Part 31 (2/2)

Isabel s.h.i.+vered. The glow had gone, there was only the intense dark fiery blue behind the stars--silver and crystal and green; one rarely sees a golden star in California. There were scattered lights in Rosewater and on the hillsides; and the night boat winding through the marsh was a mere chain of colored lights; here and there a lamp on a head mast looked like a fallen star.

”That is the way I generally feel after the glow has disappeared,” said Gwynne, abruptly. ”Let us go in.”

There were blazing logs on the hearth, and a comfortable chair on either side. The room looked very red and warm and seductive. As they pa.s.sed the table Isabel half lifted one of the English Reviews for which she subscribed. ”There is an allusion to you here,” she said. ”I meant to send 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 chairs at the fireside, asking permission to light his pipe. She noted, as she settled herself opposite, that there was less of repose in his long figure than formerly, something of repressed activity, and his rather heavy eyes were colder and more alert.

”It all seems a thousand years ago,” he said. ”I am John Gwynne. I doubt if I shall ever love your California, but I am interested--this ma.s.s of typical Europeans not yet Americanized--no common brain to work on, no one set of racial peculiarities. And the law has me fast. I have become frightfully ambitious. Talk about your Hamilton. I too walk the floor till the small hours, repeating pages aloud. My j.a.p thinks me mad, and no doubt is only induced to remain at his post by the excellence of my tobacco, 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 a night school in St. Peter, for I hear him returning at all hours; and he certainly shows no trace of other dissipation. We have never exchanged ten 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 have run down to spend the night at the Hofers--or have fallen in with Stone on my way back from Berkeley, and been induced to stay over. Hofer and that set seem to be content with living well; they are too serious for dissipation. But Stone! Of course such men die young, but they are useful in exciting the mind to wonder and awe. I don't think I am in any danger of becoming San Franciscan to the point of feeding her insatiable furnaces with all the fires of my being, but there is no denying her fascination, and it has given me a very considerable pleasure to yield to it. Whether I shall practise law there--change my base--I have not yet 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 a nut to crack at present. If I could become powerful in the State, the Independent leader they need, then I might transfer my attentions to that unhappy town. Even Hofer and all the rest of the devoted band seem to be practically helpless since the re-election of the mayor. What could I do--at present?”

”With a big legal reputation made in San Francisco you could travel very fast 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. I shall manage these men far better than Colton, who is the crudest type of American politician. Nothing could be simpler than his program: abuse, promise. Nothing simpler than his ambition: all for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. I have yet to hear him utter a sentiment that betrays any love of his country or desire to serve her, any real public spirit. Those are the sentiments I am trying to cultivate for this accidental land of my birth, for without them ambition is inexcusable and endeavor a hollow sham.”

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

”I should have done nothing so asinine, and you had everything to do with 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 the least intention of doing anything of the sort.”

He was pleasantly tired in mind and body, and the warm homelike room caressed his senses. He settled himself more deeply in Hiram Otis's old chair and looked up at Isabel. She had laid aside the white shawl, but wore a red Indian scarf over her black gown. The gown was cut out in a square at the neck; she always dressed for her lonely supper, and she had put a red rose in her hair, in the fas.h.i.+on of her California grandmothers. With her face turned from the light, her eyes with their large pupils looked black.

”I shall stay in California, like or no like,” continued Gwynne. ”But I did not walk five miles to talk politics with a woman after a day of law and the citizens of Rosewater. Where did you get that curious old-fas.h.i.+oned scarf?”

”I found it in a trunk of my mother's. Doubtless it belonged to her mother. I also found this.” She indicated a fine gold chain and heart of garnets that lay on her white neck. The humor in his eyes had quickened into admiration; he reflected that the various streams in her composition might not be so completely blended as would appear upon that normally placid surface. The feeling of uneasiness which he had peremptorily dismissed stole over him once more. She looked wholly Spanish, 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 and entertaining young women of the same warm hues that he had met during the past few weeks in San Francisco suddenly seemed to be the merest climatic accidents beside this girl who unrolled the pages of California's older past and afforded him a fleeting vision of those lovely donas and fiery caballeros for whom life was an eternal playground. That they were his progenitors as well as hers he found it difficult to realize, he seemed to have inherited so little of them; but they had flown generously to Isabel's making, and to-night she gave him that same impression of historic background as when she turned the severity 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. It was in 1776 that the Presidio and Mission of San Francisco were founded, was it not? Curious coincidence. Perhaps that is what gives you your sense of destiny.”

”I have no sense of destiny.”

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