Ancestors Part 19

In the two letters from his mother, written at Homburg, there was no news beyond the letting of the properties and a bulletin of her health, which promised an imminent fitness for travel. His solicitors wrote that the income from the two estates was ample to keep the numerous women of the family in comfort, and leave a surplus which should be paid to his mother, according to his directions. This, with the southern ranch and the San Francisco property, should yield her an income of two thousand five hundred pounds a year. The confidential member of the firm hinted that if his lordship found means of increasing her ladyship's income in that land of gold and plenty it would be wise to do so, as her ladyship knew less than nothing of economy and was even more deeply in debt than usual.

He missed Flora's gay letter of gossip, and looked with narrowing lids at the pile of newspapers. None had been sent him before, and he had left not a subscription behind him; but it was evident that his mother and Flora were under the mistaken impression that he would welcome this greeting in his new home. They had acc.u.mulated for a month. He recognized the type of the leading dailies, and could guess the names of the numerous ill.u.s.trated weeklies. Suddenly he took them in his arms and walked quickly over to the stove, his eye roving in search of a match-box. But even as he stooped he rose again, and, blushing for his weakness, carried them back to the table, tore them open with nervous haste. He skimmed the great pages of the dailies from start to finish, telling himself that he must have a breath from home, news from authoritative sources, stated in excellent English; sickened with the knowledge that he was but searching eagerly for a word of himself; sickening more when he found none. Then he fell upon the weeklies, his eye glancing indifferently from the paragraphs and presentments of the royal and the engaged, but scanning every personality. He had had one rival and there was much of him.

Before he had finished the third his struggling pride conquered. He gathered the heap and flung it into a corner, then caught up his hat and struck out for the loneliest part of the ranch. He writhed in the throes of disappointment, jealousy, disgust of self. He attempted consolation by picturing all the other ambitious men he knew exhibiting a similar weakness and vanity when there was no eye to see. His imagination did not rise to marvellous feats--and what if it did not? He had never aspired to be in the same cla.s.s with other men.

The bitter tide receded only to give place to apprehension. His temperament was mercurial, balanced by a certain languor in the earlier stages of emotion, and there had been little to depress his spirit during those thirty years when all the fairies had danced attendance on him; even defeat had but intoxicated his fighting instinct and given another excuse for flattery and encouragement. During the eleven months since he had left England he had experienced neither encouragement nor flattery. He could not recall having made a profound impression upon any of his casual acquaintances; he certainly had created no sensation. It was true that his role had been that of the listener, the student, but he had so long accepted himself as a personality, as the most remarkable of England's younger productions, that he had been deeply mortified more than once at the cavalier treatment of middle-aged business men with no time to waste upon a young Britisher of no possible use to them.

To-day he boldly faced the haunting doubt if he were really a great man; if his success in England, as well as his phenomenal self-confidence, had not been merely the result of an inordinate ambition fed by fortuitous circ.u.mstances. He recalled that from childhood his grandfather and his mother had practically decreed that the bright, lovable, mischievous boy was to be a great man; that as he grew older the entire family connection joined the conspiracy. It is easy enough to believe in yourself when the world believes in you, and easy enough to make the world take you at your own valuation when you have a powerful backing, a reasonable amount of cleverness, a sublime audacity, the power of speech, and a happy series of accidents. Were all great men two-thirds accidental or manufactured? He felt inclined to believe it, but while it soothed his torn and throbbing pride, it by no means lessened his apprehension.

