Ancestors Part 21

"But I was miserably undecided. Moreover, I could not leave Munich. My quarterly remittance was unaccountably delayed. I told him this. He knew that I would not move without my own money, but he sent off several cables. The reply came that the drafts had gone and must have been lost in the mails. Duplicates would be sent. There was nothing to do but wait.

"I suppose that money enters into all things. It certainly ruled my destiny. The fortnight that ensued I never think of if I can help it. He was desperately bored with Munich, but too polite to leave me alone. I saw him with the woman three or four times. She was an Austrian who did not visit the Baroness L., and she was staying at his hotel. There was no doubt that he still wished to marry me, but I was in even less doubt that his ruined nature would yield more and more to this sort of fascination when my novelty had worn thin. Before my money arrived my mind was made up. I dared not trust myself to the seduction of his manner and voice--he was a past-master in the art of making love. I wrote him that I would not marry a man I could not trust, and fled to Vienna, telling my Munich bankers to keep my letters until I sent for them. For two weeks I travelled madly through Austria and Hungary. Never for a moment was I free of torments. Never before had I actually comprehended what love meant. I hardly ate or slept. I arrived at a place only to leave it. The hotel-keepers thought I was the American tourist overtaken by that final madness they had always antic.i.p.ated.

When the fortnight finished I looked back upon an eternity in purgatory.

I surrendered; at least he loved me in his way. He had never ceased to urge our marriage. Who could say that I might not be fascinating enough to hold him? It was worth the trial, and I despised myself for laying down my arms without a struggle.

"I took the Oriental express from Budapest, but during the journey, swift as it was, I underwent certain reactions. I knew that he must have left Munich, that all I could do was to take a letter to his bank and ask that it be forwarded. I wrote the letter as soon as I arrived, but decided to post it; my pride revolted at facing the sharp eye of the person that handled the letters of credit. I had gone to the bank with Prestage more than once.

"As soon as the letter was posted I experienced a certain measure of peace, having done all I could. Nevertheless, to sit still was impossible, and I set out for a walk. It was one of those brilliant clear crisp days with which that high plateau can put even California to the blush. I saw that all the tram-cars were crowded, and that carriage loads of people had flower pieces. I asked if it were a Feiertag and was reminded that it was the 1st of November, All Saints' Day; Munich was on its way to the several cemeteries to decorate the graves. I had seen All Saints' Day in Venice and felt a mild curiosity to compare the Bavarian festival with the Italian. So I walked out to the great Alt Sud Friedhof where so many celebrities are buried, and where I fancied the scene would be most complete. When I arrived at the entrance the frames that had been set up in the outer court were almost denuded of the flower pieces the countrywomen had brought in to sell, but I bought a wreath at the solicitation of a peasant in a picturesque head-dress, and followed the crowd. The cemetery is on three sides of the entrance and enclosed by a high brick wall. I stood a moment at the inner official entrance, hardly knowing which way to turn; but seeing a number of staring people in a corridor on my right that faced one great division of the cemetery, I was turning into it mechanically when a policeman waved me back with the information that the entrance was at the other end. But not until I had seen, stared, and gasped. In an alcove was a figure, almost upright, that, in the first dazed seconds I took to be a wax-work, but immediately knew to be a dead woman. As I almost ran out I recalled that in Bavaria the dead are taken from the house within six hours, and are kept in a public mortuary for three days, or until all danger of premature interment is over.

"I do not think I should mind, particularly, seeing a ghost; I am sure my mental curiosity would get the better of my unwilling flesh; but I have a real horror of the corpse. I tried to forget the grotesque exhibition I had stumbled upon, in the novel and interesting scene about me. The long aisles of the cemetery were filled with well-dressed people, some strolling, others decorating, all apparently enjoying themselves. Almost all of the graves and monuments were bedecked, and presented a most Elysian appearance with the ma.s.ses of bright flowers, the streamers of wide ribbon, the lighted lanterns, many of them antique and beautiful, above all the tall flambeaux, whose flames looked white and unearthly against the bright atmosphere. Above was a deep-blue sky with those thick low ma.s.ses of snow-white clouds one sees only in Bavaria.

