V
There had been no stormier night during the winter. Isabel's old housecreaked and rattled and groaned like a ship in a whole gale, and thewind sent great waves of rain along the veranda. A northern window hadbeen blown in and hastily patched. Although but nine o'clock the sky wasas black as midnight. For several days there had been merely a quietsteady fall, but during the afternoon the northern rain belt had sentdown another great storm and it had been rising ever since.
Isabel, unable to go out, had washed her hair, and was still sitting onthe hearth-rug, drying it, when she heard a shout outside, then the slamof a door at the back of the house, and voices in the kitchen. She wastoo warm and comfortable to be interested. If it were a tramp he waswelcome to the shelter of the house; if a burglar there were two men todispose of him, and her jewels were in a safe-deposit box in SanFrancisco. She loved a storm and had given herself up to one of thosemoods of pure delight in the present moment, although she had been inanything but a good-humor of late, and solitude had palled. But a ragingstorm, the sense of the absolute dominance of nature and the littlenessof man, always exalted her. She knew that the old house was secure onits foundations, and, but that she loved comfort and warmth, she wouldhave liked to be out on the marsh in a boat; tense with thedifficulties of keeping the channel and avoiding the shoals andmud-banks obliterated by the risen waters. It amused her to imagineherself out there, while dwelling pleasurably, in a doubledconsciousness, upon the warm red tints of her room. Her dreams werebarely disturbed by the unknown interloper, but they were shattered amoment later by Gwynne's voice and rapid step in the hall.
She had intended to greet him with a cool hauteur after his neglect ofnearly a month, but she could not rise in time; and, enveloped in a massof hair, spread over a yard of the floor, it was impossible to bedignified. So she resolved to be charming.
"I had to come in the back way like a tramp and leave my oil-skins inthe kitchen," he announced, abruptly, as he entered. "Don't get up. Ihave always wanted to see your hair down. So did Jimmy, I remember. Didhe?"
"Certainly not. Neither would you if you had not chosen such anextraordinary time to call. I am delighted to see you once more afterall these years, but--what on earth possessed you?" His eyes wereglittering, although he had dropped his lids, and he did not sit down,but moved restlessly about the room.
"Your mother is much better," said Isabel, tentatively.
"Oh yes, and she is looking forward to her motor trip, and telephonedthis morning that her room was a mass of flowers. I fancy she is a bittouched by so much kindness, for she has not been half decent to any onebut the Trennahans."
"Does she say anything about returning to England? She had it inmind--just after the earthquake."
"She has made one or two casual allusions to her return, but she neverplans far ahead--does what takes her fancy at the moment. But this lifewill never suit her. I imagine she will go before long. London is in herblood. Now that she can live properly--will have all she can, or oughtto want, when the building is paying, there is no object in herremaining here."
"How goes the building?"
"How can anything go in this infernal weather? The old shanties aredown, and the contractor had a sort of tent erected and has done somework on the foundations. I should have come directly to California if Ihad had any idea of the money to be made by selling off my superfluousland and putting up that building. It might be finished, by this time.Why didn't you tell me?"
"I am only remodelling my own brain on business lines by slow degrees,and no echo of this building fever reached me in Europe. You willremember that I did write, while you were wandering about America, thatMr. Colton suggested it for both of us. If I did not dwell on thesubject it was because I had a feminine horror of the mortgage--and noidea that you were so keen on making money."
"I am thinking principally of my mother. When a woman has always had theworld I doubt if she can live long out of it. San Francisco is all verywell for the young and adventurous, and for those with a strong sense ofthe picturesque, but I can imagine that to a woman of her age andexperience----Do you know--" he burst out. "I don't know where I am.What an extraordinary thing heredity is! I doubt if most people,although they would call that a platitude, realize that heredity isanything more than a telling word. There are times when I am sitting atmy stove, surrounded by all those typical American men, who seldommention a subject but politics and farming--for I tabu chickens--or theintensely local interests, more or less affected by politics,--there aretimes when I actually feel the nameless ambitious young fellow--not bornin a log-cabin, perhaps, but next door to it--and endowed with that keencompact pioneer determination to stride straight to my goal, whether itis the White House or--well--the Presidency of a Trust Company. Iforget--good God!--_Are_ those years behind me in England? I have caughtmyself wishing that I had kept a scrap-book like other idiots. Itescapes my memory altogether at times, that I have but to take a steamerout of New York to reach the top of civilization again in less than aweek."
