far ahead--does what takes her fancy at the moment. But this life will never suit her. I imagine she will go before long. London is in her blood. Now that she can live properly--will have all she can, or ought to want, when the building is paying, there is no object in her remaining here."

"How goes the building?"

"How can anything go in this infernal weather? The old shanties are down, and the contractor had a sort of tent erected and has done some work on the foundations. I should have come directly to California if I had had any idea of the money to be made by selling off my superfluous land and putting up that building. It might be finished, by this time. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I am only remodelling my own brain on business lines by slow degrees, and no echo of this building fever reached me in Europe. You will remember that I did write, while you were wandering about America, that Mr. Colton suggested it for both of us. If I did not dwell on the subject it was because I had a feminine horror of the mortgage--and no idea that you were so keen on making money."

"I am thinking principally of my mother. When a woman has always had the world I doubt if she can live long out of it. San Francisco is all very well for the young and adventurous, and for those with a strong sense of the picturesque, but I can imagine that to a woman of her age and experience----Do you know--" he burst out. "I don't know where I am. What an extraordinary thing heredity is! I doubt if most people, although they would call that a platitude, realize that heredity is anything more than a telling word. There are times when I am sitting at my stove, surrounded by all those typical American men, who seldom mention a subject but politics and farming--for I tabu chickens--or the intensely local interests, more or less affected by politics,--there are times when I actually feel the nameless ambitious young fellow--not born in a log-cabin, perhaps, but next door to it--and endowed with that keen compact pioneer determination to stride straight to my goal, whether it is the White House or--well--the Presidency of a Trust Company. I forget--good God!--_Are_ those years behind me in England? I have caught myself wishing that I had kept a scrap-book like other idiots. It escapes my memory altogether at times, that I have but to take a steamer out of New York to reach the top of civilization again in less than a week."

"Perhaps it suggests itself when you remember that with the income you can command before long, life in England will be more worth while."

"That was as nasty a one as you ever gave me! No one knows better than yourself what brought me to America, and that those conditions cannot be altered by money. Could I not have had Julia Kaye's fortune? You need not be nasty again! You forget that not only was I in love with her--or thought I was--but could have given her the equivalent. She would be the last to claim that she was to pay too high a price, even with me thrown in. If you don't beg my pardon I'll leave the house."

"I beg your pardon," said Isabel, hastily. She was thrilled with curiosity; she had never seen him so nearly excited, with the exception of one memorable and painful moment. She fancied that she could see one of the barriers between them sway.

"It may be that this sudden prospect of wealth, or rather of a goodish income that would enable me to keep up a decent establishment in town, and a bit of a place somewhere in the hunting country, has upset my equilibrium, but it occurred to me this morning as I was splashing through the mud--I had to go out to the ranch--in fact it came over me with such a rush that I felt like Don Quixote, and every landmark looked like a windmill--what is England to-day but the very apex of civilization? The Mecca, the reward, of every man and woman with the breeding and the intelligence to appreciate it? The best of everything goes there, you have but to turn round to help yourself to an infinite variety--to be found piecemeal everywhere else on earth. And the very best is mine, by inheritance and personal effort. Why in thunder am I out here on this ragged edge of civilization struggling with almost primitive conditions?--elemental badness, sure enough! What is my object? Merely to bring about a set of conditions that exists in England to-day. I have them there. Why am I wading into filth up to my knees, for the sake of an alien race, when they are mine already?"

"But you had too full a measure. That was the reason you emptied the cup and turned your back. You wanted hard work--to use your gifts."

"What does it all amount to? Suppose I insidiously work up a reform movement in this State, and am shot into Congress over the head of the machine? Suppose my gifts are as extraordinary as I have been led to suppose--ordinarily a man feels damned commonplace--and by force of those gifts I hold my own against the formidable organizations I shall encounter there at every turn? Suppose this reform spirit in the United States grows and strengthens, and I come along in time to benefit by it, and am landed in Washington--even in the White House? What of it? I had a thousand times rather be prime-minister in England--in other words the real head of eleven million square miles of the earth's surface, dictator to a good part of the world, for that matter. Your public men are servants--or ought to be, according to your Constitution. In England we render service by courtesy, and rule the roost. In this country every man in public life is not only at the mercy of his constituents, but in daily terror of having his head cut off by the man above him. Even the President has to be a politician above all things."

