Part 46 (2/2)

The man promised fervently that he would, and then after ordering beer from a neighboring saloon for the workmen, Isabel and her party motored out to the beach beyond the Cliff House, where a number of old street-cars had been converted into bath-houses, and disported themselves in the waves until it was time to rush home and make ready for the Mardi Gras ball.

This yearly function was given in the Inst.i.tute of Art on n.o.b Hill, the wooden Gothic mansion with bow-windows, erected in the Eighties by a railroad millionaire who had barely survived his nimble victorious a.s.sault upon Fortune. His widow had presented his ”monument” to Art, and now its graceful flimsy walls housed much that was valuable in canvas and marble, and more that was worthless. Once a year, on the eve of Lent, Society gave a Mardi Gras ball, and such of the artists as were known to the elect decorated the rooms, and contributed certain surprises. This year, partly out of compliment to the Leader and Miss Otis, partly because the old Spanish spirit had been roaming through its ancient haunts of late, the interior of the mansion was hung with red and yellow. Isabel, in full Spanish costume, led the grand march with young Hofer, who was dressed as a toreador, and supported the jeers of his friends in the gallery with what fort.i.tude he could summon: he was plump and pink and golden. The great room, surrounded with boxes draped with the colors of Spain and filled with women splendidly dressed and jewelled, was very gay and inspiring, and the masques flung confetti and had a squib for everybody with a salient characteristic. When the march finished, Isabel, who wore a half-mask of black satin, and her hair in two long braids plaited with gold tinsel, danced a Spanish dance by herself, alternating tambourine and castanets. She had practised it during the past week with a professional, and she gave it with all the graceful s.e.xless abandon of those California girls, who, a hundred years before that night, were dancing out at the Presidio and Mission. She was the success of the evening as she had purposed to be, and went home with two proposals to her credit, and as gratified a vanity as ever t.i.tillated the nerves of an ambitious and heartless young flirt. It was not the first time that Isabel had deliberately elected to play a role and achieved so signal a triumph that she was beset with the doubt if she had not but just discovered herself. As she fell asleep in the dawn of Lent it was with the somewhat cynical reflection that perhaps she could make quite as great a success of the role of the statesman's wife were she to essay it.

The roads were still in too muddy and broken a condition for the long-projected automobile trip, and the Trennahans had decided to hire a special car and journey to Mexico, spending some time in Southern California. They urged Isabel to go with them, but she was sure that she had had all the respite she needed, nor would she neglect her chickens any longer. In truth she said good-bye to the party, which included not only Lady Victoria, but several other congenial spirits, with a considerable equanimity. She was suddenly tired of them all and glad to go back to her solitudes.

Although she did not return with that exuberance of joy, which, upon former occasions had made her feel like a long-prisoned nymph restored to her native woodland, still she was more than content to be at home again, and sat on her veranda until darkness closed the long evening.

Every trace of the winter's madness had vanished. The marsh was high and red above the fallen waters, the hills were green, the trees budding, wild flowers were beginning to show their heads. The scene, until the last ray of twilight had gone, leaving that dark formlessness of a California night with its horrid suggestion, was almost as peaceful as England.

For several days Isabel, from reaction after weeks of incessant gayety, and the heaviness of early spring, was too languid to find even her Leghorns interesting. She slept late, yawned through the day; and never had her hammock--swung on the porch at the beginning of spring--possessed so recurrent an attraction. At the same time she was conscious, under the physical inertia which had brought her mind to a standstill, that she avoided Rosewater lest she should be forced to talk of Gwynne. He was still in Santa Barbara, and it was likely that he would be persuaded to go with the Trennahans to Mexico. There was time enough to seek his pa.s.sport, and Isabel could well imagine that his impatience was not uncontrollable. No doubt he understood by this time that he could expect no change in her, if indeed he had not dismissed the matter from his mind.

She was rudely shaken out of her apathy by a long telegram from him, dated at El Paso:

”I have come this far with the Trennahans. Go on to Was.h.i.+ngton to-day. Expect me any time now. But should I be detained will you go over to the ranch occasionally? Use old power of attorney should occasion arise. Glad you made the running you wanted at last.

Better order terra-cotta facings for The Otis. Am told that two other buildings will go up shortly in neighborhood. Quite fit again. E. G.”

