Part 18 (1/2)
As they rode slowly down the hill towards Main Street Gwynne examined his cousin from head to foot, but, he prided himself, out of the corner of his eye. She wore a dust-colored habit with divided skirt, and a soft felt hat and gloves of the same shade. Her horse was a very light chestnut, and he was obliged to confess that the effect was harmonious, although this Western style of riding by no means pleased his fastidious taste.
Isabel shot him an amused glance. ”You don't approve of women riding astride,” she said. ”We invented it; although it is now the fas.h.i.+on in many other parts of America. Necessity is the mother of most fas.h.i.+ons.
Wait till you see our mountain roads. They are a disgrace to civilization--so broken and narrow that even in summer it is dangerous for a woman to ride a side-saddle, and in winter impossible. I have forgotten how, and that is the reason I never rode in England.... Here is the centre of your existence for several years to come. Main Street is to this section of the country what Wall Street is to the United States.”
They had entered a street that turned abruptly in from the country a block below them, and rose gently for several hundred yards, when it straggled unevenly along a higher level, to melt into the older residence district and then out into the open country again. There was nothing quite like this Main Street in California. At its southern end was a long double hitching-rail--as old as the State--already flanked by several dusty wagons and big strong horses. The long unbroken block had as many and as various stores as are generally spread over the entire area of a town. Jammed against one another like cabins opening out of a steamer's gangway, and yet of no mean size, were banks and saloons; stores for chicken feed, groceries, fruit, candy, jewelry, clothing, hats, fancy goods, stationery; and five drug stores with tiled floors.
Many of the windows made a brave display that would not have disgraced San Francisco. The entire west pavement was roofed, making a promenade like a s.h.i.+p's deck against rain or the severities of summer; and from this roof depended an extraordinary number of signs, often eccentric of color and design. Above the buildings of the opposite side of the street rose the spars of several fis.h.i.+ng-boats; the creek finished at Rosewater. Gwynne glanced about him with an interest that nothing else Californian save the Mission and San Francisco had inspired. Here was a bit of a civilization of a building era, that was almost old, everything being relative. At all events it was old-fas.h.i.+oned. It was thoroughly countrified and yet suggestive of the concentrated activities of a city.
Isabel, after leaving the hotel had made a detour, giving him a brief glimpse of the town. On the higher streets--Rosewater lay on a cl.u.s.ter of gentle hills--between Main Street and the ”residence” district, he had noticed several modern buildings of brick or stone: offices, churches, school-houses, a solid little opera-house of colonial design, a fine City Hall, and one of those forlorn ”Carnegie Libraries” in a state of arrested development for want of funds, but with an imposing facade and the name of the ”donor” conspicuously advertised. All this had interested him little, although he had thought the town on its slopes looked very pretty and quiet; but this----the word ”pioneer”
suddenly came to him, and he looked up and down with a keenness of interest that was almost like a reviving memory. This beyond question was a remnant of the old thing, and here, no doubt, the great-grandfather whose first name he had forgotten, had been a familiar sight; his fortune and enterprise had helped to lay the very foundations of this landmark of a wild and stirring time.----Then they rode past a square park high on a terrace, walled up with stone most modernly, the green shaded with pines and palms, acacia and oaks; and the dream pa.s.sed. At the same moment he became aware that his partner was talking.
”Rosewater is the financial and trading centre of an immense farming district. There are four banks, as solid as the best in the world. Three are as old as American California. The farmers come in daily for feed and supplies, the chicken-ranchers with their produce for the San Francis...o...b..yers, and eggs for the great hatcheries. Many, like myself, find the last less trouble and expense than bothering with incubators.
Something like four thousand dollars change hands daily in Rosewater, and it has less than five thousand inhabitants.”
Having parted with her information she relapsed into silence, and, the town lying behind them, he transferred his attention to her. She looked severe, remote again, and he wondered if she would grow quite hard and business-like in time. In the hotel office as he paid his bill he had overheard one man say to another that she was ”as good as the best, and no man could get ahead of her.” In this s.e.xless get-up and with her features set she looked hardly a woman. She certainly had capacities for good-fellows.h.i.+p, and yesterday she had been almost tender. He had just decided that he would as soon marry a portrait of George Was.h.i.+ngton, when, in response to a light call behind them, Isabel wheeled about with the pink in her cheeks and eyes wide with pleasure. She galloped back to an approaching buggy, in which there was an extremely pretty golden-haired young woman, and as she and Isabel simultaneously alighted and flew into each other's arms, Gwynne also descended, prepared to raise his hat when his existence was recognized. For some moments the girls talked a rapid duet, then Isabel turned suddenly and beckoned.
”This is my oldest friend, Anabel--Mrs. Tom Colton,” she said, apologetically. ”She only returned last night--just caught sight of us, and followed.”