"You used to talk in England--as if you were not wholly swayed by personal ambition."

"It is not so difficult over there to conceive high and mighty ideals--fool yourself, if you like. But I'll be hanged if I can see myself baring my breast for poisoned arrows, with a seraphic smile on my lips, over here! It is all so crude! I want to be a main instrument in reform as much as ever--Oh yes! But I am not sure that one motive is not to make the life and the game more tolerable. And the everlasting machine! There won't be a day, inside or out of it, that I won't run up against every damnable meanness that human nature is capable of. I must handle these men, placate them--or get out. History has not yet failed to repeat itself. If I succeed, in favoring conditions, in forming a new party, I may end as a boss myself! Exalted ideal! Inspiring thought! Better go home and live like a gentleman. I could have some sort of a career, and I have seen enough in this country to drive me towards the conclusion that there are worse things in life than curbing one's youthful ambitions a bit."

He was still striding up and down the room, his expressive hands as restless as his feet. The color was in his face and his eyes were blazing. There was a curious magnetism about him that Isabel had never been sensible of before, although she had heard much of it in England. It was as if his spirit were fully awake; at other times he appeared to live with his cool critical brain only, while his inner self, with its intense slow passions, slept. She wisely made no comment, and after shoving the books violently about the table he went on:

"You may argue that if public men were elected directly by the people and the President held office for one term of ten or fifteen years only, that a long stride would be made towards the millennium. But it is doubtful if even then, forty or fifty different tribes--for that is what your State and territory lines effect--could be managed without machinery, and machinery develops the lowest attributes in human nature. I saw enough of that in the few rotten boroughs we have left in England, but my imagination never worked towards the full and original development in this country. We have other faults; the serenest optimist would never deny them; but, faults or no faults, we crown civilization to-day. The richest man in America has not the least idea what it means to live like a gentleman in our sense. And there is no flaw in my appreciation of your country. In many respects it is the most marvellous the world has known--but--I sometimes wonder if the pioneer blood in my veins is red enough to stand it. No matter what the most successful reformers accomplish, there will be no high civilization here in our time--no background. Unconsciously, or otherwise, I shall always have the goal of England in my mind--and if that is the case, why am I here? Isn't civilization the highest that man is capable of accomplishing, the best that Earth has to offer any of us? What sense is there in going back to the beginnings and plodding or fighting towards a goal you were born to? It's more than once I've felt like Don Quixote. The whole infernal country is a windmill--and a large percentage of its inhabitants are windbags."

"Of course you have a streak of Don Quixote in you. All men of genius have, I suppose. You felt that you had a mission--to pack a great deal into a convenient phrase. You could do nothing in England but sit down and sup with the elect. You would have choked very quickly. And if you went back you would not stay. You would not only be bored, but you know now how badly this country needs one disinterested man of genius."

"I am not disinterested. I never felt more selfish in my life."

"You have an immense capacity for disinterested statesmanship. Of course all motives, especially with the highly gifted, are complex. You have said yourself they would be fanatics otherwise. And you are far more American than you know, although you have just confessed that you do know it well enough at times. All your American ancestors may be living again in you. It was your own instinct, no influence of mine, that sent you out here, filled with mixed but high ambitions. No full-blooded Englishman would ever do what you have done. Insanity and inebriety skip a generation. Why not Americanism? Heaven knows there is nothing American about your mother. And when the political cleanup comes, as it is bound to--"

"Oh, I am sick of this everlasting optimism: 'Everything is bound to come out all right,' 'God's own country,' and all the rest of it. I can understand it well enough out here, though. It is a wonder to me that any Californian has energy enough to care. Life is easy at the worst. The scoundrels batten unnoticed--although they are sending up the price of everything; and the most ungrateful and rapacious labor class on earth never get their deserts. The labor class hasn't a leg to stand on, so far as bare justice goes. Pity they can't have a taste of Eastern factories and wages and climate for a while. If it were not for its bay and the tremendous significance of its position opposite the Orient, California would be what it ought to be, the pleasure gardens of the world. No politics, no labor-unions, merely a succession of estates, big and little, where a man could live a happy animal existence for one-third of the year, after working the other two-thirds--that is a sane division. But if I stay here I work. And for what ultimate object? England, as sure as fate."