"But that grotesque little figure with its shrunken yellow face under the pitiless sun glare, its bony old hands, attached I knew, to the string of a distant bell, did not leave my mind for an instant. I walked down every path, I examined every interesting monument, I even went into the other divisions where there are so many statues in the alcove tombs; but all in vain. I felt that I should see that old woman to the end of my days. I could recall the very pattern of the cheap black lace of her cap. There was but one way to rid my mind of the obsession, and that was to return to the corridor, stand in front of every earthen figure, remain there until my mind was satiated, in consequence delivered.

"I set my teeth and went back to the Leichenhalle. Of course there were many to keep me company. I looked long and unflinchingly at two gentlemen in evening clothes, an old maid dressed for once on earth as a bride, a young woman and her infant. The coffins lay on an inclined plane and the edges were so concealed by a ma.s.s of flowers and greenery that the ghastly company looked as if half rising to hold a reception.

"And then I stood for I do not know how long before the alcove next to the old woman beside the exit, not knowing whether I were turned to stone or sitting by the Rosewater marsh indulging in some wild morbid flight of imagination.

"For there he was. For a second I did not fully recognize him, he was so yellow, his lower jaw had so hideously retreated, completely altering the slightly cynical expression of the mouth. The bright gay sunlight searched out every line carved by too much living, the little wrinkles about the eyes, the weakness of the handsome polished hands. He looked unspeakably aged and hideous. I had never dreamed that a brilliant mind could leave so miserable a sh.e.l.l behind it, that the body was such a mean poverty-stricken thing, a thing to be thrust out of sight as soon as it had fulfilled its work of balking and ruining the soul. I had never looked at Veronica after her death, and only once at my father, who had not horrified me, for here the undertaker has arts unknown, apparently, in Bavaria.

"My love died without a gasp. I shrank and curdled with horror that I had loved that hideous clay. What he had aroused in me was merely the response of youth to the masculine magnet, a trifle more specialized than I had heretofore encountered; the inevitable fever when infection appears. All personal feeling vanished out of me so completely that even while I stood there I felt the same pity for him that I had for the others, the helpless dead so mercilessly exposed to the vulgar indifferent crowd. If I could have hurried him into the privacy of the grave I would have exerted every effort, but before the laws of the country I was powerless. As I was leaving the cemetery I discovered that I still carried the wreath. I went back and added it to the bank of greenery which his valet no doubt had provided.

"When I returned to my pension I sent for the man and learned that he and the Consul-General of the United States had done all that the authorities had left in their hands. The body was to be shipped to New York within the month. He had died of Bright's disease. It had declared itself a day or two after I left. After ten days of intermittent suffering, during which the valet had felt no apprehension, he had died suddenly.

"I left Munich the same day. If I have failed to give you any adequate impression of my agonies, it will be next to impossible to describe my subsequent states of mind. Indeed I have little remembrance of my mental condition during the weeks of travel in Switzerland and Italy that followed. I was deliberately living up on the surface of my nature, indifferent to what was awaiting recognition below, although I knew it to be nothing unwelcome. Then, finally, I felt the time had come when I could draw aside the black curtain which I had hung for decency's sake between my consciousness and my depths, and tell the new guest to come forth. The guest was the liberty I had waited for all my life. I felt indescribably free, light, strong. The tyranny of love, even while it was but the love idea, that had shackled me for so many years, narrowing my interests, warping my imagination, clouding the future, was dissipated at last. I had paid the tribute to my youth and s.e.x. I felt really alive for the first time, existing in the actual not in the dream world. There are women and women; and quite enough of the fine old domestic order to keep the world going; but there is a vast and increasing number that are never really alive and worth anything to themselves or life until they have worked through that necessary madness, buried it, and settled down to those infinite interests upon which matrimony, happy or otherwise, bolts a thousand doors. Some day I will tell you my theory of what such women are really born for, but you have had enough for one night and the story is finished."