"Perhaps it suggests itself when you remember that with the income youcan command before long, life in England will be more worth while."
"That was as nasty a one as you ever gave me! No one knows better thanyourself what brought me to America, and that those conditions cannot bealtered by money. Could I not have had Julia Kaye's fortune? You neednot be nasty again! You forget that not only was I in love with her--orthought I was--but could have given her the equivalent. She would be thelast to claim that she was to pay too high a price, even with me thrownin. If you don't beg my pardon I'll leave the house."
"I beg your pardon," said Isabel, hastily. She was thrilled withcuriosity; she had never seen him so nearly excited, with the exceptionof one memorable and painful moment. She fancied that she could see oneof the barriers between them sway.
"It may be that this sudden prospect of wealth, or rather of a goodishincome that would enable me to keep up a decent establishment in town,and a bit of a place somewhere in the hunting country, has upset myequilibrium, but it occurred to me this morning as I was splashingthrough the mud--I had to go out to the ranch--in fact it came over mewith such a rush that I felt like Don Quixote, and every landmark lookedlike a windmill--what is England to-day but the very apex ofcivilization? The Mecca, the reward, of every man and woman with thebreeding and the intelligence to appreciate it? The best of everythinggoes there, you have but to turn round to help yourself to an infinitevariety--to be found piecemeal everywhere else on earth. And the verybest is mine, by inheritance and personal effort. Why in thunder am Iout here on this ragged edge of civilization struggling with almostprimitive conditions?--elemental badness, sure enough! What is myobject? Merely to bring about a set of conditions that exists in Englandto-day. I have them there. Why am I wading into filth up to my knees,for the sake of an alien race, when they are mine already?"
"But you had too full a measure. That was the reason you emptied the cupand turned your back. You wanted hard work--to use your gifts."
"What does it all amount to? Suppose I insidiously work up a reformmovement in this State, and am shot into Congress over the head of themachine? Suppose my gifts are as extraordinary as I have been led tosuppose--ordinarily a man feels damned commonplace--and by force ofthose gifts I hold my own against the formidable organizations I shallencounter there at every turn? Suppose this reform spirit in the UnitedStates grows and strengthens, and I come along in time to benefit by it,and am landed in Washington--even in the White House? What of it? I hada thousand times rather be prime-minister in England--in other words thereal head of eleven million square miles of the earth's surface,dictator to a good part of the world, for that matter. Your public menare servants--or ought to be, according to your Constitution. In Englandwe render service by courtesy, and rule the roost. In this country everyman in public life is not only at the mercy of his constituents, but indaily terror of having his head cut off by the man above him. Even thePresident has to be a politician above all
things."
"You used to talk in England--as if you were not wholly swayed bypersonal ambition."
"It is not so difficult over there to conceive high and mightyideals--fool yourself, if you like. But I'll be hanged if I can seemyself baring my breast for poisoned arrows, with a seraphic smile on mylips, over here! It is all so crude! I want to be a main instrument inreform as much as ever--Oh yes! But I am not sure that one motive isnot to make the life and the game more tolerable. And the everlastingmachine! There won't be a day, inside or out of it, that I won't run upagainst every damnable meanness that human nature is capable of. I musthandle these men, placate them--or get out. History has not yet failedto repeat itself. If I succeed, in favoring conditions, in forming a newparty, I may end as a boss myself! Exalted ideal! Inspiring thought!Better go home and live like a gentleman. I could have some sort of acareer, and I have seen enough in this country to drive me towards theconclusion that there are worse things in life than curbing one'syouthful ambitions a bit."