The delight and relief this telegram induced, the subtle sensation of hope and flattery, not only routed torpidity, but lashed her into such a state of fury that she ran up to her bedroom and indulged in an attack of nerves. When it was over she faced the truth with the unshrinking clarity of vision she could summon at will. But if she was not as astonished as she thought she ought to be, she was no less angry, not only with herself, but with life for playing her such a trick. Less than ever did she want to marry, and cease to be wholly herself, to run the risk of disillusionment and weariness, and that ultimate philosophy which was no compensation for the atrophy and death of imagination. But no less did she turn appalled from the thought of a future without Gwynne. All her old vague plans were suddenly formless, and she felt that if she even faced the prospect of regarding the s.h.i.+fting beauties of the Rosewater marsh for the rest of her life, she would hate nature as much as she now hated her treacherous self. And none could divine better than she, that, present or dismissed, when a man has conquered a woman's invisible and indefensible part she might as well give him the rest. He is in control. She has lost her freedom for ever. So strong was the feeling of mental possession that Isabel glanced uneasily about the room, half-expecting to see the soul of Gwynne; wondering inconsequently if it would descend to notice that her eyes were red. But she vowed pa.s.sionately that she would not marry him. If she had to be unhappy, far better unhappy alone and free, with some of her illusions undispelled.

She had seen no married happiness that she envied, even where there was a fine measure of love and philosophy. Even Anabel had come to her one day in town, looking rather strained and worn, and, in the seclusion of Isabel's bedroom, had confessed that the constant exactions of a husband, three children, and migratory servants ”got on her nerves,” and made her long for a change of any sort. ”And there are so many little odd jobs, in a house full of children,” she had added, with a sigh. ”And they recur every day. You can no more get away from them than from your three meals; I never really have a moment I can call my own. Of course I am perfectly happy, but I do wish Tom were not in politics and would take me to Europe for a few years.”

And if Anabel was not happy--wholly happy--with her supreme capacity for the domestic life, how could she hope to endure the yoke? She with her impossible ideals and theories? Not that they were impossible; but to antic.i.p.ate, in this world, the plane upon which the more highly endowed natures dared to hope they were to dwell in the next, absolute freedom was necessary. Isabel's theory of life--for women of her make--had not altered a whit, but the beckoning finger had lost its vigor. That left her with no material out of which to model a future for this plane--which, of course, was another triumph to the credit of the race.

She knew that Gwynne had conquered, that she had really loved him, as soon as he had ceased to play upon her maternal instincts. She had casually a.s.sumed at the time that her interest in him was decreasing, but in this day of retrospect, she realized keenly that it had marked the opening of a new chapter. This was, perhaps, the most signal of Gwynne's victories, for the maternal tenderness for man means maternal dominance, a cool sense of superiority. Isabel was so conscious of Gwynne's mastery that she longed to kick him as she blushed to recall she had done once before. She rubbed her arms instinctively, as if she still felt the furious pressure of his fingers, and when the memory of another sort of pressure abruptly presented itself she hurriedly bathed her eyes and went out on her horse.

VII

For a week she was so moody and irascible that Abraham twice gave warning, Old Mac artfully took to his bed with rheumatism, and only the inexcitable Chuma was unconcerned. She rode her horse nearly to death, snubbed Anabel--whose children were down with the measles--over the telephone, and even boxed the ears of a dilatory hen. At the end of the week a sudden appreciation of her likeness to a cross old maid frightened her, and time and the weather completed the cure. Her ill-humor, which had scourged through every avenue of her being, took itself off so completely that it seemed to announce it had had enough of her and would return no more.

And the spring came with a rush. The hills burst into b.u.t.tercups, ”blue eyes,” yellow and purple lupins, the heavy pungent gold-red poppy. The young green of weeping willows and pepper-trees looked indescribably delicate against the hard blue sky. Rosewater was a great park, all her little squares and gardens, and long rambling streets, set thick with camellias, roses, orange-trees heavy with fruit, immense acacia-trees loaded with fragrant yellow powdery blossoms. Main Street was clean again, and so were the farmers and their teams at the hitching-rails; the girls were beginning to wear white at church on Sunday, and to walk about without their hats. The great valley was as green as the hills, save where the earth had been turned, and one or two almond orchards were so pink they could be seen a mile away. It was spring in all its glory, without a taint of summer's heat, or a lingering chill of winter.

