Chapter 3

1906

I

On the same afternoon Lady Victoria developed appendicitis and went to bed for two months. She was only in danger for a short time, but the doctor announced his intention of giving her a rest cure, and his patient, who was profoundly indifferent, made no protest. And if invalidism is a career, an illness is an adventure; moreover, no doubt, it was a relief to Victoria Gwynne to have her thinking done by some one else for a time. Isabel had thoughtfully rung up the handsomest doctor in San Francisco the moment the disease declared itself, and it was to be expected that he would find his patient interesting enough to spend an hour by her bedside daily. It was manifestly impossible to transfer a woman of Lady Victoria's heroic proportions down that rickety and almost perpendicular flight of steps to an ambulance, but the best of nurses were engaged, Anne Montgomery agreed to come every morning and attend to the housekeeping, Gwynne established a long-distance telephone beside the bed, and Mrs. Trennahan, whom Lady Victoria liked--she could not stand Mrs. Hofer--promised a daily visit; and an automobile trip to the south as soon as the doctor would permit.

It was nearly a week before Isabel, who had sat up with Gwynne during the first two nights, and been on the rush ever since, was able to return to her ranch. She had offered to remain in town altogether, but Lady Victoria replied with some show of irritation that if either she or her son sacrificed their time and interests on her account it would oppress her mind with a sense of guilt, and hinder her recovery. She would telephone to them at a certain hour every day, and if they came down once a week as usual she should enjoy seeing them, instead of being worried by a sense of obligation. In truth she was glad to be rid of them for more reasons than one.

It was late in the afternoon when Isabel arrived in Rosewater, and business detained her there for several hours. She dined with the Tom Coltons, and the conversation was a quaint mixture of babies, politics, servants, and the Hofer ball. Colton drove her home, and talked the steady monotonous stream with which he tricked the world into believing that his own ideas were still in the germ. Upon this occasion he might as well have betrayed his secrets or quoted the poets, for Isabel paid no attention whatever to his monologue. She was consumed with her desire to be alone once more. She was tired of the very sound of the human voice, and remembered with satisfaction the silence of her Chuma and the taciturnity of her men.

When she finally reached her home she illuminated it from top to bottom and wandered about in a passion of delight. Her sensation of gratitude and novelty in her solitude and freedom could not have been keener if she had been absent for six months. Although it was too cold to sit out-of-doors, she walked up and down the piazza for an hour, watching the crawling tide and the brown tumbled hills. The boat was late, and every other light was out when it appeared, a mere string of magic lanterns with a red globe suspended aloft. Isabel struck a match and answered the captain's familiar greeting from his high perch in the pilot-house; then went within, for the fog was rolling over Tamalpais, dropping down the mountains in great sea waves. But even then she would not go to bed, and lose her knowledge of recovered treasure. After a time, however, she fell asleep in her chair before the fire. She awoke suddenly, but drowsily surprised and disappointed not to find Gwynne in the chair opposite. Then she became aware of the cause of her interrupted slumbers. There was the sound of fire-arms and of barking dogs on the hills sacred to the Leghorn. In three minutes she had her skirts off, her high boots on, and was running, pistol in hand, to the colony, announcing her coming by a preliminary discharge. Then for the next hour she and her men fought one of those hordes of migratory rats that suddenly steal upon chicken-ranches and leave ruin behind them. Isabel had a genuine horror of rats. She would far rather have faced an army of snakes; but with her rubber boots, the well-trained dogs, and her accuracy of aim, she had nothing to fear. Those that were not slaughtered were finally driven off, and Isabel, content even in this phase of her strictly personal life, went to bed and slept the sleep of youth and health and an easy conscience.

The next day began the torrential rains that lasted for three weeks, almost without an hour's intermission; that wiped out the marsh, and threatened floods for all the valleys of the north. The boats no longer looked as if cutting their way through the lands, but adrift on a great lake. Tamalpais and the mountains below it had disappeared, as if hibernating, and the winds raged up and down the long valley, shaking old houses like Isabel's to their foundations, and leaving not a leaf on the trees. Nothing could be wilder or more desolate than the scene from Isabel's piazza, where, encased in rubber, she took her exercise, often battling every inch of one way against a driving wall of rain. Rosewater, or any sort of house except her own, she did not see for days at a time, nothing but that gray foaming muttering expanse of water, its flood and fall no longer distinguishable. At first she was more than content to be so isolated. Her practical life occupied little of her time; only a daily, and always unexpected, dash up the slopes to see that her men were not shirking their duties, and a weekly trip to Rosewater with her produce: she used her own incubators in bad weather. A visit to San Francisco she did not attempt, and she was quite sure that the daily conversation over the telephone--when it had not blown down--was as sufficing for Lady Victoria as for herself. She read and studied and dreamed, became indifferent to what she chose to call her failure as a society ornament, and planned a larger future; to be realized when she had come to care less for dreams and more for realities. No doubt that state of mind would develop before long, and meanwhile she might as well enjoy herself according to her present mood. Nothing could alter her belief that all unhappiness came from contacts, and certainly she had proved her theories so far, and took a pagan joy in mere living. She loved the wild battle of the elements, the waste below her garden, with as keen a sensuousness as the spring and the flowers, and often sat late in her red room by the fire to enjoy its contrast with the desolation without.