Gwynne's disapproval vanished as he shook hands with the blooming young matron and met her bright laughing eyes. She was a small imposing creature and received him in quite the grand manner. Her accent of America was as slight as Isabel's, and she used no slang. There was about her something of the primness that characterizes American women in the smaller towns, but her simple linen frock had been cut by a master, and she looked so warm, so womanly, so hospitable as she welcomed Gwynne to Rosewater, that he liked her more spontaneously than he had liked anybody since he crossed the Atlantic, and was almost enthusiastic as he rode on with Isabel.
”Anabel is a perfect dear,” said his companion, whose eyes and cheeks were still glowing, and who looked like a mere girl. ”I am much fonder of her than I am of Paula, although we haven't a thing in common. She was domestic and wild about children before she was done with dolls. Of course she married at once. When we were at the High School together she regarded my ambition to be first as a standing joke, and has never read anything heavier than a cla.s.sic novel in her life. Why I am so fond of her I can't say, unless it is that she is absolutely genuine, and that counts more in the long-run than anything else. Besides, she was my first friend when I came here as a little girl. Her mother--Mrs.
Leslie--belongs to one of the old San Francisco families, and had always known my mother. I love her as much as ever, but I am bound to confess that I have missed her little. I suppose complete happiness comes when you miss n.o.body.”
They rode on in silence, for the heat was increasing and the dust lay thick on the road and swirled about their heads. There had been no rain since March, and the sea that sent its daily fogs and breezes to cool San Francisco and the towns about the bay was forty miles from Rosewater.
”Never mind,” said Isabel, as Gwynne mopped his brow for the third time and ostentatiously rubbed his face. ”The nights are cool and the hot weather will soon moderate down into the mellowness of October. When the rains come--well it is a toss up, which is worse--the dust or the mud.”
”Heavens knows what we have swallowed,” muttered Gwynne, who had served on sanitary boards and heard much talk of germs. But Isabel only laughed and told him to go to Anabel, who had a nostrum for every ill. A moment later the road led up a hill-side, and at the summit she caught his bridle and reined in.
”I brought you this roundabout way on purpose,” she said. ”Is it not what the poet would call a fair domain?”
Below them was a vast flat expanse bounded opposite by a mountain chain, that rose abruptly from the level, breaking into much irregularity of surface above, but all its hollows blurred with woods. Beyond a dip rose, far in the distance, a huge crouching formidable ma.s.s--St. Helena, named after a Russian princess, the wife of the last of the Russian governors of northern California. On the plain were golden fields, orchards, compact ma.s.ses of the eucalyptus-tree planted as shelters for the cattle in time of storm or unbearable heat. Many cattle were roaming about; on the grazing land in the far distance towards the town of St.
Peter--a mere white cl.u.s.ter in the north at the base of the range--were the horses. Over the mountains lay a s.h.i.+mmering haze, blue or pink; it was difficult to define whether the colors flowed through each other or subtly united.
”It is all yours,” added Isabel, emerging from the role of the mere cicerone. ”Are you not proud of it?”
Gwynne did in truth dilate, but hastily a.s.sured himself that it was at the beauty of his estate, not at its paltry nineteen thousand acres. Had he not shot over many an estate as large? Had not his grandfather come into four times that number? True, most of them had not been entailed, and this at least was his, his own. He quite realized it for the first time; even as a source of income he had barely given it a thought; even after Isabel's descriptions he had never exerted himself to picture it.
As a resource in his crisis it was all very well, but not worth while shaping into concrete form until he could avoid it no longer.
But now, as he gazed down and over the great beautiful expanse--for even the mountain-side and much beyond was his--he felt a sudden pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude to that Otis whose first name he had forgotten, pride fairly invaded his chest; then, as he realized that it was visibly swelling under Isabel's intent gaze, he blushed, laughed confusedly, turned away his head. But his annoyance was routed by a speechless amazement, for Isabel suddenly flung both arms round his neck and gave him a hearty kiss.
”There!” she exclaimed. ”I never really liked you before, though I never denied you were interesting enough. Men are nothing but overgrown boys, only some are nice and some are not. You are. I'll really adopt you now, instead of merely doing my bounden duty. Now look at those mountains in the south.”
More disturbed than he would have believed possible at the young warmth and magnetism of her embrace--although it was disconcertingly evident that she would have kissed a small boy in precisely the same manner--he composed his features to indifference and followed the motion of her whip.
In the dim perspective of the south she indicated Tamalpais and Monte Diablo opposite, vague dim blue ma.s.ses behind San Francisco. ”Monte Diablo and St. Helena are both old volcanoes,” she continued. ”I never say dead volcanoes after the history and performances of Vesuvius and Pelee. I wish one of our volcanoes would liven up. We might have fewer earthquakes--although, to be sure, ours are supposed to be caused by faulting--in so far as they know anything about it.”
”Do you think of nothing but earthquakes out here? You have made at least three casual allusions since we met twenty-four hours ago, and in southern California they are a part of every tradition.”