In Isabel's garden were many old Castilian rose bushes, that for fifty years had covered themselves pink with the uninterrupted l.u.s.tiness of youth; and their penetrating, yet chaste and elusive fragrance, combined with the rich heavy perfume of the acacia-tree beside the house, would have inspired a distiller and blender of scents. The birds sang as if possessed of a new message; and several of Isabel's prize roosters, tired of their old harems, flew over the wire-fences and strutted off in search of adventure, proclaiming their route by loud and boastful clamor. When they were captured by the unsympathetic Abe and restored to their excited ladies, they flew at and smacked them soundly, then tossed back their red combs and crowed with all their might: a paean to the ever conquering male.

There were other flowers besides Castilian roses in Isabel's garden, haphazardly set out and cared for, but the more riotous and luxuriant for that. And all around her, save on the Leghorns' hills, was the gay delicate tapestry of the wild flowers. The marsh glittered like bronze in the sunlight. In the late afternoon it was as violet as the hills. In the evening afterglows it swam in as many colors as the Roman Campagna.

At this hour the sky was often as pink as the almond orchards, melting above into a blue light but intense; while everything in its glow, the tall trees on the distant mountains, and the picturesque irregularities of the marsh-lands, seemed to lift up their heads and drink in the beauty until Isabel expected to see them reel.

And the pagan intoxication of spring took as complete a possession of her. She sat under the long drooping yellow sprays of her acacia-tree, her lap full of the pink Castilian roses, and dreamed. No one could help being in love in the spring, she concluded, given a concrete inspiration; and far be it from any creature so close to nature as herself to attempt to stem that insidious musical scented tide. It was possible that Gwynne would not return, or returning, would flout her; she hardly cared. In fact so steeped was she in the pleasures of merely loving, in a sweet if somewhat halcyon pa.s.sion, that she had no wish that the mood should be dispelled; and felt that she could ask nothing more than to spend the rest of her mortal life with a beautiful memory--like the aunt whose dust lay over the mountain in the convent yard. She knew that if Gwynne returned and demanded her, she should be tempted to marry him--she never went so far as to promise either him or herself the rounded chapter; but one of the strongest instincts of her nature was to squeeze the pa.s.sing moment dry, jealously drink every drop of its juice. She had no intention of tormenting herself with problematical futures. Futures took care of themselves, anyhow.

She was subconciously aware that she could conceive and portray a more extreme phase of emotion than this present evolution, but she deliberately avoided the phantasm. She was utterly, ideally, absurdly happy. Not for a moment did she desire the raw material, the concrete substance, to which all dreams owe their being. The wild pagan gladness of the wood-nymph, rejoicing in her freedom from the worries of common mortals, and in the vision of an undefined but absolute happiness, was enough for her. Sometimes, when walking in the early morning, far into the hills, and away from human eyes, she let the light electric breezes intoxicate her, and danced as she walked, or sang; nor, indeed, was she above whistling. She often spent the evening hours on the marsh, those long twilights that are so like England's; remaining, sometimes, as late into the night as the tide would permit, enjoying the contrast of the lonely desolate menacing landscape with the utter beauty of the day. She avoided San Francisco and Rosewater, but the extraordinary effervescence within her demanded an outlet of a sort, and she was so radiant to her small staff that they looked upon her with awe. She had actually a fortnight of bliss, and hoped that nothing might happen to disturb it for ever and ever. But no one's world has ever yet stood still.

One day Tom Colton's hoa.r.s.e voice over the telephone begged her to ”come at once.” She was on her horse in ten minutes, in Rosewater in half an hour. There were groups of people in the street near the younger Coltons' house, the front door was open, several members of the family were pa.s.sing in and out. As she entered the garden she saw one of them tie a knot of white ribbon to the bell k.n.o.b.

Her first impulse was to run. She felt that rather would she hear of Gwynne's death than face Anabel in her maternal agony. But she set her teeth and went on, far more frightened than sympathetic. The people that overflowed the hall and parlor were all crying, but nodded to her, and Tom Colton, haggard and white, appeared at the head of the stair and beckoned. He pointed to the door of his wife's bedroom, as she ascended, and she went forward hastily and entered without knocking. Anabel was standing on the threshold of the door that led into the nursery. Her face was white and wild, but she had not been crying.

”Isabel!” she exclaimed, in loud astonished voice, ”my baby is dead! My baby is dead!”

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