Ancestors: A Novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

  XXV

  Two weeks later Lady Victoria was established in the house on RussianHill. She had given no intimation of her coming until the day her trainwas due in Oakland, when she telegraphed, suddenly reflecting, no doubt,that she was descending into the wilderness and that precautions werewise. Gwynne barely had time to catch the train from Rosewater, and whenthe connecting boat arrived at the ferry building in San Francisco, hewas obliged to run like a thief pursued by a policeman down to theOakland ferry building, in order to catch the boat just starting to meetthe Overland train. All this was by no means to his taste. Nor was hismother's cavalier arrival. It savored too much of royalty. And he had amasculine disapproval of being taken by surprise; moreover was far lessardent at the prospect of seeing his mother again than he would haveexpected. In England he had needed her; she seemed superfluous in thiscountry, which she never would understand; and he wanted all his timefor his studies--and as little reminder of England as possible. Hismother, for all her individualities, was the concentrated essence of theEngland he knew best. Besides, she was accustomed to a great deal ofattention. He had no taste for dancing attendance upon any one, and fromwhom else could she expect it--unless, to be sure--he recalled that hismother was a beautiful woman, always surrounded by a court of admirers.Why should Americans be impervious to the accomplished fascination andthe beauty of a woman that had reigned in London for thirty years? Hedetermined to press Isabel into service. She could try her hand on hismother's American destinies, and provide her with amusement and a hostof friends.

  He felt all the promptings of natural affection when he was actuallyface to face with his mother once more, and forgot all his doubts in hisintense amusement at her naive surprise before the comfortable immensityof the San Francisco hotels, and the crowds and automobiles in thestreets.

  The next day he took her up to the ranch. For a week she stalked aboutthe country, eight hours out of the twenty-four, expressing interest innothing, although her eyes always softened at her son's approach; and ifshe manifested no enthusiasm for his adopted country, at least shebarely mentioned the one of his heart. At the end of a week she promptlyaccepted Isabel's suggestion to transfer herself and her grim disgustedmaid to the house on Russian Hill. Isabel lost no time in piloting herthither. Anne Montgomery undertook to provide her with a small staff ofservants, and to call daily and order the household until all wheelswere on their tracks. Mrs. Hofer delightedly agreed to be the socialsponsor of Lady Victoria Gwynne, and issued invitations at once for atea and a dinner; and Gwynne, who had been half indifferent torebuilding on the San Francisco property, immediately began holding longinterviews with bankers, lawyers, architects, and contractors. The lawrequired him to give but thirty days' notice to his tenants, well-to-doworkmen; and if all went well the building might be finished in sevenmonths. Lady Victoria evinced something like a renewed interest in lifewhen told that by the following winter her income would be increased;and trebled as soon as the large revenue from the building had paid offthe mortgage. Her son offered to place his own share at her disposaluntil her debts were paid, but to this she would not listen. He foundher maternal affection undimmed, but other changes in her which he wasfar too masculine to understand, and after she was fairly settled andapparently content, he dismissed feminine idiosyncrasies from hisoverburdened mind. He had neglected his studies long enough, and it wastime to begin his amateur practice in Judge Leslie's office, to saynothing of the bi-weekly lecture at the State University at Berkeley,which, with the journeys, consumed the day.