Was he not a great man, even so? He felt anything but a great man at the moment. He recalled that he had indulged in few lapses into complacency since his departure incognito from England, and that he had deliberately held self-a.n.a.lysis at bay by incessant travel and a compulsory interest in subjects that did not appeal to him in the least. It was this absence of interest after close upon a year in the country that appalled him as much as his inner visioning. He hated the country. He hated its politics, both parties impartially. He hated all the questions that absorbed the American mind, from graft to negroes. He had sat in the Congressional galleries in Washington, attended political meetings wherever he could obtain admittance, studied the press in even the smaller towns, travelled through the South and relieved himself of whatever abstract sympathy he may have cherished for the colored race, visited the sweat-shops of New York, the meat-packing establishments of Chicago, the factories of New England, every phase of the great civilization he knew of; and while he found much to admire and condemn, both left him evenly indifferent. With all his soul he longed for England. She might have her selfishness and her sn.o.bberies, lingering taints in her political system, but she stood at the apex of civilization, and her very faults were interesting; far removed from the brazen crudities of the New World's struggle for wealth and power. And although the blood of reformers was in his veins, and in his secret soul he was an idealist to the point of knight-errantry, the desire for reform had ebbed out of him during his American exile. And he knew the fate of a good many American reformers. There were several in high places at present, cheerfully trimmed down from the statesman to the political ideal. Julia Kaye--clever woman!--had put the matter into an epigram. The American statesman was the superior politician.

And how was he, out of tune with every phase of the country, to find the ghost of an opportunity to lead it? He was no actor. If he had a merit it was sincerity, a contempt for subterfuge as beneath both his powers and the lofty position to which he had been born. Moreover, he was honest; an equally aristocratic failing and drawback.

He recalled a conversation he had held in the smoking-compartment of a Pullman with a sharp young politician, who had become voluble after Gwynne had "stood him" two high-b.a.l.l.s.

"It's graft or quit," he had announced. "All this cleaning up in insurance and what not, all this talk of curbing the trusts and the rest of it don't fool yours truly one little bit. It's just the ins trying to get ahead of the outs. It's not the honestest or the best man that gets there in G.o.d's own country, but the smartest--every time. Those that are crying the loudest against the grafters are just waiting for a chance to graft good and hard themselves. I am, and I don't care who knows it.

Only I don't waste any strength kicking. The labor party works itself up over trusts and capitalists, and most of the capitalists come out of that factory, and are the first to grind those left behind them, under both heels. They know what I know, and what you'll know before you get through, that the only fun in life is to be got out of power and money."

The face as sharp as a razor but by no means dishonest rose before Gwynne. He had been a very decent little chap, and in the two days they had travelled together he had displayed a photograph of his wife and "kids," to whom he seemed even sentimentally devoted. Although Gwynne had parted from the man with satisfaction it was impossible to despise him utterly. Since then he had met many of his kind, more or less honest, able, pettily ambitious, fairly educated, unlearned on every subject except politics and the general business of the country; and all equally unsympathetic. He made no pretence to judge the country on its social or intellectual side, for he had been forced to avoid all groups that might have enlightened him--although he found no difficulty in a.s.suming that well-bred and intellectual people were much the same the world over, and was willing to give the United States the benefit of every doubt. But its obvious side was the one that concerned him and his career. In order to succeed--and without success life would mean less than nothing to him--must he in a measure conform to conditions that were the result of a century of complexities? He recurred to the dry biographical sketches he had received, from certain of his travelling companions, of the most distinguished--and successful!--men in American politics to-day. Their ideals and their zeal for reform had played between horizon and zenith like a flaming sword, so compelling the attention of all that would pause to look that the diminishing effulgence had been even more conspicuous; and now, although the sword was occasionally brandished for form's sake, and was even sharper than before, having learned to cut both ways, it had the rust of tin not of blood on it, and deceived no one. But it had served its purpose--if to be sure it had been needed at all--and its owners were past-masters of success. Had he in him the makings of the mere trimmer and politician, in addition to the miserable vanity that had riven him to-day? And would some measure of great success won on those lines stir the dormant greatness in him?--if there were any greatness to stir. This was the fearful doubt, after all, that beset him. He almost saw with his outer vision his ideals lying in a tumbled heap, as he felt himself on the point of crying aloud that to feel once more that sense of power which had exalted him above mere mortals, and given him an ecstasy of spirit that no other pa.s.sion could ever excite, he would sacrifice everything, everything!