"You cannot possibly tell how you will feel twenty years hence--"

"Twenty years! That is a fair estimate, no doubt! I believe that the real secret of discontent has been the prospect of this cursed period of inaction. Nice substitute--coruscating as a blooming barrister; and it's mighty difficult to travel along for four years without showing your hand. It requires a tact that I may or may not have. If I have it, there may be other depths of hideous guile, as yet undiscovered. I have had glimpses of them already. All these farmers that I am nursing? What if my beneficent virus works too quickly--before I can represent them? Some other fellow reaps the benefit; and when my turn comes, likely as not there will be a reaction. I've to keep and increase my hold on these men of every nationality under the sun, as well as upon the seasoned old Americans, lest they should break away from me. Nice job I've cut out." He hesitated a moment, but added: "Beastly idea to subject all to the same law. It should be ten years for immigrants, and one for the man-of-the-world anxious to take the oath of allegiance--not that I am frantic to take it."

"I never knew any one so keen for obstacles; and now that you have found more than you bargained for--"

"It's not the obstacles that daunt me. If I were only sure of accomplishing any result worth while, if I had the materials to work on--if I were sure I cared! The American is an unhatched Englishman, but he won't be hatched out in my time----I even long for the close compact drama of English life. Everything is spread over such a vast loose surface here. These four years through which I may--must stumble along with my hands tied, are a fair example. And it seems to me that I never go to bed without seeing a face on the dark trying to enunciate: 'What for?' 'Why?'"

He sat down suddenly on a chair in front of her and took his head in his hands. "Do you ever ask yourself those questions?" he demanded, abruptly.

Isabel nodded. He noted absently that she looked like an elf with her face half-hidden by her hair, and that he could see but one little black mole, but a narrow ring of blue about the dilated pupils of her eyes, the tiny dimple at the corner of her mouth. She wore a loose blue wrapper, and the wood fire leaped in high flames behind her. The storm was terrific. He suddenly realized that this was the only homelike room he knew outside of England. He felt as if nothing would ever give him peace again, but he was suddenly and overwhelmingly glad to be there--and comfortably alone with Isabel on this raging night. He stared at her until his own pupils dilated, but she replied more tranquilly than she felt.

"_Cui bono_ is the motto on Earth's coat of arms. The only thing that saves us is that we don't see it all the time. There are long intervals in which we eat and sleep and dance and love and play at politics and enjoy the storm--and our best companions."

"We certainly are not here to spend our lives preparing for another world. Otherwise there would be no sense in the complexities of civilizations. A man could do that much in a cave. It is merely the diabolism of instinct that prompts the young to believe that the race is all. Certainly love is not the only source of happiness. I have been ecstatically happy when writing--thinking, in the fever of composition that I was dashing out the finest thing in literature. I have been happy under fire, or excited enough to think so. And I have felt enough exultation with exaltation to make happiness when I have been on a platform and carried a hostile crowd off its head and to my feet. If two people were indescribably mated--I don't know--"

"Why not deliberately accept the doctrine that there is a purpose, even if you are not permitted to read the riddle of life--"

"All very well, but what have politics to do with it? You may answer that a man should lay up all the credits he can, and that he can possibly get more by cleaning out the political trough than in any other way. If those are my lines I suppose I shall work along them, but my higher faculties whisper that to live this life on the intellectual plane, fighting for your country when necessary, is the rational existence for those that have the luck to be born to the good things of the old civilizations. Here they don't know any better, or if they do they can't help themselves. If that plane isn't meant to live on, why is it there? Has a man the right deliberately to step off the high plane upon which a long succession of circumstances have planted him--pull up his roots and plant them in a virgin soil?"

"Perhaps it is his duty to go where he is most needed--where his riper instincts and experience--"

"Your arguments are always good, otherwise I should not be here arguing with you. What do you really think of love?"

