Ancestors Part 16

Isabel had quite recovered herself. "I will tell you everything, but not now. We must be in the mood. This moment I am interested in nothing but yourself. Sit down. What has happened to you in all these months?

Something not altogether pleasant. Have you had any adventures? Have you been recognized?"

He had finished his chocolate, and he clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, giving the railing a slight kick.

"No," he said, grimly, "I have not been recognized. At first I avoided all the big hotels, lest I might be; then growing more secure, and disliking the inferior ones, I became quite reckless. The second time I visited New York I went to the Waldorf-Astoria, and the third time to the St. Regis. In the smoking-rooms of all the hotels and trains I talked with any one whom I found disposed to conversation. Not that I was; but I was perambulating the country for an object and determined to accomplish it. As you had told me to improve my manners I did my best, and have reason to believe that, if not effusive, I am almost cynically approachable. In New York I was at times repelled with a haughty stare or a negative frigidity which no duke I know could compa.s.s. But in Boston they were more friendly, and farther West so expansive that I was frequently invited to houses before I had presented my modest card. Very often I had long talks with newspaper men, and made no attempt to conceal the fact that I was a Britisher. Once or twice that fact was commented on, but taken as a matter of course. There are a good many Britishers in the United States. My ident.i.ty was never suspected. I never saw a newspaper paragraph about myself."

He laughed, but looked at her between lids so narrowed that she could not see the expression of his eyes. She nodded, smiling; and she could make her smile very sweet and encouraging.

"The time came when I felt like a shipwrecked mariner. Stranded!

Abandoned! Forgotten! Finally--take all the circ.u.mstances into consideration and make due allowance--I felt that I would risk everything to see my name in print once more. I arrived in Chicago late one night. There had been a break-down that doubled the time of the beastly trip. I went to its first hotel and registered myself as Elton Gwynne. The night clerk, with the haughty indifference of the stage duke, or the New-Yorker who fancies himself, called a bell-boy and turned his back on me. I remained in Chicago three days. Not a reporter sent up his card. Not a line appeared in a newspaper. It was the most chastening experience of my life. No doubt it did me good. My ego has actually felt lighter." He smiled. But he added in a moment: "It left a scar, nevertheless."

"Never mind," said Isabel, consolingly. "All that will read delightfully in your biography. What on this difficult globe is not difficult, first, last, and always? The only thing for you to do is to snap your fingers at everything, as we do out here, and see nothing in the future but success. How do you like the land of your birth?"

"I hate it!" he said intensely. "Washington is a crude unwieldy village.

New York is like one of those nightmares a certain cla.s.s of writers project and label 'Earth in the Year 2000.' Chicago is the entrails of the universe. The small interior towns and villages of the Eastern States are open mausoleums for people so old and so dried up that their end will be not death but desiccation. There is nothing picturesque in those old towns, for they were dead before they were civilized. Some of the cities and villages of the South are certainly attractive to look at and have a background of a sort, but they are as lifeless as their negroes. The cities of the West are hives, and when you have seen one you have seen all. Its smaller communities are horrors, pure and simple.

Much of the country is magnificent. The Adirondacks, the Hudson River, Yellowstone, those great prairies and deserts, atone for a good deal.

The last three weeks I have spent in southern California. It seemed to me--below Santa Barbara, at least--little more than a reclaimed desert--and with nothing of the wonderful atmospheric effects of the great interior deserts; nothing but dirt and a hideous low shrub caked with prehistoric dust. Precious little of it reclaimed at that. I am glad that ranch is in good hands. I never want to see the place again.

That eternally grinning sky! That dead atmosphere! It blunted my nerves for the time, but the reaction is all the worse. However--" He stood up and leaned over the railing. "I did not expect the earthly paradise. I am not going to treat you to a continued diatribe--"

"But you must like California--love it!" cried Isabel, in alarm. "Of course you have hated everything--natural enough--but not California! It is your State, your home, your future. You must begin by liking it, at least."

"Very well, mentor, I shall do my best. One might certainly indulge in an illusion or two up here. I thought as I walked--climbed--through the city, guided a part of the way by a messenger-boy, who e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed at intervals, 'Say, mister!' and described n.o.b Hill as the 'millionaire bunch,' that I had seldom seen so many ugly buildings together; but from this perch of yours it looks quite beautiful. Still I long for the country. Can we go to the ranch this afternoon?"

"Why not?" Isabel stifled a sigh. She had intended to ride all round the city on the electric cars; but she felt as if she had an adopted homesick child on her hands, and he was a responsibility that she had deliberately a.s.sumed. Moreover, she felt deeply sorry for him.