He was still striding up and down the room, his expressive hands asrestless as his feet. The color was in his face and his eyes wereblazing. There was a curious magnetism about him that Isabel had neverbeen sensible of before, although she had heard much of it in England.It was as if his spirit were fully awake; at other times he appeared tolive with his cool critical brain only, while his inner self, with itsintense slow passions, slept. She wisely made no comment, and aftershoving the books violently about the table he went on:
"You may argue that if public men were elected directly by the peopleand the President held office for one term of ten or fifteen years only,that a long stride would be made towards the millennium. But it isdoubtful if even then, forty or fifty different tribes--for that is whatyour State and territory lines effect--could be managed withoutmachinery, and machinery develops the lowest attributes in human nature.I saw enough of that in the few rotten boroughs we have left in England,but my imagination never worked towards the full and originaldevelopment in this country. We have other faults; the serenest optimistwould never deny them; but, faults or no faults, we crown civilizationto-day. The richest man in America has not the least idea what it meansto live like a gentleman in our sense. And there is no flaw in myappreciation of your country. In many respects it is the mostmarvellous the world has known--but--I sometimes wonder if the pioneerblood in my veins is red enough to stand it. No matter what the mostsuccessful reformers accomplish, there will be no high civilization herein our time--no background. Unconsciously, or otherwise, I shall alwayshave the goal of England in my mind--and if that is the case, why am Ihere? Isn't civilization the highest that man is capable ofaccomplishing, the best that Earth has to offer any of us? What sense isthere in going back to the beginnings and plodding or fighting towards agoal you were born to? It's more than once I've felt like Don Quixote.The whole infernal country is a windmill--and a large percentage of itsinhabitants are windbags."
"Of course you have a streak of Don Quixote in you. All men of geniushave, I suppose. You felt that you had a mission--to pack a great dealinto a convenient phrase. You could do nothing in England but sit downand sup with the elect. You would have choked very quickly. And if youwent back you would not stay. You would not only be bored, but you knownow how badly this country needs one disinterested man of genius."
"I am not disinterested. I never felt more selfish in my life."
"You have an immense capacity for disinterested statesmanship. Of courseall motives, especially with the highly gifted, are complex. You havesaid yourself they would be fanatics otherwise. And you are far moreAmerican than you know, although you have just confessed that you doknow it well enough at times. All your American ancestors may be livingagain in you. It was your own instinct, no influence of mine, that sentyou out here, filled with mixed but high ambitions. No full-bloodedEnglishman would ever do what you have done. Insanity and inebriety skipa generation. Why not Americanism? Heaven knows there is nothingAmerican about your mother. And when the political cleanup comes, as itis bound to--"
"Oh, I am sick of this everlasting optimism: 'Everything is bound tocome out all right,' 'God's own country,' and all the rest of it. I canunderstand it well enough out here, though. It is a wonder to me thatany Californian has energy enough to care. Life is easy at the worst.The scoundrels batten unnoticed--although they are sending up the priceof everything; and the most ungrateful and rapacious labor class onearth never get their deserts. The labor class hasn't a leg to stand on,so far as bare justice goes. Pity they can't have a taste of Easternfactories and wages and climate for a while. If it were not for its bayand the tremendous significance of its position opposite the Orient,California would be what it ought to be, the pleasure gardens of theworld. No politics, no labor-unions, merely a succession of estates, bigand little, where a man could live a happy animal existence forone-third of the year, after working the other two-thirds--that is asane division. But if I stay here I work. And for what ultimate object?England, as sure as fate."
"You cannot possibly tell how you will feel twenty years hence--"
"Twenty years! That is a fair estimate, no doubt! I believe that thereal secret of discontent has been the prospect of this cursed period ofinaction. Nice substitute--coruscating as a blooming barrister; and it'smighty difficult to travel along for four years without showing yourhand. It requires a tact that I may or may not have. If I have it, theremay be other depths of hideous guile, as yet undiscovered. I have hadglimpses of them already. All these farmers that I am nursing? What ifmy beneficent virus works too quickly--before I can represent them? Someother fellow reaps the benefit; and when my turn comes, likely as notthere will be a reaction. I've to keep and increase my hold on these menof every nationality under the sun, as well as upon the seasoned oldAmericans, lest they should break away from me. Nice job I've cut out."He hesitated a moment, but added: "Beastly idea to subject all to thesame law. It should be ten years for immigrants, and one for theman-of-the-world anxious to take the oath of allegiance--not that I amfrantic to take it."