She jumped with the suddeness of the attack, and then drew backward a little, for he was leaning towards her and she felt his masculine magnetism as she had never done before. It pulled and repelled her, fascinated and filled her with resentment. And she was fully alive to the romantic conditions, the wild night, the isolation, the vibrating atmosphere. But she replied, soberly:

"I don't think about it. I buried all that--"

"Chuck it on the dust-heap! It served its purpose: women should have some such experience in their first youth as men have others. You are the better for it, because you worked off on the poor devil all the morbid and ultra-romantic tendencies that were spoiling your life. But let it go at that. It was no more love than my first Byronic madness for one of my mother's friends when I was sixteen--"

"You were thirty when you were in love with Mrs. Kaye. And she was not even your second--nor your tenth, no doubt."

"Quite right. I do not understand and shall waste no time on the effort. All men run pretty much the same gamut. That attack was the most commonplace sort of passion, no madness in it, no idealization, no sense of mating--"

"And how, may I ask, do you expect to know when you really do fall in love--"

"I'll know, all right. I wish you would put up your hair. You look uncanny, not like a woman at all. You have too many sides. I like you when you are human and normal."

"If you think my hair in its proper place will accomplish that result--my hair-pins are up-stairs on my dressing-table--"

He disappeared instantly. When he returned she was standing and coiling her hair about her head. Her sleeves were loose and the attitude bared her arms. As Gwynne handed her the pins, one by one, he stared, fascinated; but when she had finished and shaken down her sleeves, returning his stare with two polar stars, he turned his back suddenly and resumed his tramp of the room.

"I have changed my mind," he said, abruptly. "I had intended to marry you on any terms, merely because you suited my critical taste. But I believe that if I married you in that way I should beat you or kill you--or you would kill me. You are capable of anything. Love would square matters with us--nothing else."

"Then is the engagement broken?" asked Isabel, placidly. She did not sit down, but stood with a foot on the fender.

He relieved his feelings by kicking a stool across the room, then came and stood in front of her.

"Could you love me?" he demanded.

"I am not the village prophet."

"Have you made up your mind you will not marry me?"

"Oh yes--that."

"Because you couldn't love me, or because you are determined not to marry?"

"I won't feel and suffer and have my life torn to tatters when I can keep it whole! I had rather marry you without love, if I believed myself indispensable to your success in life."

"Much you know about it. I won't have you on any such terms."

"You are in no imminent danger. Heavens, what a wind! You must stay here to-night. If the spare room is too cold you can sleep on this divan."

"If that is a polite hint, I am ready to take it. I have been here long enough."

"Oh, but I mean it. I will not hear of you riding back in this pitch darkness. You would be more likely to go into the marsh than not. You can return to Rosewater so late to-morrow that Sister Ann will infer you have made a morning call."

"I shall return to-night. It was as dark when I came, and I am not altogether a fool. Neither is my horse."

"But you are not so familiar with the road," murmured Isabel, irrepressibly.

"That is the one decent thing you have said to me to-night. It is these sudden lapses into the wholly feminine that save me from despair. What a night for romance, and you and I sparring like two prize-fighters! That is as far as we have ever got. If you would ever let me know you--sometimes I have an odd fancy that I can see a lamp burning in your breast, and that if ever I got at it, and searched all the nooks and crannies of your strange nature by its light, I should love you as profoundly as it is possible for a man to love a woman."

"I am afraid it is only a taper in a cup of oil. At all events it is not a search-light, even to myself. I fancy people only seem complicated to others when they do not wholly understand themselves."

"Do you understand yourself?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Are you perfectly satisfied that you never could love me?"

She reddened and her sensitive mouth moved, but she brought her teeth together. "That has nothing to do with it."

"Everything!"

"Nothing!"

"Do you mean to tell me that you are literally contented with your life as it is?--living out here alone with nothing to do but read and look after those confounded chickens? You have the most romantic temperament I have ever met, and the way you gratify it would make an elephant laugh."

"I dream and think of the future."

"Future? You saw what that amounted to when you were in town--"

"I have shaken off the impression. It must have been that I had too much at once--and the purely frivolous, which offended my puritanical streak--"

"You don't like the Bohemian crowd any better."

"There are plenty of others. When I am ready I shall make the plunge and forbid myself to shrink from realities--"

"And the only people that will interest you will be those deep in public affairs. A woman to be a political power must be married. Otherwise she becomes the worst sort of feminine intriguer."