But Gwynne was not a man to be dismissed from the thoughts of any one that knew him as well as his cousin, He had taken his part in her life as a matter of course, and of late they had been very intimate. During the first days and nights of his mother's illness, they had talked, or sat in companionable silence, by the hour. She had been assailed by regrets more than once that she was to have no part in his life, that he had already won some of his hardest battles with no help of hers, and deliberately had matched their spirits and driven her off the field where she had subtly sought to manage him. She liked him the better for this, but while her vanity retired with philosophy, she regretted her inability to help him. That she had it in her to assist and encourage him in many ways, she needed to be told neither by himself nor his mother, but she was unwilling to pay the price. That she felt his charm, took an even deeper interest in him since he had announced his intention to marry her, she did not pretend to deny, and sometimes caught herself looking out upon a future in which he had as inevitable a part as if it had been decreed from the beginning of time. She also dreamed of the satisfaction and pleasure it would give her to make him really love her, become quite mad about her. But again she was unwilling to pay the price. She argued that this was merely due to the persistence of the solitary ideal; and refused to face the cowardice that lurked in the bottom of her soul. Heroic in every other development of her highly bred character, she had all the secret fear and antagonism of her sex for the other, a profound resentment of the male instinct for possession, and the deeper terror that what Gwynne might find would eventually make her wholly his. Life had given her a deep surface; the depths below it sent up rare vibrations; and her mind was seldom unoccupied. She could add layer upon layer of evasions and subtleties with no prospect of a rude disturbance; and when the wind ceased for a time she tramped over the hills. But she missed Gwynne increasingly, wondered that he did not brave the elements and come out to her; finally felt herself shamefully neglected, and would not answer his occasional telephone queries as to her well-being.

II

Three days of floundering through the mud between Lumalitas and Rosewater exhausted Gwynne's patience, and he engaged a furnished suite of rooms on Main Street, moved in his law library, Imura Kisaburo Hinomoto, and several easy-chairs, invested in a red wall-paper for his sitting-room, and was immediately so comfortable, and so relieved to be rid of his dripping sighing trees and flooded valley, that he was almost happy. As he looked down from his window upon the slope of the street crowded with muddy wagons and men in oil-skins and high rubber boots, he recalled the ironical picture Isabel had drawn, that memorable night at Capheaton, of his own future appearance; and as he could not ride out to Old Inn in any other garb, an excess of vanity deterred him from going at all. To be sure he could drive out in a closed surrey, but he would have felt equally ridiculous, and Isabel, beyond doubt, would scorn him. Better let her think him indifferent for a while; it might do her good. He could save himself from discourtesy by telephoning occasionally, and, for the matter of that, the less he thought of her at present the better.

For the first time he came intimately in contact with the men of Rosewater: "leading citizens" too busy to call upon him at Lumalitas, or to sit down in their places of business for a chat during the day, and too well trained to ask strangers home for dinner, were any hospitable instincts left in them. But they soon discovered that his rooms were very comfortable and inviting, his whiskey and tobacco "above par." The homeless citizens of Rosewater, while their wives wrangled at bridge or five-hundred, fell into the habit of "dropping in at Gwynne's," instead of going to the Lodge or the dingy back room of some saloon or lawyer's office. They were at liberty to take off their coats and put their feet on the railing surrounding the large iron stove that sat well out into the room. There were even spittoons for such as clung to the old tradition; and in a short time the large newly built, almost luxurious room took on somewhat of the character of that forum of an older time, the corner grocery. Judge Leslie seldom honored these assemblies, as he was tired at night and rejoiced in a comfortable home; nor did Tom Colton, whose domestic virtues were pronounced; but Mr. Wheaton came, and Mr. Haight, Mr. Boutts, and other solid business men old enough to be Gwynne's father; and they were all deeply interested in Rosewater first, State politics second, and national affairs once in four years; or oftener if there was any pyrotechnical departure from routine. European politics interested them not at all, and if they had any suspicion of Gwynne's real status, they were too accustomed to minding their own business to take any liberties with his reserve.

