Ancestors Part 29

"And don't you get used to it?" asked Isabel with curiosity. "You've been married thirteen years, and I suppose Lyster has always been what he calls an all-nighter."

"There are some things a wife never gets used to," replied Paula with injured dignity, as she held out a doubting hand for the candle Isabel had lighted. "Haven't you gas or electricity?"

"There is gas, but why take the trouble to light it? And the candle recalls so many delightful evenings in England. I know no prettier picture than a procession of long-trained women, with bare shoulders, and jewels in their hair, each carrying a candle up a long stair beside the central hall."

"Ah! I have no such charming reminiscences of the English aristocracy, and I am only afraid of spilling candle grease on my one decent dress."

XXII

At four o'clock Isabel was awakened by suspicious sounds at the key-hole of the front door. She reached out for her pistol, but withdrew her hand as she heard the careless laugh of her brother-in-law. A few moments later the two explorers, after an instant's hesitation at the head of the stair--which they had climbed like cats--walked past her door with a brisk swaggering preternaturally steady gait that invoked the memory of former occupants of the mansion. Then Gwynne's door opened and shut as if by sleight of hand. Stone's was at the end of the hall. Isabel inferred that he went through it, and a sound between a hiss and a smothered roar shot down the hall as he would seem to pick up the door and bang it into place.

Mr. Hofer had mentioned his luncheon hour as half-past one. Isabel had Gwynne called an hour before. She was sitting on the veranda, as he emerged. He was as well groomed as usual, but he was unmistakably pale beneath his new coat of tan. She laughed wickedly.

"Oh yes," he said, imperturbably, "I was drunk. If I had not been I never could have got through it, not being a seasoned San Franciscan. I thought I knew vice. I have seen a good many variations, and in places where protection was necessary. But I had not guessed at the combination of ancient civilization and the crudities of the mining-camp in the heart of a modern city. Stone is not a tank, but a camel. I befuddled myself successfully in those dives under the pavements--and we had by no means begun there: I should say we had patronized at least half the saloons in San Francis...o...b..fore we started for the underworld.

As we finally supported each other up the hill--we hadn't the price of a cab left between us--it seemed to me that I was ascending from a jungle of antediluvian men and women and beasts for ever and ever on the rampage. San Francisco is the most wonderful city in the world inasmuch as she not only exists but thrives on the top of such outrageous rottenness. And no wonder that the men like Hofer are desperate. We were escorted by a policeman after all, and he seemed to enjoy himself. The flash of knives--I saw two men stuck--made as little impression upon him as the awful abandonment of--well, of the females. Good G.o.d!--Well, I hope another variety is in store to-day. Hofer, at least, does not appear to be dissipated."

"Oh no, it is the fashion in that set to be domestic and good citizens.

All you'll hear of the underworld to-day will be its relation to politics. They have been making a desperate fight to defeat the present mayor's reelection and have been overwhelmingly defeated. The mayor is popularly supposed to be a criminal at large, and the party that supports him call themselves socialists, and are labor unions more greedy and tyrannical than any Trust in the country. Nice town. But we are optimists. No doubt Mr. Hofer and his party are already planning for the next campaign. If I were a man, I'd go back to the tactics of the Fifties and lynch. The city had good government for twenty years after the operations of that Vigilance Committee. You might suggest it."

"I cannot say that I am in a suggesting mood. Shall you be here to dinner?"

"Probably. But you are to accept whatever offers. No doubt Mr. Hofer will motor you out to the Country Club or down to Burlingame, where he has a house."

Gwynne nodded gratefully and left her. As he reached the top of the steps leading down the hill, Isabel saw him pause and speak to a very tall very smart young woman, whom she recognized in a moment as Mrs.

Hofer. Then the young matron advanced along the board walk with a sort of trembling stride. It was evident from her charming blushing face that she was as embarra.s.sed as any one so young and buoyant, so successful and so Irish, could be. Isabel ran down the steps to meet her.