  Isabel's feminine soul took a far more abiding interest in the subtlechanges of that complicated modern evolution whose special arrangementof particles was labelled Victoria Gwynne. She bore little externaltraces of her illness, and when Isabel congratulated her upon socomplete a recovery, she looked as blank as if memory had failed her.Isabel had encountered this truly British attitude before, andexperienced none of the irritation of several of the Englishwoman's newacquaintances when insisting upon the beneficence of the San Franciscoclimate. But it was not long before Isabel discerned that under thatsphinx-like exterior the older woman was intensely nervous, that once ortwice even her splendid breeding could not control an outburst ofirritability. Her eyes, too, had a curious hard opaque look, as if theold voluptuous fires had burned out; and she seemed ever on her guard.What her future plans were no man could guess. She might have settleddown for life on Russian Hill, so completely did she make the newenvironment fit her imperious person. She even remarked casually toIsabel that "of course" she should entertain in the course of thewinter, but at one of the hotels; she would never ask people to climbthose stairs on a possibly rainy night. But it was evident that herentertaining would be merely on the principle of noblesse oblige; herlack of interest in the doings of a civilization so different from herown was patent, and it was doubtful if she would have even accepted theattentions showered upon her had she not feared the alternative of anunbroken ennui. Isabel felt vaguely sorry for her, and puzzled deeply,but she could do no more than provide her with entertainment and theabundant comforts and luxuries of the city; to express any deeper andmore womanly sympathy to that proud nature would have been a libertyIsabel would have been the last to take. But she retained her own roomsand went down with Gwynne once a week, when they both devoted themselvesto Lady Victoria's amusement. It was at least gratifying that the Frenchrestaurants and many of the unique Bohemian resorts entertained her morethan society; and she found the Stones amusing, and frankly made use ofPaula, who did all her shopping, receiving many a careless present.

  Meanwhile Gwynne, when not reading, or practising, or attendinglectures, or endeavoring to hurry forward his new enterprise in thecity, took long buggy rides with Tom Colton about the country, and madeacquaintance with many farmers, as well as with the guileful depths ofthe ambitious young politician. Colton, although for the presentdependent upon only the voters of his district, by no means confinedhis attentions even to those of his county. The time would come when hewould need a wide popularity, and with his cool far-sighted tactics hewas already sowing its seeds. There was an immense and varied materialto work on. Not only were his own county and the two adjoining as largeas a State more modest than California, but, with the exception of theAsti vineyards, and one or two ranches like Lumalitas, were cut up intoan infinite number of farms owned by Irish, Scotch, Danes, Norwegians,Swedes, Hungarians, Swiss, Germans, Italians, and a few nativeAmericans. Asti alone, a great district devoted to the vine, andboasting the largest tank in the world, was entirely in the hands ofItalians. The Swiss, for the most part, were cheese makers. The restdevoted themselves to chickens, grain, hay, wheat, and fruit. There wereseveral orange orchards and one violet farm. Many of these foreignerswere so numerous that churches had been built for their separate use,and service was held in their native tongue. All were willing to dropwork for a few moments and talk politics with Colton, particularly if itwas to abuse lawmakers and monopolists--above all, the railroads, whoseprices were exorbitant, and whose service was inadequate. In thisdepartment of monopoly at least they had a real grievance, and Coltonnever let them forget it. He made no secret of the fact that the UnitedStates Senate was his goal, and reiterated that there alone could heaccomplish the legislation that would free the farmer from the costlytyranny of the corporations and give the laboring man his rightful shareof profit. Some were skeptical that any mortal could accomplish all hepromised, but the foreigners for the most part were gullible, and theyall liked the rich man's son, with his simple ways and his blatantdemocracy.

  Of Gwynne they took little notice, but he studied them, one and all, andit was not long before he understood the materials with which he mustdeal in the future. The State was Republican, although San Franciscopresented the remarkable spectacle of a Democratic mayor with aRepublican boss controlling the labor element, which was presumablydemocratic in essence, and devoted to the figurehead. But countrypolitics were far less complicated, and it was possible that a strongDemocrat with a
sufficiency of inherent power could weld together theconflicting and half indifferent elements, and change the politicalcurrent. Californians had gone thunderously Republican at the lastPresidential election, because for the moment they were dazzled by theRoosevelt star and all it seemed to portend. There could be no betteraugury for a really great and sincere leader; for whether or notRoosevelt was all they imagined, the point to consider was that they hadbeen carried away by their higher enthusiasms, not by those a meretrickster like Colton was trying to stimulate. They had rushed to thepolls with all that was best in their natures in the ascendant, eagernot only for a great servant that would reform many abuses, but for onethat stood at the moment before the country as the embodiment of allthat was high-minded, uncompromisingly honest, and nobly patriotic inAmerican life. It was one of the greatest personal triumphs everaccomplished--for the leaders wished nothing more ardently than hisdownfall--and whether or not it was to be justified by history, it mustever remain to his credit that he had hypnotized his countrymen throughthe higher channels of their nature. The reaction might be bitter, butmemory is short, and at least he had served to demonstrate that theAmerican mind was not materialized by the lust of gain, was quite assusceptible to the loftier patriotic promptings as in the days of itsrevolutionary and simpler ancestors. A man like Colton might delude fora time, for the Democratic party was deplorably weak in leaders, and theRepublican bosses, in California, as elsewhere, had made the State abyword for shameless corruption; and their iron heel ground hard even inthat land of climate and plenty. Colton might be useful to rouseCalifornians to a sense of their wrongs and opportunities, but Gwynnedoubted if he could hold them. He promised too much. The time would comewhen they would turn to a strong man who talked less and did more, whogradually imbued them with the conviction of absolute honesty,distinguished ability, and as much disinterestedness as it is reasonableto expect of any mortal striving for the great prizes of life.