He paused abruptly and looked about him. He was half-way up the mountain. The great valley, that looked as if it might embrace the State itself, lay before him. North and south the scenery was magnificent, ethereal in the distance, melting everywhere into one of those lovely mists that seem to have extracted the spiritual essence of all the colors. But the very beauty of his new domain added to the sense of unreality, of uneasiness, that had so often possessed him since he had crossed the borders of the State. And it was all on such a colossal scale. There could never be anything friendly, anything possessing, in a land destined for a race of primeval giants. He felt so pa.s.sionate a longing for the sweet embracing historied landscapes of England that the very violence of the nostalgia drove him homeward with the half-formed intention of taking the first train for New York and the first steamer out of it. Moreover, he was suddenly obsessed with the belief that if he had greatness in him England alone held its magnet.

But it was a long walk to his house, and he reached it late in the afternoon, very tired and very hungry. When he entered his comfortable living-room, redolent of flowers, he received something like a shock of peace, and after he had taken a cold bath, he cursed himself roundly for permitting the mixed blood in his veins to contrive at times the temperament of an artist or of some women. As he sat down to a more than palatable supper, he felt thankful that he had had it out with himself so early in the engagement, and thought it odd if the Anglo-Saxon in him could not drive rough-shod over his weaker outcroppings.

VIII

He did not see Isabel again for three weeks. Several days after his arrival he received a note from her, briefly stating that she was starting for Los Angeles to exhibit her prize Favarolles and Leghorns at a "Chicken show," and after that would pay a long deferred visit to her sister. "But I shall not be long," she added, possibly with a flicker of contrition, "only they have been planning things for me for ages and I am always putting them off. I will spend a week--not with them, exactly, but at their disposal, and it will be a relief to have it over."

Gwynne felt himself ill-treated, but shrugged his shoulders with a new philosophy not all doggedness, and easily stretched to embrace the vagaries of woman. And, in truth, he found an abundance of occupation.

Ascertaining that Mr. Leslie was away, he spent his time on the ranch, examining its various yields, divisions, possibilities; to say nothing of its books and history. The dairy was now an insignificant affair, experiments having proved disastrous, and his superintendent advised him to let it remain so. The greatest yield was in hay, and cattle raised for the market. The last lessee had come to grief over blood horses, and Gwynne's agents had accepted what remained of the racers and breeders in default of apocryphal cash. Although advised that they could be sold to advantage if haste were not imperative, Gwynne, who had a large balance in the bank, determined to continue the experiment. Many acres of the ranch were profitably let, although by the month only, as pasture both for cows and horses. The orchards always made a handsome yield, and the vegetable garden and strawberry beds needed only proper care to become remunerative. Moreover, several acres had recently been planted with kale, a favorite food of the conquering Leghorn, and there were fine runs on the hills that might be fenced off for sheep--or chickens; but at this point the superintendent always detected something even defiant in his employer's cold indifference, and told his friends that the Englishman was "haughty in spots."

It was all very satisfactory, but in order to bring him a really considerable increase of income he must dismiss his superintendent--who now drew a salary of a hundred and fifty dollars a month, and who did not inspire him with unbounded trust--and become his own manager, an office which would not only make heavy demands upon his time, turning him virtually into a farmer, with little leisure for the reading and practice of law, but no doubt involve the sacrifice of money as well; he did not flatter himself that he could learn to "run" a ranch of nineteen thousand varied acres in a season. His superintendent was a half-breed Mexican, the son of his cook, quick, voluble, and experienced in the ways of the ranch, upon which he had worked since boyhood. Gwynne had called on Mr. Colton at the bank two days after his arrival, and the old gentleman, who had an eye like a gimlet and a mouth like a steel trap, had consigned all "greasers" to subterranean fires, and emphasized the fact that he had hired Carlos Smith by the month only. A better man would demand a year's contract. There were infinite possibilities for "the greaser" to pocket a goodly share of the profits, and "cover up his tracks." And it might be a year or two before a superintendent could be found capable in every way of managing so complicated a ranch.