XI

Gwynne, between the fog and the story, felt congealed to the marrow. He leaned his elbows on his knees and stared at the bottom of the boat. It was the second time that the dark and carefully guarded recesses of the human soul had been opened to him, but Zeal's at least were a man's, and he had listened to him with a certain pa.s.sive acceptance cut with lightning-like visions of his own ruined future. He had never been invited into a woman's crypts before, and he hardly knew whether he were gratified or repelled. She had been as brutally truthful as he would have expected her to be if she spoke at all, but he doubted if he understood her as well as he had expected. He had been a.s.sured that she had once at least possessed the capacity for intense feeling, but what was the result? And were the depths frozen solid? Or merely buried alive?

He remarked after a moment: "I cannot think of anything appropriate to say, so perhaps it is as well to say nothing. I certainly do not feel that you are in any need of my sympathies, for you are quite terribly strong. When did all this happen?"

"About eight months before I went to England."

"What did you do with yourself in the interval?"

"I climbed in the Alps a bit, then went to Rome and studied the Campagna, then travelled somewhat in Spain. By that time the desire for California had grown insistent. The novelty of Europe had worn thin. I was tired of playing at doing things, and only at home could I really accomplish anything. I suddenly made up my mind to pay the long-delayed visit to England, stopping in Paris by the way for frocks. I doubt if I ever enjoyed anything more than those three weeks in Paris, where I completely forgot every unpleasant a.s.sociation. It was my first fine wardrobe, my first opportunity to experience to the full the delight of clothes. I have felt quite happy here. California is so far from every other place that it is almost like living on a detached planet. You forget the rest of the world for months at a time. For days after I returned I wandered about out-of-doors in a gay irresponsible mood, and carolled all over the house. Of course it was nothing but the electricity of the climate and that I was in my own State once more and took an insane pride in it. You do not even need to be born here for that; it comes with the inevitable sense of isolation. You will feel it in time. If I had not known that so certainly I should never have dared to urge you to come."

Gwynne smiled with a pardonable cynicism; but while he was not unwilling the conversation should turn upon himself, his curiosity was not satisfied. The fog had gone and the moon had risen. He could see Isabel quite plainly. She had turned her head and was gazing out over the great expanse desolated by the moonlight, and he studied her profile for the first time, often as he had observed it. To-night with the moonlight on it and against the dark hills it was almost repellently unmodern in its sharply cut regularity, the cla.s.sic modelling of the eye-socket and chin, the nose with its slight arch. Her hair had fallen from its pins and hung in a braid, its length concealed by her position, and making the effect of a queue. She had long since taken off her hat and wrapped its veil about her head. The veil had slipped and might easily have been mistaken for a ribbon confining the queue at the base of the head. For an instant Gwynne's senses swam. He recalled the portraits of their Revolutionary ancestors in the house on Russian Hill. It might have been a medallion suspended before him. He drew in his breath; then his eye fell to the short thin sensitive upper lip, rarely quiet for all her extraordinary repose; to the full enticing under lip, and the little black moles. Then his gaze wandered down to the rough shooting-jacket, to the rubber boots reaching to her waist, and he only restrained himself from laughing aloud because he feared to rush down the curtain before that secretive nature.

"Then you have no faith in love as the best thing in the world?" he asked.