  One day there was a mass-meeting suddenly called to express sympathywith the orange growers of the South, who had dumped twelve carloads ofearly oranges into the San Francisco Bay rather than submit to theincreased rates of the transcontinental railroads. Gwynne saw hisopportunity and summoned his powers. There was a moment of doubt, ofhesitancy, of reflection that he was rusty, and that the subject was ofno special interest to him; then, at the eager insistence of Colton, hewalked rapidly to the front of the platform with all the actor's exaltednervous delight in a new role. In a few moments there was no subject onearth so interesting to him as the iniquities of the railroads and thewrongs of the orange growers; he awoke from his torpor so triumphantlythat his amazed audience, as of old, felt the deep flattery of itspower over him, and he made a speech which was like the rushing of risenwaters through a broken dam. Not that he permitted himself to be carriedaway wholly; he deliberately refrained from indiscriminate phillipics,from rousing their ire too far, grasped the opportunity to see whatcould be done by appealing to their reason through their higheremotions, and begged them to meet constantly and consider the questionof electing men that were not mere politicians, that would deliver theState from the medieval tyranny that oppressed it; advised his hearersto employ the best legal counsel they could get, and to give theirleisure moments to the study of practical politics, instead ofindolently submitting all great questions to the hands of men asunscrupulous as the State bosses and corporations. With his peculiargift he made each breathless man in the auditorium feel not only that hewas being personally addressed, but that his mental equipment hadmysteriously been raised to the plane of the speaker's. When Gwynnefinished amid applause as great as any he had evoked in England afterthe expounding of great issues dear to his heart, he turned to findColton regarding him with sharp eyes and lowering brow. He immediatelytook his arm and led him without.

  "I am glad a climax has come so soon," he said. "Otherwise I should havebegun to feel like a hypocrite. Not only are your principles and mineutterly antagonistic, but you must consider me as your rival. I can donothing definite, of course, for nearly four years, and meanwhile youmay reach the United States Senate. If you do I shall do my utmost tooust you. Nevertheless, if I can be of any service in sending you thereI am perfectly willing to place myself at your disposal, for theexperience and insight I shall acquire in exchange. And as you are noworse than the others, and some one must go, it might as well be you asanother. But, I repeat, I shall use all my powers to oust you and takeyour place."

  Colton stood for a few moments, his hands in his pockets, regarding theground. Then he lifted his eyes and smiled ingenuously.

  "You are dead straight, for a fact. And I think I have got just as goodan opinion of myself as you have of yourself. You put me in the UnitedStates Senate with that tongue of yours--God, you can talk!--and I'lltake the chances of even you getting me out. It will take more thaneloquence to upset a great State machine, and before I get through I'llhave the Democratic machine stronger than the Republican is to-day. Youcan't get anywhere in this country without the machine, and the man incontrol stays in control unless he falls down, and this I don't proposeto do. I'll swap frankness and tell you right here that when I'm boss Imay let you come to Congress as my colleague, but that you've got to doas I say when you get there. What do you say to that?"

  "I'll take all the chances. At least we understand each other. I workfor you now, and I break the power of both you and your infernal machinewhen I am a citizen of the United States."

  "Shake," said Colton.

  And they shook.