Ancestors: A Novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

  XXVI

  Isabel sat idly on the veranda of her old hotel as was her habit in theevening hour. There had been no heavy rains as yet to freshen the hillsand swell the tides until the salt waters scalded the juices from themarsh grass, turning it from green to bronze and red; and the barometerwas stationary. A cool wind came in from the sea with the flood, andIsabel enjoyed the beauty that was hers all the more luxuriously in herthick shawl of white wool. A great part of the valley north and southwas within the range of her vision, and it was suffused with gold undera sky that looked like an inverted crucible pouring down its treasuresin the prodigal fashion of the land. Facing her house and on theopposite side of the marsh, at its widest here, was a high wall of rock,from which the valley curved backward on either side, tapering to thegreat level in the north, but on the south halting abruptly before themass of mountains following the coast line and topped by the angularshoulder of Tamalpais; coal black to-night against the intense gold ofthe West.

  She had not seen Gwynne for several days, and half expected that hewould come to-night. These were busy days, and she saw less of him thanformerly, although he snatched an hour for shooting whenever he could,and occasionally rode over for supper; and they saw much of each otherduring the weekly visit to the city. Their relations were easy andsexless. He refused to talk of chickens, but they had many otherinterests in common. She had by no means forgotten his outbreak in thelaunch, and had scowled at her arms for quite a week as she brushed herhair for bed, but that episode was now several weeks old, and she hadceased to harbor resentment. But she was subtly out of conceit withherself and life, resentful that she missed any one, after her longtriumph in freedom from human ties; also resentful of the respect andinterest with which Gwynne had inspired her, particularly since hissummary expulsion of her will from the battle ground where it wasbecoming accustomed to easy triumphs. She had no love for him, and shewas as satisfied with the life she had chosen as ever, but she wasbeginning to feel a sense of approaching confusion, where readjustmentwould once more be necessary. The future looked longer, and she waslosing her pleasant sense of finality. She had guessed long ago that theonly chance of escaping the terrible restlessness that pursues so manywomen, like enemies in the unseen world converted into furies, was tocaress and hug the present, fool the ego into the belief that it wantednothing beyond an imminent future, certain of realization, which shouldbe as all-possessing as the present. But she had been wise enough to dolittle analysis, either of her depths or of life, and her time was fullenough.

  "Are you asleep?" asked a polite voice. Gwynne swung himself over thelow railing of the veranda.

  "I did not hear your horse." It would be long before he could surpriseher into any sort of emotion again.

  "Good reason. I walked. I read Cooley until I had an alarming vision ofthe Constitution of the United States writ black upon the sunset, so Ithought it was high time to walk it off. Naturally my footsteps led mehere."

  "That was nice of them. Mac will drive you home, or you can have myhorse."

  "It is like you to plan my departure before I have fairly arrived. May Isit down?"

  Isabel shivered. The glow had gone, there was only the intense darkfiery blue behind the stars--silver and crystal and green; one rarelysees a golden star in California. There were scattered lights inRosewater and on the hillsides; and the night boat winding through themarsh was a mere chain of colored lights; here and there a lamp on ahead mast looked like a fallen star.

  "That is the way I generally feel after the glow has disappeared," saidGwynne, abruptly. "Let us go in."

  There were blazing logs on the hearth, and a comfortable chair on eitherside. The room looked very red and warm and seductive. As they passedthe table Isabel half lifted one of the English Reviews for which shesubscribed. "There is an allusion to you here," she said. "I meant tosend it to you. I fancy they want you back. It is very complimentary."

  But Gwynne concealed the promptings of vanity and took one of the chairsat the fireside, asking permission to light his pipe. She noted, as shesettled herself opposite, that there was less of repose in his longfigure than formerly, something of repressed activity, and his ratherheavy eyes were colder and more alert.

  "It all seems a thousand years ago," he said. "I am John Gwynne. I doubtif I shall ever love your California, but I am interested--this mass oftypical Europeans not yet Americanized--no common brain to work on, noone set of racial peculiarities. And the law has me fast. I have becomefrightfully ambitious. Talk about your Hamilton. I too walk the floortill the small hours, repeating pages aloud. My Jap thinks me mad, andno doubt is only induced to remain at his post by the excellence of mytobacco, and the fact that his education is unhindered by much service.While I am packing my own brain cells I infer that he is attending anight school in St. Peter, for I hear him returning at all hours; and hecertainly shows no trace of other dissipation. We have never exchangedten sentences, but perhaps we act as a mutual stimulus."

  "Don't you love California the least little bit?" asked Isabel,wistfully. "Or San Francisco?"