"You can express all your luggage but a portmanteau, and we will go in my launch. It is down on the bay side of the Hill. We must start at four to catch the tide. You have no idea how cosey and pretty your ranch-house looks, and I have sent out my uncle's law--and farm--library. I have arranged everything with Judge Leslie, and you enter his office at once. He is the first lawyer of northern California. I wrote you that it would be impossible to conceal the truth from him, as his firm has done all the legal business of the estate for the last thirty years, and he knows your mother has only one son. But he is the more interested. No one else knows but Mr. Colton and his son Tom--your Rosewater bankers and agents. Your secret is safe with them.

Gwynne is not an uncommon name in California, although some of its letters have been dropped. Lumalitas has been leased for so many years that your name has ceased to be a.s.sociated with it in the public mind, and the deeds are so deeply buried in the archives of St. Peter--the county-seat--that the most curious would hardly attempt to unearth them.

Of course most townspeople all through the State take in a San Francisco paper, and your name has doubtless appeared now and again in the telegrams. But they are not the sort that take the least interest in the career of a young Englishman--those that do, at all events, are few and far between. Judge Leslie is deeply interested; so is Tom Colton, the only son of the bank, so to speak. He is a Democrat, by-the-way--but I don't suppose you have made up your mind--"

"I have quite made up my mind. In practice one party seems about as bad as the other, but at least the Democratic ideals more nearly correspond with my own. Besides, the Democratic party is the under dog, and that always appeals to me, to say nothing of the fact that it is weak in strong men, that all its salient leaders are what you so elegantly term 'blatherskites.' If I go in for American politics, I must fight so hard that I cannot help becoming absorbed body and soul; with only the present and the future--no past. Let us take a walk over these hills."

III

"Do you run this thing yourself?" asked Gwynne, as they boarded the launch, which was at anchor by the end of the sea wall at the foot of Russian Hill.

"Rather. How do you expect me to make a fortune in this paradise of the labor-union if I don't do things myself? I have a hard time being economical, and I suspect that where I save once I spend twice, but I try not to think about it. Theories make life so palatable! This old launch belonged to Uncle Hiram. I had it repaired, and take my eggs to the hatcheries and my produce to Rosewater three times a week. There I deal direct with the San Francis...o...b..yers--and in this launch; it serves me very well as an office. Then I come down in it every week. The railroad is exorbitant, and the boats are too slow. It may be that gasolene and repairs cost more than a railroad fare once a week, but I have abstained from making a comparison. The trip is so delightful!"

The launch was about twenty feet long with a small cabin and a fresh coat of brown paint. It shot lightly over the smooth water, and Gwynne sat on top of the cabin above Isabel swinging his long legs, and looked with some envy at the hundreds of yachts that skimmed the bay. They appeared and vanished about the corners of the Islands and promontories like birds swooping after prey. The Islands and all the mainland had lost their greens long since, but the burnt gra.s.ses shone in the sun like hammered gold; were tan and brown and fawn on the shadowed eastern slopes. The chain of mountains beyond the towns across the bay and facing San Francisco glittered like bronze, but the lofty volcanic peak of Monte Diablo, farther still, was a pale and misty blue. North of the Golden Gate and high above the mountains of Marin County, Mount Tamalpais was so intense and hard a blue, and was cut against the fleckless sky with so sharp an outline, that it produced in Gwynne a vague sense of unreality and uneasiness. The Marconi poles on the summit looked like the masts of a mammoth ship, and every window of The Tavern, close by them, shone like a plate of bra.s.s.

They steered for the southern point of Angel Island, and Gwynne looked about him with much interest. The mainland of the great northern cove and the eastern side of the Islands were thick with trees: oaks, buckeye, willows, madrono. And almost as thickly set, although sometimes half hidden, were the villas: light and airy of architecture, gayly painted, with broad verandas and overhanging vines. At the foot of Belvedere and the little town of Tiburon were house-boats, in which people lived for eight months of the year.

And everywhere, people, people, people. They swarmed in the yachts, on the house-boats, on the driveways, the verandas. Gwynne twisted about and looked at San Francisco. The palaces were on the heights and in the Western Addition--out towards the Presidio and the Golden Gate; but hundreds of tiny dwellings clung to the precipitous sides of Telegraph Hill and Russian Hill as if their foundations were talons. And each had its bit of garden, or its balcony full of flowers. Telegraph Hill, the great bluff where the city turned almost at a right angle from north to south, was given over largely to Mexicans and Italians, and was uncommonly vivid. And the streets were full of people. The city had turned itself inside out. Everywhere were bright gowns and parasols, whizzing cars packed to the rails.