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Hofer, in a light, high, cultivated, but nasal voice, with a slightly English accent. "You _are_ sweet! I had intended to call in state the first time I could think of a decent excuse, for I have simply been mad--_mad_--to know you. But last night I told Mr. Hofer that my slender stock of patience had gone--flown--evaporated. I could hardly wait till this afternoon! Do you think I'm unconventional? I'm not really, except when I'm abroad--never here. n.o.body is so conventional as the San Franciscan at home."

Isabel was smiling and trying to guide her up the steps. "I am more glad than I can say to know you, at last," she said. "Do come into my house."

"Let me rest a bit. The breath is out of me with the climb and the fright. Yes, fright, and it takes a good deal to phaze me. But you're the sensation of the town, my dear. There have been all sorts of plans to get hold of you. People are simply mad--_mad_! I was just bound I'd be the first. Not petty social ambition, not a bit of it. I wanted to know you. And I stayed in a country-house in England just after you, last year. To think that you could have married Lord Hexam. Oh, what a jewel of a house! I went simply mad over those white rooms in London."

Isabel had firmly piloted her up the steps and into the house, and Mrs.

Hofer sat on the edge of a chair like a bird on a bough, her merry shrewd sweet eyes devouring Isabel's face.

"Oh, but I've wanted to know you! You don't know what this means to me!"

"But why?" asked Isabel, much amused. "I am n.o.body."

"Oh, just aren't you, though? Why, you're almost the last of the old San Francisco Knickerbockers, so to speak. That is, the last that has inherited any of the beauty one is always hearing about from the old beaux. And most of them have gone under anyhow--in the cheerful California fashion: three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves. Of course there are some left, but the most interesting thing about them is that they have been forced to open their houses to the likes of us--or sit down and talk to empty chairs. But the old Spanish blood is what interests us most. It was quite forgotten--all that old life--for about two generations; but now it's the fashion to remember it, and everything else early Californian. To think that you are a niece, so to speak, of the first nun in California, who had that romantic love affair with that Russian--I never could p.r.o.nounce his name. That's not what interests _me_ most, though. It's _you_. To think what you've done! Those chickens! My man in the market has orders to send me Old Inn chickens and eggs, on penalty of losing my custom. All the _blasee_ girls--the San Francisco girls _do_ get so _blasee_, poor things--are threatening to go in for chickens. It would be a lot better for them than bridge. It is quite shocking the way they do gamble. Talk about early times!"

"Fancy chickens becoming a fad!" Mrs. Hofer had paused for breath. "Poor chickens! Tell your friends that they will have to get up at all hours of the night, and at six o'clock in winter, and five in summer, and spend a large part of their time in overalls and rubber boots. I fancy that will cure them."

"It would! No more flirtations! No more Paris gowns! No more paint! I'll tell them. But they admire you, all the same. And we are all dying to see you _en grande tenue_. I am giving a ball the night before Christmas. Say you will come--right here, on the spot."

"I shall love to come. I had intended to reopen this house as soon as I could afford it, and had hardly expected to pick up my mother's old threads until then. But a ball! I haven't danced for a year."

"It is simply fine to hear you say things just like other girls, when you look the concentrated essence of all our bewigged and bepowdered ancestors. To think that you've got that old colonial blood in you too, and are related to a lot of those old duffers one sees in the public parks. The next time I go East I'll look at them with more interest."

Then she sat still farther forward, and her bright face took on an expression of coaxing eagerness.

"If it hadn't been a man's luncheon to-day I should have asked you to join us. But won't you come down to The St. Francis with me? My automobile is at the foot of the bluff. We can motor afterward through the park a bit, and out on the boulevard. It is a simply heavenly day."

Isabel hesitated, and lifted an ear to the floor above. There was not a sound, nor was it likely that Lyster would make his appearance before dinner. Paula had announced her intention of visiting her children in the course of the afternoon; she would hardly awaken for luncheon. While she hesitated Mrs. Hofer began to coax in her eager commanding fashion.

"Oh, do come! Please come! I'm mad, _mad_ to have you all to myself for one day. Chloroform them--"

"You wouldn't lunch with me?"

"I _will_ entertain you first. Please, please, come!"

"Very well," said Isabel, laughing. "I doubt if they ever know the difference. I won't be a minute getting ready."