"I am interested in the women that are interested in the improvement of all things."

"And what is their ultimate aim, for heaven's sake? The franchise. Do you mean to tell me that you intend to become a Club woman? I had sooner you wrote a book."

"I have no intention of doing either--"

"In other words you are a plain dreamer, and a selfish one at that--"

"I try not to be selfish. I visit no ill-humor on any one--but you!--and I do good where I can. I should be more selfish if I ran the risk of making--some man unhappy in matrimony."

"Well, I'm sick of the subject. I came to say good-bye for a time. I'm off to the south to-morrow, and then east on business. I don't know when I shall be back--Oh, you can turn white--I can make you turn white!"

"What do you expect when you fire such a piece of news at me? What is behind this?"

"I have told you enough."

"Don't you trust me?"

"Oh, you can keep a secret. I don't know that I want to tell you."

"Very well."

"Oh, well, it would be beastly ungrateful in me not to. I have had a hint that, not having de-Americanized myself formally when I came of age, I may still be an American citizen. Judge Leslie has advised me to go to Washington and find out, and I am going. Are you really so interested?"

"Oh yes," said Isabel, softly. "I am interested! I have been afraid you might become discouraged and disgusted. Four more years would be a long time. Are you glad?"

"I don't know whether I am or not. When it comes to taking the oath of allegiance to the United States--if that is sprung on me in Washington--I shall feel more like taking the next steamer for England and making my oaths there. It is a little too sudden."

"All this hesitation and doubt are natural enough until you are settled down, and become too accustomed to the country to think of anything else--"

"I accept the balm. But I have less hesitation than you imagine--whatever the doubt and disgust. And I really believe the secret of my unrest is you! Good heavens! _Do_ I love you--_already_--that would be the last straw!"

He was staring at her, and something in his face blinded her. She turned cold from head to foot; but she moved her glance to the baskets on the mantel-shelf, and replied, quietly:

"It will take some time for you to know whether you are in love again or not. You have seen me too constantly--barring the last month. I have become in many ways necessary to you. When you move to San Francisco, as I am convinced you will, and have many other resources----propinquity is all there is to ninth-tenths of what we call love----and then a little more kills it! Even if I were under the same delusion as you are I should not yield to it."

"I do love you," he said, as slowly and clearly as he was capable of enunciating. But his voice was hoarse, and she was sensible, without turning her head, that he was rigid. "It is different--quite different. I am willing to wait, however. I understand your hesitation. When I return--"

"Doubt of the reality of your--well--"

"Love," said Gwynne, grimly.

But Isabel could not bring herself to utter the word. "One way or the other, it does not alter my determination not to marry."

"Let that rest for a while. What I want to know is, could you--do you love me?"

"Oh, I don't know! I only know I don't want to. You have a tremendous influence--you have made every one else seem commonplace and uninteresting--I have resented very much your neglect this last month. I am willing to tell you all this--also, that I have dreamed, imagined myself in love with you. But I am convinced that if you let me alone I shall get over it."

"I have no intention of letting you alone."

She moved backward suddenly, and he laughed. "I wouldn't touch you with a forty-foot pole," he said, roughly, "unless you wanted me. That, perhaps, shows how far gone I am. But precious little you know about men. Or yourself. If I kissed you this minute you would succumb--"

He turned suddenly and was down the hall and had slammed the kitchen door behind him before she realized that she was actually alone, that he meant to leave the house. For a moment she clutched the edge of the mantel-piece in a passion of relief and regret. Then her femininity was swept aside by her hospitable instinct and vehement fear. She ran down the hall and into the kitchen. But even his rain garments and boots were gone. She opened the back door and peered out into the inky darkness. A light was moving in the stable. The rain was falling in a flood and the wind almost drove her backward. But she gathered up her gown and ran as fast as she could make headway to the stable. He was alone, and tightening his horse's saddle-girths by the light of a dark lantern. He gave her a bare glance and went on with his work.

"You must not go!" She was forced to scream. "You shall not. Why, you are mad. The marsh--such conventionality is ridiculous. I refuse to recognize it."