She turned upon him her clear dreaming eyes. "I have faith enough in love, as I have faith in death, or any other of the uncontrovertible facts, as well as in its mission. But not as the best thing in life; not for my sort at least. Not for even the domestic, for that matter, unless they are utterly brainless. I believe that from the beginning of time the misery of the world has been caused by the superst.i.tion that love was all. It must continue to be the fate of the child-bearing woman, I suppose--for a while at least; but others have blundered upon the fact that it is a mere incident, and are far happier in consequence. To women like Anabel freedom means an indulgent husband and plenty of money. To others it means something of which the Anabels know the bare nomenclature: an absolute freedom of the soul, of which the outer independence is but the symbol. As I said, we only find it when we have finished with the bogie of love. It is a modern enough discovery. Think of the poor old maids of the generations behind us, who, failing to marry, collapsed into insignificance instead of revelling in their deliverance. And what humiliation to know that in your youth you are really wooed for the sake of the race alone, no matter what the delusions. If any one doubts it let him compare the matrimonial opportunities of the ugly maternal girl and the ugly clever girl. When clever women realize that they are a s.e.x apart and wait until their first youth at least is over before selecting a companion of the s.e.x that I am quite willing to concede must always interest us more than our own, and no doubt is necessary to our completion, then will the world have taken its first step towards real happiness."

Gwynne repressed his gorge and answered practically: "Not a bad idea if two were really suited, for no doubt companionship is _one_ of the best things in life, and a woman is more useful in many ways to a man than a partner of his own s.e.x. It is even apparent that she does equally well in certain varieties of sport. I suppose the more experience a man has had of life the more he hesitates to define what love really is. One has attacks of such a severity and one recovers so completely! Doubtless Schopenhauer was right: it is merely the furious determination of the race to persist. Spencer tells us that it is 'absolutely antecedent to all relative experience whatever.' Companionship--yes--perhaps----"

"It is necessary to a man; but by no means to all women----"

"Not for yourself, you mean. You are still blunted and somewhat disgusted--"

"I have dismissed the question. You cannot imagine how happy I feel every morning when I wake up, and every night when I go, always rather tired, into my comfortable little bed, knowing that I shall sleep like an infant. I love work. I love out-door life. I love the long evenings with my books and my thoughts, and my plans for the future--all my own.

I revel in the thought that I can never be unhappy again, because now I love no one. I loved my poor father, and suffered with him in his fits of repentance and shame. I loved, of course, that man. I have absolutely nothing in common with Paula, and my mother is merely a pretty memory. I am fond of Anabel and perhaps several other friends--Mr. and Mrs.

Leslie; but that sort of affection does not go very deep. Love is synonymous with selfishness and slavery--slavery because you no longer own yourself. My brother-in-law adores my sister, makes a great point of his fidelity, because before his marriage he was always flaunting some painted female, without which possession, a few years ago, a San Franciscan felt that he would lose the respect of his fellow-citizens.

But Lyster's reform makes him as exacting as a Turk. If my poor silly little sister smiles at some fugitive thought he demands to know what it is, and if she cannot remember he sulks for a day. He would possess her very thoughts. She dares not have a man friend, talk to a man for half an hour at a time. He won't let her belong to a club--clubs are all very well for other women, but his wife is not as other women. On the other hand, he has long since let her persuade him that he is the most marvellous of men, and, in consequence, permits her to make every sort of mean little sacrifice while he spends his money on himself. Her eyes are in a measure open now, but it is too late, and she rebels in the usual futile feminine way. There are millions like them. You will meet Anne Montgomery. She is thirty-five now, quite plain, and makes a living as a sort of itinerant housekeeper and caterer. She was a most lovely girl, with a wild-rose complexion and starlike eyes, and full of life and buoyant hope. Her great talent was for the violin, and she dreamed of conquering the world. Teachers told her that with the proper study she could at least become a professional of the first rank, although she lacked the genius of creation. Her parents and an older sister--one of the plain, domestic, unselfish kind, whose pleasure is in living for others--were horrified at the bare suggestion. Not only because they were old-fashioned--some of the most old-fashioned people on earth are in San Francisco--but because it would mean separation from their idol.