She ran up-stairs, and during the half-hour of her toilette Mrs. Hofer examined everything in the down-stairs rooms and nodded an emphatic approval.

XXIII

It was nearly midnight. Isabel, her head still buzzing after a kaleidoscopic day, which included much motoring and many words, felt no inclination for bed, moreover was not only curious to hear Gwynne's impressions, but felt a pleasant sense of antic.i.p.ation in talking the day over with him. He had telephoned that he was going down to Burlingame for dinner, but should manage to return to the house in the neighborhood of midnight. She wondered if he had met as many people and received as many bewildering impressions as she had done.

If she had cherished a lingering delusion that aught remained of the old proud reserved character of the society of her mother's time, it had vanished before the chatter of her hostess and the experiences of the day. They had not lunched at The St. Francis, after all. As they reached the entrance Mrs. Hofer capriciously changed her mind, and decided to make a dramatic descent with Isabel upon the house of a friend whom she knew to be entertaining informally, and where she was always sure of a welcome. The house was out at The Mission, a generic term in these days for the valley under the shadow of Twin Peaks, so spa.r.s.ely populated by the _padres_. There were still a few large wooden houses, surrounded by grounds, that looked like country seats in the midst of that wilderness of cheap and hideous streets; built perhaps thirty or forty years before, when "The Mission" was a suburb, and for old affection's sake still inhabited in spite of a thousand drawbacks. Isabel approached this place in a fever of antic.i.p.ation, for it was none other than the old estate of Juan Moraga, and through a grille in its vanished adobe wall Concha Arguello had held tryst with her Russian lover, Rezanov.

Into this sheltered valley the trade winds and the fog came so seldom that, although it was a November day, the host had no hesitation in entertaining his guests on the lawn, with rugs under foot and a canopy to protect the complexions of the women. Here, Isabel found members of nearly every set the city had ever possessed: Mrs. Trennahan, like herself of the old Spanish stock, and her New York husband; Anne Montgomery and two or three others of the second regime; Catalina Sh.o.r.e, with her beautiful half Indian face and English husband; these few with a repose of manner that looked old-fashioned against the lightly poised figures and incessant chatter of the younger girls. And there was an even greater variety of garb. Several were dressed for the season in velvet and furs: one wore an organdie blouse and hat; another had hastily donned a checked travelling suit; there was no doubt that Miss Montgomery had bought her simple brown frock already made, and perhaps at a sale; her neighbor wore a black lace dress with a fur boa. The majority were excessively smart, whatever their vagaries, and Mrs.

Hofer, most of all, in several shades of gray; not only becoming to her dark hair and bright color, but suggesting the natural plumage of a bird; she was one of those women that look so well in whatever they wear that it is difficult to imagine them in anything else. Isabel, perhaps, although the sharp eye of a woman would have detected the absence of the hand of a maid in her toilette, more nearly solved the problem of a spring day in mid-winter, with her frock of white serge and large black hat covered with feathers.

She sat between the "Reform Mayor," whose guest she was, and the "Militant Editor," neither in the highest spirits after their recent and unexpected defeat; and heard much of that intimate political talk for which she had longed, although her mind wandered occasionally to that romantic past of caballero and dona not yet a century old, very difficult to conjure in this swarming heterogeneous valley.

After luncheon Mrs. Hofer had invited Miss Montgomery into the automobile, and taken her and Isabel for a long ride, chattering of everything under the sun, but with breathing spells that enabled Isabel to exchange a few remarks with her old friend; and between remorse for her own neglect and pity for that desolated life, she was almost effusive, and begged Miss Montgomery to visit her in the valley where Anne's father too had owned a ranch in palmier days. She offered to furnish a room immediately, and Miss Montgomery smilingly promised to obtain surcease from dinner-parties, where her portion was to enter by the back door--in nine cases out of ten with the ancestral silver--and take the rest she needed. She made a good living, she a.s.sured Isabel, but was educating a young relative for the navy, and lived in a flat that was largely kitchen. All her fragile wild-rose beauty was gone long since, but she still remembered how to put on her clothes, and her position was unaffected in that devil-may-care city; she went into society when she chose.