  "I have liked San Francisco too well upon several occasions--when I haverun down to spend the night at the Hofers--or have fallen in with Stoneon my way back from Berkeley, and been induced to stay over. Hofer andthat set seem to be content with living well; they are too serious fordissipation. But Stone! Of course such men die young, but they areuseful in exciting the mind to wonder and awe. I don't think I am in anydanger of becoming San Franciscan to the point of feeding her insatiablefurnaces with all the fires of my being, but there is no denying herfascination, and it has given me a very considerable pleasure to yieldto it. Whether I shall practise law there--change my base--I have notyet had time to think it out."

  "A country lawyer's is certainly no career."

  "This is a good place to begin politically. San Francisco is too hard anut to crack at present. If I could become powerful in the State, theIndependent leader they need, then I might transfer my attentions tothat unhappy town. Even Hofer and all the rest of the devoted band seemto be practically helpless since the re-election of the mayor. Whatcould I do--at present?"

  "With a big legal reputation made in San Francisco you could travel veryfast and far. And you would be learning every thread of every rope,become what is technically known as 'on'; and then when the time came--"

  "I hate so much waiting! The shortest cut is here in the country. Ishall manage these men far better than Colton, who is the crudest typeof American politician. Nothing could be simpler than his program:abuse, promise. Nothing simpler than his ambition: all for himself, andthe devil take the hindmost. I have yet to hear him utter a sentimentthat betrays any love of his country or desire to serve her, any realpublic spirit. Those are the sentiments I am trying to cultivate forthis accidental land of my birth, for without them ambition isinexcusable and endeavor a hollow sham."

  "And can't you?" Isabel left her chair and stood by the mantel-piece. Itwas the first time he had spoken of himself with any approach toconfidence since the day of his arrival. "Sometimes I repent the share Ihad in your coming to America--not that I flatter myself I had much todo with it--" she added, hastily. "But my being there may have turnedthe scale. You might have gone off to rule a South American Republic--"

  "I should have done nothing so asinine, and you had everything to dowith my coming here. Not that I hold you responsible. You gave a hint,and I took it."

  "And you don't regret it?"

  "Why waste time in regret? I can go back any moment. Not that I have theleast intention of doing anything of the sort."

  He was pleasantly tired in mind and body, and the warm homelike roomcaressed his senses. He settled himself more deeply in Hiram Otis's oldchair and looked up at Isabel. She had laid aside the white shawl, butwore a red Indian scarf over her black gown. The gown was cut out in asquare at the neck; she always dressed for her lonely supper, and shehad put a red rose in her hair, in the fashion of her Californiagrandmothers. With her face t
urned from the light, her eyes with theirlarge pupils looked black.

  "I shall stay in California, like or no like," continued Gwynne. "But Idid not walk five miles to talk politics with a woman after a day of lawand the citizens of Rosewater. Where did you get that curiousold-fashioned scarf?"

  "I found it in a trunk of my mother's. Doubtless it belonged to hermother. I also found this." She indicated a fine gold chain and heart ofgarnets that lay on her white neck. The humor in his eyes had quickenedinto admiration; he reflected that the various streams in hercomposition might not be so completely blended as would appear upon thatnormally placid surface. The feeling of uneasiness which he hadperemptorily dismissed stole over him once more. She looked whollySpanish, and put out the light of every brunette he knew. Dolly Boutts,whom he still admired at a distance, although he fled at her approach,was a bouncing peasant by contrast; and several well-bred andentertaining young women of the same warm hues that he had met duringthe past few weeks in San Francisco suddenly seemed to be the merestclimatic accidents beside this girl who unrolled the pages ofCalifornia's older past and afforded him a fleeting vision of thoselovely donas and fiery caballeros for whom life was an eternalplayground. That they were his progenitors as well as hers he found itdifficult to realize, he seemed to have inherited so little of them; butthey had flown generously to Isabel's making, and to-night she gave himthat same impression of historic background as when she turned theseverity of her profile up on him and suggested a doughtier race.

  "It was about the same time," he said, abruptly.

  "What?"

  "While our Spanish ancestors were playing at this end of the continent,our 'American' forefathers were bracing themselves against England. Itwas in 1776 that the Presidio and Mission of San Francisco were founded,was it not? Curious coincidence. Perhaps that is what gives you yoursense of destiny."

  "I have no sense of destiny."

  "Oh, but you have. Now I know that you are quite Spanish to-night. It isyour more ordinary mood of calm unvarnished--not to saybrutal--directness that gives you your greatest charm as a comrade--evenwhile you repel as a woman."