They surrounded her like a flaming belt, not even a man could get at her. They worshipped her as if she was a being of another world, devoured her; all the treasures of life were centred in her. That there might be the less temptation, they never took her to Europe; and gradually induced her to lay aside the instrument altogether. She was very sweet and gentle, and she loved them and submitted (I would have throttled them all). But she faded rapidly, lost her lovely coloring and animation, and she had no other beauty. Then her father speculated and failed. While they were undergoing real privations the influenza swooped down upon them and carried off the three older members of the family in a week. Anne Montgomery is the most conspicuous victim of what are generally supposed to be the higher affections that I know. They were just commonplace animals--those three--nothing more."

"Real happiness may lie in forgetting that love is selfish, and in overlooking the bitter in the sweet."

Isabel shrugged her shoulders. "If one can be happy without love why run the risks?"

They felt that they had exhausted the subject for the present and there was a long silence. Gwynne's eyes wandered over the inexpressibly desolate and sinister landscape. The intense brilliancy of the moon seemed to press darkness down upon the earth. It was true that every object was as sharp of outline as if cut against crystal, but they were a hard dark brown: the hills that jutted out into the windings of the marsh, the marsh itself, the more distant mountains. It looked like a landscape upon which the sun had set for ever, smitten with death--or not yet born into the solar system; some terrible formless menacing globe on the edge of the Universe. As he had approached San Francisco on the afternoon of his arrival, standing on the forward deck of the boat in a high wind, he had thought it the most stranded lonely city he had ever seen. He recalled the impression now, and in a flash he appreciated the Californian's att.i.tude to the rest of the world, the effect of such isolation upon the character of a people that had created a great and important city out of the wilderness, and in half a century. In spite of the obstinate aloofness of his ego he felt an involuntary thrill of pride in his connection with such a people; and hoped it might be premonitory. But again the eerie landscape claimed him and he became aware of the weird night sounds that broke out with violent abruptness after intervals of throbbing quiet: the loud honk-honk of geese, the shriek of loons, the noisy capricious serenade of the frogs. He experienced a feeling of such utter isolation that he almost started when Isabel spoke.

"These waste places in California are almost terrifying by moonlight,"

said she. "They always look as if they were brooding, crouching, concentrating their energies for a convulsion. No earthquake country can be quite normal in any of its aspects, nor quite beautiful. Here comes the tide. How Mac will grumble at us! But he is sure to have kept the fire going, and you shall have a cup of hot coffee before you start for home."

XII

Gwynne, on the following day, was making a late toilet, and in anything but a good-humor, for he had grown accustomed to early rising, when he received a note from Isabel.

It ran:

DEAR PARTNER,--Anabel has just told me over the telephone that Tom and Mr. Leslie and two other representative citizens are going out to see you this afternoon. I have the ghost of an idea that a friendly call is not their only object. _Do_ be plastic--it is better in the beginning--until you know your ground. Above all, don't be too English. You are vastly improved, but you have lapses.

I send you your share of the ducks. Mariana's roasting will explain our pride in one of the two most native of our products--the next time we go to San Francisco I'll take you to the market and we will sit in a grimy little balcony restaurant and you will be introduced to fried California oysters.

Please consider the marsh your own; and whenever you come, remember that you are to have breakfast or supper with me. Are you quite comfortable? If anything is wrong I will go over and interview Mariana and the j.a.p. Of course the latter will appropriate your cigarettes and books; he is probably a prince, and far from condescending to steal, he will take them as his right; and his hauteur may match your own at times. Moreover, he may decamp any morning without giving notice--Lafcadio Hearn dwells upon the _impermanency_ of the j.a.panese, and we can all bear him out. But on the other hand the j.a.p will keep your house cleaner than any other sort of servant, and he can be both amiable and alert when he chooses. I merely warn you, for I know nothing of your present _homme de chambre_ beyond the recommendation of my Chuma, who is amiable to the verge of imbecility. If he disappears, let me know at once, for I really want to make you comfortable and contented in what I know must seem to you little more than a beautiful wilderness peopled by ambitious barbarians. But wait till you know San Francisco!