"I never knew any one so keen for obstacles; and now that you have foundmore than you bargained for--"
"It's not the obstacles that daunt me. If I were only sure ofaccomplishing any result worth while, if I had the materials to workon--if I were sure I cared! The American is an unhatched Englishman, buthe won't be hatched out in my time----I even long for the close compactdrama of English life. Everything is spread over such a vast loosesurface here. These four years through which I may--must stumble alongwith my hands tied, are a fair example. And it seems to me that I nevergo to bed without seeing a face on the dark trying to enunciate: 'Whatfor?' 'Why?'"
He sat down suddenly on a chair in front of her and took his head in hishands. "Do you ever ask yourself those questions?" he demanded,abruptly.
Isabel nodded. He noted absently that she looked like an elf with herface half-hidden by her hair, and that he could see but one little blackmole, but a narrow ring of blue about the dilated pupils of her eyes,the tiny dimple at the corner of her mouth. She wore a loose bluewrapper, and the wood fire leaped in high flames behind her. The stormwas terrific. He suddenly realized that this was the only homelike roomhe knew outside of England. He felt as if nothing would ever give himpeace again, but he was suddenly and overwhelmingly glad to bethere--and comfortably alone with Isabel on this raging night. He staredat her until his own pupils dilated, but she replied more tranquillythan she felt.
"_Cui bono_ is the motto on Earth's coat of arms. The only thing thatsaves us is that we don't see it all the time. There are long intervalsin which we eat and sleep and dance and love and play at politics andenjoy the storm--and our best companions."
"We certainly are not here to spend our lives preparing for anotherworld. Otherwise there would be no sense in the complexities ofcivilizations. A man could do that much in a cave. It is merely thediabolism of instinct that prompts the young to believe that the race isall. Certainly love is not the only source of h
appiness. I have beenecstatically happy when writing--thinking, in the fever of compositionthat I was dashing out the finest thing in literature. I have been happyunder fire, or excited enough to think so. And I have felt enoughexultation with exaltation to make happiness when I have been on aplatform and carried a hostile crowd off its head and to my feet. If twopeople were indescribably mated--I don't know--"
"Why not deliberately accept the doctrine that there is a purpose, evenif you are not permitted to read the riddle of life--"
"All very well, but what have politics to do with it? You may answerthat a man should lay up all the credits he can, and that he canpossibly get more by cleaning out the political trough than in any otherway. If those are my lines I suppose I shall work along them, but myhigher faculties whisper that to live this life on the intellectualplane, fighting for your country when necessary, is the rationalexistence for those that have the luck to be born to the good things ofthe old civilizations. Here they don't know any better, or if they dothey can't help themselves. If that plane isn't meant to live on, why isit there? Has a man the right deliberately to step off the high planeupon which a long succession of circumstances have planted him--pull uphis roots and plant them in a virgin soil?"
"Perhaps it is his duty to go where he is most needed--where his riperinstincts and experience--"
"Your arguments are always good, otherwise I should not be here arguingwith you. What do you really think of love?"
She jumped with the suddeness of the attack, and then drew backward alittle, for he was leaning towards her and she felt his masculinemagnetism as she had never done before. It pulled and repelled her,fascinated and filled her with resentment. And she was fully alive tothe romantic conditions, the wild night, the isolation, the vibratingatmosphere. But she replied, soberly:
"I don't think about it. I buried all that--"
"Chuck it on the dust-heap! It served its purpose: women should havesome such experience in their first youth as men have others. You arethe better for it, because you worked off on the poor devil all themorbid and ultra-romantic tendencies that were spoiling your life. Butlet it go at that. It was no more love than my first Byronic madness forone of my mother's friends when I was sixteen--"
"You were thirty when you were in love with Mrs. Kaye. And she was noteven your second--nor your tenth, no doubt."
"Quite right. I do not understand and shall waste no time on the effort.All men run pretty much the same gamut. That attack was the mostcommonplace sort of passion, no madness in it, no idealization, no senseof mating--"
"And how, may I ask, do you expect to know when you really do fall inlove--"
"I'll know, all right. I wish you would put up your hair. You lookuncanny, not like a woman at all. You have too many sides. I like youwhen you are human and normal."