While he was still revolving the problem he met Mr. Leslie and Tom Colton, who advised him to sell at least half the ranch to small farmers. Properties of four and five acres were in increasing demand in this fertile county, and equally difficult to obtain. He had but the one interview with them, as they were starting the same day to attend to some business in the north, but after revolving the matter in all its bearings for another ten days he made up his mind to accept their advice, consoled his crestfallen superintendent with the promise of constant work, and set forth one afternoon to place his advertis.e.m.e.nts.

He had visited the town but twice since his arrival, and then in the morning. To-day he saw it characteristically for the first time. The hills that formed a cove of the great valley were bright with their houses and gardens, but very quiet. The long sloping block of Main Street was crowded with wagons, buggies, and horses, that from a distance looked to be a solid ma.s.s; and even when he rode into their midst he found some difficulty in forcing his way. Where the dusty vehicles were not moving they were tied to every post, the horses with their front feet on the sidewalk observing the familiar throng with friendly patient eyes. The shops were doing a rushing business, and so, Gwynne inferred, were the banks. As for the saloons, their doors swung with mechanical precision. Most of the farmers wore linen dusters and broad straw hats, but their women had put on all their finery. The girls of the town could be readily distinguished by their crisp muslins and white hats and absence of dust. There were groups of Rosewater girls holding rendezvous with their country cousins everywhere, although for the most part in the drug stores, which, with their tiled floors and ample s.p.a.ce, looked like public reception-rooms. There were many knots of men under the broad roof over the pavement, but in spite of the ubiquitous saloon no drunkenness. Nor was there a policeman in sight.

Nor a shop for fire-arms. Gone were the old days when a man drank till his brain was fire and his pistol went off by itself. The sting had been extracted from California and she had settled down to practical consideration of her vast resources; and in the comfortable a.s.surance that there was enough for all. Gwynne had not seen a beggar nor a pauper since his arrival.

He placed his advertis.e.m.e.nts with both the local newspapers, to avoid the ill-will of either, posted others to the San Francisco press, and was riding down Main Street in order to have a closer look at the long hitching-rail lined on either side with another solid ma.s.s of horses and vehicles, when he caught sight of Isabel driving a buggy and evidently searching for an empty post. He laid aside his grievance and made his way to her side. She quite beamed with welcome, and they disentangled themselves into a side street, where there were empty posts.

"I only got home at half-past eleven last night," she informed him. "The boat was three hours late in starting, and when I finally made up my mind to come by train the last had gone. So I overslept this morning or I should have gone out to see you. But I meant to telephone you from here and ask you to come out for the first duck-shooting--"

"Duck-shooting!" Gwynne forgot the grievance.

"The season opens to-day--the fifteenth of October. I had meant really to ask you for the first thing this morning. Never mind, we have plenty of time, and you will not have to go home for anything. Just wait here until I do my errands."

He tied his horse next to hers and sat down in the shade on a chair provided by a friendly store-keeper. In less than half an hour she returned, and they started for Old Inn. Isabel had never seemed so charming to him as they rode slowly out of the town and along the dusty road. Smiling and sparkling, she asked him rapid eager questions about his ranch, his plans, his comforts, whom he had met, how he had pa.s.sed his days and evenings. The truth was she had practically forgotten him, and her conscience smote her. Her week in San Francisco had waxed to a fortnight, for she had enjoyed herself far more than was usual in the company of her relatives. Lyster Stone was one of the most agreeable of men when debts were not more than usually pressing, and as he had just painted a drop curtain and sold a picture for a considerable sum, he had replenished his own elaborate wardrobe, given his wife a new frock, silenced the loudest of his creditors, and thought it worth while to "blow the rest in" on a sister-in-law who seemed to have no taste for matrimony. Moreover, he really liked and admired her, and he liked still more to spend money. When his pockets were full of actual coin he abandoned himself to sheer happiness. Debt had bred philosophy; moreover, his wife relieved him of too depressing a contact with duns, and there were times when his respite was longer than he deserved. If his Paula had a little way of cajoling the amount out of her sister's pocket, why not? He had never refused a friend in need, and, in truth, could see no use for money except to spend it. If all the world did not wag his way, so much the worse for cold-blooded mercenary superfluous beings. So, the two weeks had been a round of dinners at the gay Bohemian restaurants, chafing-dish suppers at his own and other studios, the theatre and opera, and long walks about the brilliant streets at night. It was all the more interesting to Isabel from its odd wild likeness to foreign life. She had heard much of this American "continental" flavor of San Francisco life, only to be tasted by artificial light, and she had given herself up to it with an abandon of which she possessed a sufficient reserve. But one cloud had risen on the blue, and as it emptied itself in a torrent, it was a matter for congratulation that it had tarried the fortnight.