He rose to his feet and led his horse outside. But before he could vault to the saddle she caught his arm and dragged him backward. "You shall not go! You shall not!" She could hardly hear the sound of her voice. But she heard his, and there was nothing in either storm or darkness to blunt the sense of touch. For a moment she felt as if the whole had never been halved, as if they two were youth incarnate; and his arm was like vibrating iron along her back. She thought he was going to kiss her and dazedly moved her head towards him. But he cried into her ear instead:

"I stay if you marry me to-morrow."

"No, no, no!" Her will sprang through her lips, and before it was beaten down again she saw a spark of light engulfed in the dark, and stood alone in the storm, wondering if the world had turned over.

VI

"_Monday Morning._

"This is merely to announce that I survived the marsh, and that
upon my return we will resume where we left off last night. E. G."

Isabel received this note early in the morning. That night she had accepted an invitation of some weeks' standing, and was established in the old Yorba mansion on Nob Hill. She anathematized her cowardice, but solitude was beyond her endurance for the moment. She had made up her mind that she would not think of Gwynne at all, much less give herself opportunities to miss and desire him; and her will, reinforced by conditions, was strong enough at times to persuade her that she hated him.

And there was nothing in the Trennahan household to try her nerves, everything to soothe them. Although the old buff walls and terrible carpets of Mrs. Yorba's day had gone long since and the house had been completely refurnished, it looked like a home, not a museum. Trennahan had taken his family to Europe many times, and they had brought back much that was rare and beautiful; but nothing stood out obtrusively, not even a color. They entertained constantly in a quiet way, and if Magdalena was far too Spanish to seek out the clever of all sets, and Trennahan too indifferent, at least Isabel met daily such of the _haute noblesse_ as were not completely fossilized, and many men that interested her well enough. Moreover, as Mrs. Trennahan now had a grown-up daughter, she was obliged to take her to the cotillons and other routs given under the merciless supervision of the Leader. Isabel accompanied her as a matter of course, and when she declined an invitation her guest was at liberty to go with the ever faithful Mrs. Hofer.

For three weeks Isabel did little thinking. She went to the ranch once a week for the day only, spent an occasional hour with Lady Victoria. Even then she was barely reminded of Gwynne. She was busy during every moment while in the country, and her relative was no more communicative than of yore. Only once did Victoria remark casually, that, by a sort of poetic justice, Gwynne was detained in the south with a sprained ankle, and was hurling maledictions at fate from the classic shades of Santa Barbara. Isabel grudgingly admired the restraint with which he denied himself the possible solace of correspondence with herself, and it crossed her mind once or twice that the young man might have the understanding of women that proceeded from instinct, if not from study. But she deliberately dismissed him, and although his name was frequently mentioned in her presence, she soon ceased to turn cold, and forced him to flit with a hundred others across the surface of her mind.

For the first time in her life she flirted desperately, and with others besides young Hofer. She was quite wickedly indifferent to consequences, and was inspired to woo the fickle goddess of popularity. The peace and charm and intellectual relief of the Trennahan home did much to modify her shrinking from realities, and the effort to please, and the abandonment to the purely frivolous instincts of youth, were the only aides her beauty needed to achieve that popularity she had abstractly desired the night Gwynne brought her the stars. She no longer desired it at all, but she disguised this fact, and reaped the reward.

Moreover, although her analytical faculty slept in the darkest wing of her brain, the mere fact that she was stormily loved and desired by a man to whom she was powerfully attracted, that for a moment she had been awake and eager in his embrace, had warmed her blood and given her an insolent magnetism that she had never possessed before.

Through Mr. Colton she received a formal request from Gwynne to dedicate the Otis Building--named in honor of the creator of the family fortunes--on the day the last of the foundation-stones was laid. In company with half a hundred other young people in automobiles, she astonished South of Market Street, one beautiful spring day--the spring was making desperate assaults upon the lingering winter--and amidst much mock solemnity and many cheers, deposited into the chiselled crypt of one of the great concrete blocks upon which the building would rest, a strong-box containing three of Concha Argueello's Baja California pearls, several family daguerreotypes, and the original deed of sale which had transferred the property from the city to the first James Otis. When the ceremony was over the contractor shook hands with her approvingly.