And the wealthy cla.s.s by no means monopolized the bay with their yachts and luxurious launches. There were fishing-smacks filled with whole families of Italians and Chinese; in fact every tongue floated over the water in the course of a brilliant Sunday afternoon. And at the docks there were steamers, sailing vessels, from all the ports of the world, a forest of spars and funnels; odd little Italian craft and even a Chinese junk. A man-of-war was coming down from Mare Island. Gwynne had seen a big Australian liner flying the Union Jack enter the Golden Gate as the launch rounded Angel Island. It made him homesick, and he was not sorry to lose sight of it.

They pa.s.sed steamboats crowded with holiday seekers coming home from a day's outing in Sausalito, San Rafael, Mill Valley, sporting parks; the majority noisy and vulgar, but a ma.s.s of color. It was a scene of surpa.s.sing variety, life, gayety, prosperity, importance. Gwynne, as the light electrical breeze began to p.r.i.c.k his veins, experienced a sensation of pride in the country where his lines were cast, in those ancestors of his that had memorably helped to develop its vast resources: a tremendous concession, for he had barely acknowledged these ancestors before. A slight meed of resignation descended upon him. He smiled down upon Isabel, who was frowning at the sun and sighing for her forgotten veil; she had a tender regard for her complexion. Gwynne thought her very pretty in her smart crash suit and sailor hat, not nearly so severe and fateful in appearance as when she had adjusted herself to the formalities of Capheaton; although he remembered that he had heard much discussion of her beauty and had not been unappreciative himself. But he liked her far better here in California. Her eyes were more alert, her voice was less monotonous; and those little black moles looked particularly fascinating on the ivory white of her skin, fairly luminous in the sunlight. He fancied they would drift into matrimony; and that she appeared to be as indifferent and pa.s.sionless as she was handsome and clever but the better suited his present mood. His love for Mrs. Kaye had died a sudden and violent death, but it had left him callous, somewhat contemptuous of the charms of woman. He doubted if his heart would ever beat high in his breast again, but in the course of events he should need a partner, and Isabel seemed to him fashioned to be the helpmate of a busy and ambitious statesman.

But all he said was: "You have a little freckle on your nose. I saw it come."

Isabel shrugged her shoulders and sniffed. He lost interest in her for the moment, for he distrusted a woman without vanity. He knew girls too little to suspect that the most business-like were often smitten with a desire to pose; and were as likely to forget the pose of to-day in the naturalness of to-morrow. Secretly, Isabel was grievously afflicted at the thought of the freckle, and did not speak for some time, recalling the antidotes of her early girlhood, when she and Anabel Leslie experimented in secret with various beauty recipes cut from the newspapers. She smiled as she recalled that Anabel, who had pretty golden hair, had washed it with lye to acquire a reddish tinge, and been forced to retire for a month; and a semi-tragic experience of her own--smothered from crown to toe in a blanket taking a hot-air bath for the benefit of her complexion, the spirit lamp, in a wash-basin under the chair, exploded, and there was one interminable moment of panic, and several days of discomfort. She quite forgot her companion in these lighter reminiscences of a period that seemed far more than ten years agone.

Gwynne had discovered at Capheaton that one of his cousin's charms was her absence of effort in conversation and a corresponding indifference to effort in others. They did not exchange a syllable as they sped up the wider expanse of the bay east of the Islands, and he watched the hills and mountains close on his left, with their bright little towns and sombre depths of forest. Many of the rounded cones of the foothills were bare, and so was the rocky crest of Tamalpais, but the old redwoods still held triumphant possession of several of the slopes and all of the canons. Here and there factories and warehouses marred the almost primeval beauty of the scene, but to-day at least there was no smoke to cobweb the radiant sky. Even the Chinese shrimp-pickers were lounging on the beach before their little shack village.

They pa.s.sed the last of the towns. Towers and sharp roofs rose above the ma.s.s of cultivated trees in some private park; the trees a motley collection of pines and palms, eucalyptus and oak, madrono, laurel, locust, and acacia. The gardens were full of children and birds. On the roads horses in old-fashioned buggies danced at automobiles whizzing by.

In the yachts even the men had laid aside their keen anxious look--as peculiar to the young San Franciscan of business as to the New-Yorker or Westerner--and were bent upon absolute relaxation for the day. One millionaire was alone in his big luxurious launch, a broad grin on his homely ingenuous countenance, and even his mouth open to inhale the clean and sparkling air. His hands were clasped on his curves.