A woman of growing wealth, who affected artists' society, had continued to live in her pretty odd little house, but had recently done it up like a stuffed and scented jeweller's box. The tiny salon was her pride. It was all cherry satin and white lace, the furniture lilliputian, to match the proportions of the room and the lady. She was large-eyed, dark-haired, pretty, and the room set her off admirably. It was here that she invariably received her artist friends, and felt herself at last set in a definite niche, in the city of individualities. One day, in a spasm of generosity, she bade Stone, calling in a mood of unusual depression, to paint it, and sell for his own benefit what, at least, should be a glowing bit of still life. Stone began his work next day, meaning, when the seductive interior was finished, to induce his patron to sit on the doll-like sofa for a portrait, irresistible alike to her vanity and pocket. But she capriciously went off to New York for clothes, and he exhibited the picture in the shop of a dealer where buyers were not infrequent. Thence, indeed, in the course of a few days went a wealthy broker whose sign was three b.a.l.l.s. He liked the picture, but bargained that himself should sit on the sofa. His offer was generous. Stone, to do him justice, demurred, for all Bohemia, at least, knew the room. But Mrs. Paula wept at the thought of the lost hundreds, and he succ.u.mbed. The result, at the owner's insistence, was exhibited.

The lady returned as unexpectedly as she had flown, and was asked at every step if she had "seen her room." Scenting mystery, she went to the gallery; and stood petrified before the faithful presentment of her cherry-colored satin boudoir, the very edge of the sofa accommodating a large gentleman with an eminent nose, a bulging shirt-front--diamond-studded--and knees long severed. He looked like a Hebraic Gulliver in Lilliput, and the unities were in tatters. She stared, stuttered, wept. And then she descended upon Stone.

Gwynne laughed heartily as Isabel related the episode, but they fell into silence after they crossed the bridge and were able to accelerate their pace. He made no effort to break it, although Isabel had never found him more polite. She also thought him vastly improved with his thick coat of tan, and almost picturesque in his khaki riding-clothes and high boots. There were more subtle changes in him which it was too warm and dusty to speculate upon at the moment.

Gwynne had restrained his spontaneous delight in seeing Isabel again.

Not only did he have a genuine grievance in her neglect of him, but he had no intention that she should fancy he had need of anything she could give him, beyond superficial companionship and advice. More than once during the past weeks he had caught himself longing so miserably for her sympathy and the support of her strong independent character that it had alarmed him. He realized for the first time what a prop and resource the deep maturity and scornful strength of his mother had been. He must brace and reinforce his character at all points if he persisted in his determination to achieve the colossal task he had set for himself.

Woman's sympathy was all very well for some men, or for him in more toward circ.u.mstances, but he had looked deeply into himself and been terrified at unsuspected weaknesses. He had set his teeth and determined to fight his fight alone. If he failed, at least he would have the consolation of never having cried out to a woman: "Give me your help! I need you!"

He did not betray the least of this, but his first remark as they rested the horses on the slight hill leading to Isabel's ranch was less irrelevant than it may have seemed to himself.

"I suppose you met all sorts of interesting Johnnies in that beloved San Francisco of yours," he said, abruptly.

"Of course. It will be quite cool in an hour and we can go out.

Fortunately I never gave away Uncle Hiram's shooting-togs, and he was quite your height and figure. We'll take tea and sandwiches with us so that we need not hurry home for supper."

She suddenly forgot the ducks and pointed with her whip at the low hills behind her house. The runs were covered with several thousand snow-white, red-combed chickens, and all their little white houses shone in the sun. The effect was by no means inartistic, but Gwynne elevated his nose. He hated the sight of chickens.