"If you think my hair in its proper place will accomplish thatresult--my hair-pins are up-stairs on my dressing-table--"
He disappeared instantly. When he returned she was standing and coilingher hair about her head. Her sleeves were loose and the attitude baredher arms. As Gwynne handed her the pins, one by one, he stared,fascinated; but when she had finished and shaken down her sleeves,returning his stare with two polar stars, he turned his back suddenlyand resumed his tramp of the room.
"I have changed my mind," he said, abruptly. "I had intended to marryyou on any terms, merely because you suited my critical taste. But Ibelieve that if I married you in that way I should beat you or killyou--or you would kill me. You are capable of anything. Love wouldsquare matters with us--nothing else."
"Then is the engagement broken?" asked Isabel, placidly. She did not sitdown, but stood with a foot on the fender.
He relieved his feelings by kicking a stool across the room, then cameand stood in front of her.
"Could you love me?" he demanded.
"I am not the village prophet."
"Have you made up your mind you will not marry me?"
"Oh yes--that."
"Because you couldn't love me, or because you are determined not tomarry?"
"I won't feel and suffer and have my life torn to tatters when I cankeep it whole! I had rather marry you without love, if I believed myselfindispensable to your success in life."
"Much you know about it. I won't have you on any such terms."
"You are in no imminent danger. Heavens, what a wind! You must stay hereto-night. If the spare room is too cold you can sleep on this divan."
"If that is a polite hint, I am ready to take it. I have been here longenough."
"Oh, but I mean it. I will not hear of you riding back in this pitchdarkness. You would be more likely to go into the marsh than not. Youcan return to Rosewater so late to-morrow that Sister Ann will infer youhave made a morning call."
"I shall return to-night. It was as dark when I came, and I am notaltogether a fool. Neither is my horse."
"But you are not so familiar with the road," murmured Isabel,irrepressibly.
"That is the one decent thing you have said to me to-night. It is thesesudden lapses into the wholly feminine that save me from despair. What anight for romance, and you and I sparring like two prize-fighters! Thatis as far as we have ever got. If you would ever let me knowyou--sometimes I have an odd fancy that I can see a lamp burning in yourbreast, and that if ever I got at it, and searched all the nooks andcrannies of your strange nature by its light, I should love you asprofoundly as it is possible for a man to love a woman."
"I am afraid it is only a taper in a cup of oil. At all events it is nota search-light, even to myself. I fancy people only seem complicated toothers when they do not wholly understand themselves."
"Do you understand yourself?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Are you perfectly satisfied that you never could love me?"
She reddened and her sensitive mouth moved, but she brought her teethtogether. "That has nothing to do with it."
"Everything!"
"Nothing!"
"Do you mean to tell me that you are literally contented with your lifeas it is?--living out here alone with nothing to do but read and lookafter those confounded chickens? You have the most romantic temperamentI have ever met, and the way you gratify it would make an elephantlaugh."
"I dream and think of the future."
"Future? You saw what that amounted to when you were in town--"
"I have shaken off the impression. It must have been that I had too muchat once--and the purely frivolous, which offended my puritanicalstreak--"
"You don't like the Bohemian crowd any better."
"There are plenty of others. When I am ready I shall make the plunge andforbid myself to shrink from realities--"
"And the only people that will interest you will be those deep in publicaffairs. A woman to be a political power must be married. Otherwise shebecomes the worst sort of feminine intriguer."
"I am interested in the women that are interested in the improvement ofall things."
"And what is their ultimate aim, for heaven's sake? The franchise. Doyou mean to tell me that you intend to become a Club woman? I had sooneryou wrote a book."
"I have no intention of doing either--"
"In other words you are a plain dreamer, and a selfish one at that--"
"I try not to be selfish. I visit no ill-humor on any one--but you!--andI do good where I can. I should be more selfish if I ran the risk ofmaking--some man unhappy in matrimony."
"Well, I'm sick of the subject. I came to say good-bye for a time. I'moff to the south to-morrow, and then east on business. I don't know whenI shall be back--Oh, you can turn white--I can make you turn white!"