ISABEL.

Gwynne smiled at the form of address and the expressions of concern in his welfare; but he scowled twice over the admonition to be plastic and American.

"I'll be what I d.a.m.n please," he announced, aloud, much to the surprise of Imura Kisaburo Hinomoto who entered at the moment with his shaving water.

Nevertheless, when his visitors arrived, late in the afternoon, his natural courtesy, and the reflection that he had not come to America to fail, induced him to receive the four with something like warmth, and to place his cigars and whiskey--he already knew better than to offer them tea--at their immediate disposal. They sat on the porch facing the mountain, and for a few moments the conversation was confined to the weather and the scenery, giving Gwynne an opportunity to observe his guests with some minuteness. Judge Leslie and young Colton he had already met, and he liked the former, a pleasant shrewd tactful man, who was one of the chief ornaments of the northern bar, and universally admitted to be "dead straight." So "straight," indeed, was he that his term of judgeship had been brief. He had been carried to the bench on an independent ticket, but the reform movement subsiding, he could obtain re-election only by bargaining with political bosses, and this he refused to do; but after the fashion of the country he retained his t.i.tle. He had a loose hairy benignant face with a humorous but penetrating eye and the usual domelike brow. His body had grown unwieldy from years and lack of exercise, and his clothes were old-fashioned and, generally, dusty. He voted the Republican ticket and was not too well pleased with his son-in-law who was a red Democrat and rising daily in the good graces of the party bosses.

This young man who was sipping his plain soda and commenting on neither the scenery nor the weather, had inspired Gwynne with a certain interest and curiosity. He was thirty but looked little over twenty, and his large limpid blue eyes were as guileless as a child's. He had a long pale face with an indifferent complexion and the common American lantern jaw. His hair and brows and lashes were paler than straw, and his long lank figure was without either distinction or muscularity. Nevertheless, there was a curious suggestion of cynical power in his impa.s.sive face and lolling inches, and Gwynne had made up his mind that he would be useful as a study in politics.

Mr. Wheaton, one of the present "City Fathers," a position he had occupied with brief intermittences for many years, had hard china-blue eyes and a straight mouth, in a large square smoothly-shaven face. He had crossed the plains in the Fifties from the inhospitable State of Maine, sought fortune in the gold diggings with moderate success, avoided San Francisco with a farmer's dread of "sharpers," and drifting to the hamlet at the head of Rosewater Creek had opened a small store for general merchandise. Frugality and a shrewd knowledge of what men wanted and women thought they wanted had increased his capital so rapidly that in five years he had converted a wing of the store into a bank. To-day he was a power. His wife was the leader of Rosewater society and attended first nights in San Francisco.

Mr. Larkin T. Boutts was new to Gwynne, although his status was easily to be inferred from the constant references in the local press. He was a fat little man who sat habitually with a hand on either knee, which he clawed absently both in conversation and thought. Otherwise his att.i.tude was one of extreme repose, even watchfulness. He was excessively neat, almost fashionable in his dress, which--Gwynne was to observe in the course of time--was invariably brown. He had a small pointed beard and a sharp direct dishonest eye. He was the leading hardware merchant of Rosewater and owned the hotel and the opera-house. His business methods had never been above criticism, and his politics drove the San Francisco correspondent, during legislative sittings, into a display of caustic virtue which gave the newspaper he represented just the necessary smack of reform and did not hurt its inspiration in the least. For Mr. Boutts was too sharp for the law, and all his sins were forgiven him on account of his genuine devotion to Rosewater. Far from battening on her, after the fashion of the San Francisco cormorant, he had never taken a dollar out of her that he had not returned a hundred-fold, and he was the author of much of her wealth.

This gentleman was the first to indicate that they had not driven out to Lumalitas to discuss the weather and the scenery.