  "Do I repel as a woman?" Isabel had placed one foot on the fender, onehand on the mantel-piece, and as she leaned slightly towards him, thered glow of the lamps and the mellow old scarf softening her features,the small square of neck dazzlingly white, and the position revealingthe lines of her figure against the high flames of the logs, she lookedmore lovely than he had ever seen her. Like all racial beauties, bred byselection, she needed the arts of dress and furnishings to frame her.It is only your accidental or peasant beauty that can defy "clothes";and Isabel's looks in ordinary ranch and riding costumes made noimpression on Gwynne whatever. But to-night her appeal was very direct,although he had not the least idea whether she was posing or wasentirely natural in an unusual mood. He had no intention of being made afool of, however, and answered with the responsive glow in his eyes duea pretty and charming woman:

  "Sometimes. Not to-night. If you would remain Spanish with noRevolutionary lapses, I make no doubt I should fall in love with you,and then perhaps you would fall in love with me merely because of my ownlack of picturesqueness, and we should live happily ever after."

  "What a bore." Isabel sniffed, and moved her gaze to the fire. But shedid not alter her attitude.

  "Are you really happy?" asked Gwynne, curiously.

  "Of course. So much so that it begins to worry me a little. Mypuritanical instincts dictate that I have no right to be quite happy.What slaves we are to the old poisons in our blood! I live by the lightof my reason, and all is well until one of those mouldy instincts, likea buried disease germ, raps all round its tomb. Then I feel nothing buta graveyard of all my ancestors. I don't let them out, and my reasoncontinues its rule, but they keep me from being--well--entirely happy,and I resent that."

  "I should say it was not the Puritans but your common womanly instinctsthat were thumping round their cells. You have no right to be happyexcept as Nature intended when she deliberately equipped you, and thatis in making some man happy."

  "That is one of those superstitions I am trying to live down while I amstill young. Your mother is unhappy, under all her pride, because shehas outlived youth and beauty and all they meant to her--she made themher gods, and now they have gone, and she doesn't know which way toturn. Ennui devours her, and she is too old to turn her brains toaccount, too cynical for the average resource of religion, and toosteeped, dyed, solidified, in one kind of womanism to turn at this latedate to any other. But there are so many resources for the woman ofto-day. The poor despised pioneers have done that for us. Of course ithas not killed our natural instincts, and if I had not fallen in lovewhen I did, no doubt I should still be looking about for an opportunity.It is my good-fortune that I was delivered so soon. I wish all womenborn to enjoy life in its variety could be freed of that terrible burdenof sex as early as I was."

  "I suppose you would like to rid men of it too."

  "I do not waste any thought on men; so far as I have observed they areable to take care of themselves."

  "A woman incapable of passion is neither more nor less than a failure."

  "I have seen so many commonplace women capable of it! Look at Mrs.Haight and Paula."

  "I never look at Mrs. Haight, but as for Mrs. Stone I can quite conceivethat if she had better taste she would be almost charming. She embodiesyouth properly equipped."

  "For reproduction, you mean. That is the reason that the silliest, themeanest, the most poisonous girl can always find a husband if she ishealthy. It is no wonder that some of us want a new standard."

  Gwynne laughed. "Schopenhauer suits you better when you are out on themarsh in rubber boots and a shooting-jacket. Do you realize that if youpersist in this determination to camp permanently in the outer--andfrigid--zone, you will never be the centre of a life drama? That, I takeit, is what every woman desires most. You had a sort ofcurtain-raiser--to my mind, hardly that. First love is merely the morepicturesque successor of measles and whooping-cough. In marriage it maydevelop into something worth while, but in itself amounts tonothing--except as material for poets. But the real drama--that is inthe permanent relation. This relation is the motive power of the greatknown dramas of the world. Life is packed with little unheard of dramasof precisely the same sort--the eternal duet of sex; nothing else keepsit going. Now, it is positive that a woman cannot have a drama all byherself--"

  "Not a drama in the old style. But that is what we are trying to avoid.Are there not other faculties? What has civilization done for the worldif it is to be everlastingly sex-ridden? What is the meaning of thismultitude of faculties that progress has developed? What is the meaningof life itself--"

  "Oh, are you aiming to read the riddle of life?"

  "I mean to pass my own life in the effort. Men have failed. It is ourturn. But if I say any more I suppose you will pinch me again."

  "No," said Gwynne, smiling. "I feel much more like kissing you--ah!"

  He had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes blaze. His pipe was finished;he clasped his hands behind his head and almost lay down in his deepchair. "I am just tired enough to be completely happy, and if I canlook at you I am willing to listen like a lamb all night."

  "And be convinced of nothing." Isabel tossed her head and returned toher chair. It faced him and he could still look at her. They watchedeach other from opposite sides of the hearth with something of theunblinking wariness of a dog and a cat, and no doubt had they possessedcaudal appendages they would have lashed them slowly.