Mrs. Hofer, on their return from the environs, left them for a few moments in front of a house on Van Ness Avenue where a friend lay ill, and Isabel made an enthusiastic allusion to the gay out-door appearance of the city. The broad avenue was crowded with men, women, and children, promenading in the sunshine. Every street-car was filled with people on their way to or from the Park, Presidio, or Cliff House. They had pa.s.sed hundreds of automobiles and fine turnouts of every description, and out at the three great resorts thousands of pleasure-seekers.

Miss Montgomery set her well-cut mouth in a pale line. "I get somewhat weary of all this pagan delight in mere externals," she remarked. "It is all so superficial and deceptive, although sincere enough in its ebullitions. I can tell you, my dear idealist--you have not changed a particle, by the way--that there is another side you have never seen. I doubt if you ever would see it, even if you came to live in the town."

The automobile stood on a corner. Miss Montgomery indicated the rise and fall of the hill-side, east and west of the avenue. "Look at all those shabby-genteel rows of houses, each exactly like the next, each with its awful bow window, and all needing a new coat of paint. So are the lives inside. And there are miles of them. There are just four sorts of people in this town--ignoring its underworld--that get any real enjoyment out of life: those that are wealthy enough to command constant variety; the careless clever Bohemians with their wits always on the alert and plenty of congenial work; the club women; the laboring cla.s.s, that get the highest wages on earth and are as happy as beasts of the field on a bright warm winter's day like this. But oh, the thousands and thousands of mere mortals that are mired in their ruts and no longer even plan to climb out! There is no more chance for those people--who are in some little business, or are clerks, or small professional men, or fractions in the great corporations--to mention but a few examples--no more chance for them than in any of the older cities; for San Francisco has gone at such a pace that she has as many ruts as if centuries had plowed her, and those in the ruts might as well be on Lone Mountain. They--the women particularly--have the tedium vitae in an acuter form than you have seen anywhere in Europe, for over there the centuries have mellowed and enriched life; there is something besides this eternal climate which can never take the place of art. Of course there was a day when every man had an equal chance, but that day has pa.s.sed long since. And then in Europe," she went on, the minor note in her voice becoming more plaintive, although she was too well bred to whine, "you are always near some other place. You can save your money for a few months and command a change of scene. Here you have to travel three thousand miles to find a change of accent. I often have the delusion that California is on Mars.

And the climate! Day after day, when I walk down that shabby hill with menus revolving in my head, or take the boat across that sparkling bay--I have customers all about--I long for the extremes of seasons they have in the East--fogs and four months of intermittent rain are only an irritant to one's natural love of variety. I long for the excitement of wading through snow drifts. I wish we would have a war. I should love to hear the sh.e.l.ls hissing overhead, to see great buildings collapse, people rushing about in a mad state of excitement--anything, anything, to relieve the monotony of this isolated bit of semi-civilization--where, I can tell you, more women meditate suicide from pure ennui than in any city on earth!"

Isabel was appalled by this outburst. The brilliant day seemed faded, the bright faces were grinning masks. Then she experienced a powerful rush of loyalty towards this stranded member of her own cla.s.s, and before she realized what she was saying, she had offered to send her to Europe to finish the musical education begun in her promising youth.

"Don't be angry," she stammered, knowing the intense pride of the impoverished American. "Why not? We are really related. I am quite alone. My little fortune has almost doubled. I make much more than I can spend. It would be quite shocking if I did not do something for some one--there is Paula of course, but it is against my principle to do too much for any woman with a husband. Do--please--"

Miss Montgomery, who had flushed deeply and averted her head, turned suddenly with a smile and a light in her eyes that, with the color in her cheeks, made her look young for a moment.

"That was just like you!" she exclaimed. "I remember in Rosewater, when you were a little thing, you used to give away the clothes on your back, and your toys never lasted a week; although you beat the children and pulled them about by the hair when they didn't play to suit you. I saw you on the street just after your return from Europe--you looked as if you had wrapped yourself up in the pride of your nature--had found a plane apart from common mortals. For that reason I did not remind you of my existence. But I should have remembered that you had had trouble and care enough to freeze any woman of your inheritances into a sort of animated Revolutionary statue. But you are just the same old Isabel. It makes me feel young again."