"He inherited," said Isabel, in reply to Gwynne's comment that he did not look as if he ever expended his energies in the piling of dollars.

"And he doesn't want any more. But they all look well enough. It is not only the climate but the cooking."

They left San Francis...o...b..y and Isabel steered more carefully: the channel in the Bay of San Pablo is narrow and the current treacherous.

When they reached the drawbridge they were not only alone on the wide silvery expanse of water, but there was scarcely a country-house to break the wild loneliness of mountain and canon. After they entered Rosewater Creek the mountains with their broken and multiplying ridges were more imposing still, and before long another range began to taper northward on the opposite sh.o.r.e. They were in the great tidal marsh now, green, where all the rest of the world was burnt and dry. At times the creek was as wide as an ordinary river, at others so contracted that one could gather gra.s.s on either side. Isabel told Gwynne to "watch out for other boats," for the creek wound and twisted and doubled like a mammoth brown snake into an infinite perspective, broken here and there by sailing boats that had the effect of skimming the land. It was a scene reminiscent of Holland, but far more beautiful, with the wild primeval character of the landscape and the grandeur of the mountains.

Isabel indicated an island well out in the marsh. It was crowned with a white house shaded by many trees. Men in duck trousers, and coatless, were lounging in the shade.

"That is a country club," she said. "Tom Colton will put you up. But if you are still disinclined to sociabilities you can shoot all the ducks you want on my place."

"Shoot what?"

"Best duck-shooting in the world is out here--canvas-back, teal, English widgeon--fancy your not knowing that. It begins on the fifteenth of October. I have not rented my marsh-lands this year, and intend to shoot ducks for the market. You can help me and we'll go halves."

Gwynne's eyes were sparkling. He had expected to kill his bear and deer, but any variety of sport new or old gave him joy. Isabel pointed to many little shanties on the edge of the marsh.

"The more enthusiastic sit in those and wait for the tide to come back.

I avoid being left high and dry, for if the ducks go elsewhere it is rather a bore."

The mountains on the left diminished in height, turned off abruptly to the northwest, following the coast line. Those on the right took form in the pink mist that enveloped them, for the sun had set. All the lower sky was pink, melting imperceptibly into the still pale blue of day. Far to the north other mountains seemed suddenly to heave from the level, villages appeared, with great stretches of farming land between. Then the glow faded into the gray of twilight and the vast landscape took on a sudden aspect of desolation; as of a country stranded, forgotten, with a heap of stones here and there to mark some ancient civilization.

"There is Rosewater--over there where the lights are coming out; and here we are," said Isabel.

Gwynne turned with a start and found that Isabel had run her launch up to a little pier. Behind it was a cl.u.s.ter of low hills set with narrow fields and tiny white houses. In the foreground was a large house of two stories and no architecture whatever, although the roof was mercifully flat. It was painted white and surrounded by a broad veranda. The garden was full of bare rosebushes and blooming chrysanthemums, but save for two mournful eucalypti and a naked acacia, there was not a tree in sight. Just behind were many out-buildings, stark and white.

"Is this where you live?" asked Gwynne, wonderingly. He had vaguely pictured her in a romantic setting, a bit of California epitomized.

"It was like Uncle Hiram to sell off the prettiest parts, but I don't bother about anything I can't help, and I have a lovely view opposite.

Where is that boy?" She raised her voice and called, "Chuma! Chuma!" and in a moment a j.a.panese boy came running down to the pier.

"The two men spend Sunday in Rosewater, but I have trained my j.a.p to do a little of everything," said Isabel, as they walked up to the house.

"He is one of the willing sort; most are not. Chuma is my cook and butler and chambermaid--"

"Do you mean that you live here without any other woman?"

"Why not? No girl would stay in this lonely place. I should have to send her in to Rosewater every night and get a second girl to keep her company. Mac--who was with Uncle Hiram before I was born--sleeps in the house. It was a hotel forty years ago, by-the-way, and is still known as Old Inn. That was in the days of picturesque ruffianism, and there are terrible stories about the house, but no ghosts."

It had been decided that Gwynne should dine with Isabel and spend the night at the hotel in Rosewater. Isabel had telephoned to her patient j.a.p, and there was a log fire in the "parlor"--now transformed into a comfortable living-room. Gwynne looked about him with considerable curiosity while Isabel was up-stairs dressing. The walls were "ceiled"