"Did you ever see anything more beautiful than that?" asked Isabel, proudly. "They all know me, and I love every one of them."

"I don't doubt there is money in them," said Gwynne, dryly. "But as a pet I should prefer even a cat."

"Oh, I only pet them when they are ill. There is an old feather-bed in the house, and I put them in that when they need nursing at night. That is a device of my own, and much better than going out at twelve o'clock on a cold dark night. By-the-way, I think your idea of selling half or more of Lumalitas admirable. Great tracts of land in this part of the State are out of date, and more bother than they are worth, anywhere.

You can invest the money to great advantage in San Francisco; but I think you should devote the rest of the ranch to chickens--"

"No, madam!" Gwynne turned upon her the glittering eye of an animal at bay. Then he laughed. "I have heard that proposition from every man I have met and daily from my superintendent until I managed to suppress him. I won't have a chicken on the ranch. The sight of them not only fills me with ennui, but I have no intention of presenting your comic papers with material. I could write their jokes myself--'_Gwynne before and after_': Westminster in the background and a hayseed figure in front addressing a const.i.tuency of chickens. Stumping the country with eggs in my pockets for the children. Dining the eminent members of my const.i.tuency on horse-meat, under the delusion that what is good for chickens is good for votes. 'Leghorn Gwynne.' 'The Member from Chickenville.' No thanks. No weapons that I can withhold."

IX

"This is all on my ranch," said Isabel; "so there is no danger of being peppered. The rest of the marsh is owned by clubs, and as there was no shooting here last year the ducks should be thicker than anywhere else.

We should get our fifty apiece in no time."

They were entering a narrow slough, hardly wider than the boat. It cut its zigzag way through the marsh for many miles, and they could follow its course with the eye but a few feet at a time. Gwynne shipped the oars and began to scull, his gun across his knee. Isabel, in front and with her back to him, sat with her own gun ready for a shot. On one side of them was a large piece of marsh-land, on the left, smaller patches, and little islands caught in the long grasping fingers of the tide.

Gwynne had attired himself with an ill grace in a pair of his cousin Hiram's rubber boots that completely covered his body below the waist, and an old shooting-coat with capacious pockets. Isabel wore a similar costume, and but for her hair might have been mistaken for a lad. She possessed no interest for Gwynne whatever at the moment. Nor did anything else but the prospect of a new and exciting sport. The October evening was mellow and full of color, the entire reach of the marsh steeped in a golden haze shed from the glory in the west. Even the forests and the lower ridges rising to Tamalpais had something aqueous in their vague outlines, swayed gently in the golden tide. Only the tide lands were green; the very water was yellow. Here and there, but far away, a mast or sail rose above the level surface of the marsh. From the distance came the sound of constant shooting.

Gwynne sculled silently, but with some impatience. They had left the open creek far behind and had not seen a duck. Suddenly Isabel's gun leaped to her shoulder. They rounded a sharp point and the whole surface of the narrow slough between them and the next bend was black with sleeping ducks. Gwynne's knee moved automatically to the seat in front of him, and as the startled birds rose he and Isabel fired to right and left. The scattering shot played havoc, and the second charge brought down at least half as many on the higher wing. Isabel reloaded the guns while Gwynne went for the ducks that had fallen on the land. He fell into several holes himself, and returned covered with mud, but waving his birds in triumph; and once more they stole softly along their winding way. The shot had roused neighboring flocks; several dark clouds had risen simultaneously, but in a few moments they settled again.

"You had better use both guns," whispered Isabel, "and I will do the reloading. We can't do much with these old-fashioned things at best."

Gwynne accepted this act of sacrifice with a matter-of-fact nod, and it was but a moment later that they came upon another flock. He fired with an accuracy of aim that won him an admiring mutter, although to miss would have been almost as noteworthy. But after repeating this experience several times, he shrugged his shoulders and announced himself blase.

"I'd like something a little more difficult," he said. "Ten minutes of this and we can glut the market."