"What do you expect when you fire such a piece of news at me? What isbehind this?"
"I have told you enough."
"Don't you trust me?"
"Oh, you can keep a secret. I don't know that I want to tell you."
"Very well."
"Oh, well, it would be beastly ungrateful in me not to. I have had
ahint that, not having de-Americanized myself formally when I came ofage, I may still be an American citizen. Judge Leslie has advised me togo to Washington and find out, and I am going. Are you really sointerested?"
"Oh yes," said Isabel, softly. "I am interested! I have been afraid youmight become discouraged and disgusted. Four more years would be a longtime. Are you glad?"
"I don't know whether I am or not. When it comes to taking the oath ofallegiance to the United States--if that is sprung on me inWashington--I shall feel more like taking the next steamer for Englandand making my oaths there. It is a little too sudden."
"All this hesitation and doubt are natural enough until you are settleddown, and become too accustomed to the country to think of anythingelse--"
"I accept the balm. But I have less hesitation than youimagine--whatever the doubt and disgust. And I really believe the secretof my unrest is you! Good heavens! _Do_ I love you--_already_--thatwould be the last straw!"
He was staring at her, and something in his face blinded her. She turnedcold from head to foot; but she moved her glance to the baskets on themantel-shelf, and replied, quietly:
"It will take some time for you to know whether you are in love againor not. You have seen me too constantly--barring the last month. I havebecome in many ways necessary to you. When you move to San Francisco, asI am convinced you will, and have many other resources----propinquityis all there is to ninth-tenths of what we call love----and then alittle more kills it! Even if I were under the same delusion as you areI should not yield to it."
"I do love you," he said, as slowly and clearly as he was capable ofenunciating. But his voice was hoarse, and she was sensible, withoutturning her head, that he was rigid. "It is different--quite different.I am willing to wait, however. I understand your hesitation. When Ireturn--"
"Doubt of the reality of your--well--"
"Love," said Gwynne, grimly.
But Isabel could not bring herself to utter the word. "One way or theother, it does not alter my determination not to marry."
"Let that rest for a while. What I want to know is, could you--do youlove me?"
"Oh, I don't know! I only know I don't want to. You have a tremendousinfluence--you have made every one else seem commonplace anduninteresting--I have resented very much your neglect this last month. Iam willing to tell you all this--also, that I have dreamed, imaginedmyself in love with you. But I am convinced that if you let me alone Ishall get over it."
"I have no intention of letting you alone."
She moved backward suddenly, and he laughed. "I wouldn't touch you witha forty-foot pole," he said, roughly, "unless you wanted me. That,perhaps, shows how far gone I am. But precious little you know aboutmen. Or yourself. If I kissed you this minute you would succumb--"
He turned suddenly and was down the hall and had slammed the kitchendoor behind him before she realized that she was actually alone, that hemeant to leave the house. For a moment she clutched the edge of themantel-piece in a passion of relief and regret. Then her femininity wasswept aside by her hospitable instinct and vehement fear. She ran downthe hall and into the kitchen. But even his rain garments and boots weregone. She opened the back door and peered out into the inky darkness. Alight was moving in the stable. The rain was falling in a flood and thewind almost drove her backward. But she gathered up her gown and ran asfast as she could make headway to the stable. He was alone, andtightening his horse's saddle-girths by the light of a dark lantern. Hegave her a bare glance and went on with his work.
"You must not go!" She was forced to scream. "You shall not. Why, youare mad. The marsh--such conventionality is ridiculous. I refuse torecognize it."
He rose to his feet and led his horse outside. But before he could vaultto the saddle she caught his arm and dragged him backward. "You shallnot go! You shall not!" She could hardly hear the sound of her voice.But she heard his, and there was nothing in either storm or darkness toblunt the sense of touch. For a moment she felt as if the whole hadnever been halved, as if they two were youth incarnate; and his arm waslike vibrating iron along her back. She thought he was going to kiss herand dazedly moved her head towards him. But he cried into her earinstead:
"I stay if you marry me to-morrow."
"No, no, no!" Her will sprang through her lips, and before it was beatendown again she saw a spark of light engulfed in the dark, and stoodalone in the storm, wondering if the world had turned over.