  "I don't say that," he replied, in a moment. "I believe I intimated thatI came here to-night with a purpose. It was to tell you that I havethought more or less about what you said in the boat that morning, andthat I can understand, if I cannot agree with you. No doubt the timeshave bred a certain class of women too good for mere matrimony. I haveseen many that were miserably thrown away; although I will confess thatthe only remedy that occurred to me was a better man. But if you
andyour like--are there really any others?--if you, let us say, are gropingtowards some new solution of life, some happiness recipe that willbenefit the few that deserve it, far be it from a mere manto--well--pinch you. You--you individually--have so many highlydeveloped faculties that I can conceive your finding sufficientoccupation through them, a filling up of time;--and no doubt idlenessand the vain groping after sex happiness are the principal reasons forthe failure of so many women. But work does not give happiness; itmerely diminishes the capacity and opportunities for unhappiness. I takeit that you, with all your gifts and the immense amount of thought youhave bestowed on the subject, are striving for something higher thanthat. Besides, I had your lucid exposition of your mission. I now havean additional reason for remaining in California--to watch the newcentury plant flower. Like other commonplace mortals, however, myinstincts fight for the only solution of happiness I know anythingabout. I still think that as the wife of some ambitious public man youwould find a far better market for your gifts than to stand as a sort ofstatue of Independence on the top of Russian Hill with only SanFrancisco to admire. And if you passionately loved the man--"

  "Now you are spoiling everything. But it is handsome of you to admitthat I am not a fool; and that you have thought my theories worthturning over in your busy mind is a compliment I duly appreciate."

  "Even a sneer cannot spoil your loveliness to-night, so I don't mind thesarcasm in the least. But it is true that in my few unoccupiedintervals--as, for instance, when Imura Kisaburo Hinamoto is shaving me,and I have, by an excess of politeness, made sure that he will not cutmy throat--I have had visions of you on that ungainly pedestal with allSan Francisco kneeling at the base. It is quite conceivable. I am a bornleader myself. I recognize certain attributes in you. The town is on thequi vive to know you. Mrs. Hofer is determined that you shall be thesensation of her ball, and no doubt that will be the commencement ofyour illustrious career. When you are really grown into your pedestallike one of Rodin's statues, you are certain to have a most illustriousand distinctive career--and accomplish much good. But you will beterribly lonely."

  "I should not have time. And if I am a born leader, how, pray, could Iyoke comfortably with any man? I should despise a slave, and the sameroof will not shelter two leaders."

  "I am not so sure of that, if both were working to the same end. Ittakes two halves to make a whole. If women have so far been thesubordinate sex, no doubt it is merely the result of those physicaldisabilities which enabled man to gain the ascendency during the longcenturies of struggle with nature. But your sex is rapidly altering allthat. We shall see woman's suffrage in our time--and be better for it. Ihave never been opposed to it--and that is proof enough of the progressthe idea has made, for I am arbitrary and masculine enough. Then--now,no doubt--women will be as much partners as wives, and I grant therelationship might be vastly more interesting than marriage in the oldstyle. And I will even concede that it may be the only sort of marriagefor a man of my type--with a pretty woman, of course; hanged if I couldmarry the finest woman in the world if she were ugly; and if this betrue--if men really need women enough to make such a concession as I ammaking this moment, then I fancy that women will retain enough of theiroriginal generosity to meet our demands."

  "You do not need any woman. In England I fancied that your mother meanta great deal to you, but I don't believe you have missed her at all--orthat you will mourn when she returns to England. I was more than readyto take her place; you actually stirred my maternal instincts when youarrived, you looked so forlorn. But you spurned me, and now you havegrown too independent even to illustrate your own theories."

  "I did not spurn you. Some day I may tell you why I did not come to youin my dark hours, but not now."

  "Why not now?"

  "Because I do not choose to. And seductive as you look I am not to bemade a fool of to gratify one of your whims--of which you are quite asfull as the least emancipated woman I ever saw."

  To this Isabel deigned no reply, and a silence ensued. She transferredher gaze to the fire, and her mind revolved in search of new arguments,but it was tired and worked slowly. She concluded to change the subjectand offer to read him the article in the Review, so complimentary tohimself; but she turned her head to discover that he was sound asleep.

  She laughed, half vexed, half amused. Then she laid a rug lightly overhis knees, and softly replenished the fire. The room was deliciouslywarm, her own chair very comfortable. She too fell asleep.

  She was rudely awakened. Gwynne was shaking her by the shoulder, and hisface was white with consternation.

  "Good God!" he exclaimed. "Do you know what time it is? It is twoo'clock! Why did you let me sleep? Those old tabbies--"

  "They must be asleep too," said Isabel, indifferently. "Come out, and Iwill hold the lantern while you saddle Kaiser."