But they were fully alive to the importance of his addition to the community. He was a large landholder, selling many small farms to acceptable persons; he spent money freely, buying everything he needed for his household and farm in Rosewater, instead of sending to the city; he was studying law with a view to practising in their midst; and now that Judge Leslie--who proclaimed him a marvel--was threatening to retire, his keen and cautious fellow-citizens needed nothing more than a man of first-class legal ability to take care of their great and varied interests and defend them against the corporation bogie. They found themselves hinting that he should engage in politics as well, when his probationary years were over.

When Gwynne shrugged his shoulders one night and remarked bluntly that he had no desire to work with either of the California machines, and would unquestionably come a howling cropper if he worked against either, Mr. Wheaton answered with the nimbleness of a mind already made up, that he could be sent to Sacramento on an independent ticket--manipulated by the honest men of Rosewater--to fight such of the frauds and tyrannies as the State was suffering acutely from at the moment. During reform spasms the machines were practically powerless, and with the brilliant abilities he would be able to display as soon as he entered public life, and backed by a powerful influence, he could win his way to higher things before the wave subsided. They wanted a senator in Washington who was for his State first and himself next, even more than they wanted a lawyer; and for that matter he could serve their anti-corporation interests better there than here. Meanwhile he would have many opportunities to speak and show the stuff that was in him, draw converts to himself with his fiery eloquence and hard practicality, inculcate the desire for better things, and the necessity for reducing the influence of the army of petty professional politicians to a minimum, make of himself so central and inspiriting a figure that when his time came the best element of both parties throughout the State would form an independent body under his leadership.

This was an alluring picture, but if Mr. Wheaton, who had had as little to do with politics as possible, was a bit of a dreamer, there was no question that his dreams were shared by more practical men at the present moment than for many years past; and that his theories were sound, however formidable the alert, resourceful, enormously capitalized army which stood between them and execution. His idol was Abraham Lincoln, and in consequence he "banked" on the good in human nature as a factor, which, in sudden recrudescences of indignant energy, accomplished revolutions of far greater moment than the overthrowing of political machines.

Mr. Wheaton had launched forth upon one particularly stormy night when he happened to be Gwynne's only guest. The host, not to be outdone, was sitting with his feet on the railing of the stove, but as far from the spittoon as possible. He had listened to the long monologue, which involved a sketch of Lincoln's varied career, with more attention than might have been inferred from his half-closed eyes, and his pipe had gone out. It was only recently that any of his neighbors, barring Judge Leslie and Tom Colton, who shared his secret, had definitely proposed a political career to him, in other words divined his abilities and ambitions. But Mr. Wheaton had once been young and adventurous himself, and much if not all of his success in life was due to his shrewd divination of human nature. No man could drive a harder bargain than "Wash" Wheaton (he was named for the father of his country), but he had never been wanting in a vein of humorous sympathy, nor in a fair capacity for friendship as well as enmity.

He raised his eyes from the coals and looked directly at Gwynne, who was relighting his pipe.

"I don't like Tom Colton," he said, abruptly. "And it's not so much because he is the son of that old skinflint, neither. He is a little too much the product of the times--a sort of polished up descendant of that hoodlum element that terrorized San Francisco in the Seventies. He started out as a mere or'nary politician, but the Democratic Boss took him up and his ambitions are growing. What with the money he has and will inherit, and the devilish gall of him, he can play a deep game, and his chances of winning look a little too fair to suit a good many of us. He's nothing better than an anarchist, and without the excuse of the common anarchist--who, at the worst--or his own best--risks his life. Tom Colton and men of his stamp wouldn't risk the skin of their little fingers. All they do is to build a red-hot fire under the political caldron, stir it up with a big stick until it doesn't know where it is at or what it is made of, and then float into power on the steam. This has been one of the rottenest States in the Union for a good many years, and no wonder such men as Tom think they can about do as they please; but a good many are getting pretty damned tired of it, and there's a sort of reform mutter going on here and there that will gather and swell if skilfully manipulated. We've been talking you over, and have concluded to back you up for all we are worth as soon as you are ready--that is to say we would but for one drawback--your friendship with Colton."

"If you choose to call it that. I have told him in as plain English as he will ever hear what I think of his politics, and that if I ever enter public life myself I shall devote my energies to running him and his like out of it. He is too good-natured and too sure of himself--and his State!--to mind. Moreover, he has four years the start of me. It is possible that I shall go to Sacramento with, and even speak for, him; but he understands perfectly that I am only after experience, will advocate nothing I disapprove of--he actually has certain reforms in his political basket, and whatever may be his intention to compromise when he reaches Sacramento, I, at least, can advocate them in all sincerity; and further open the eyes of all these people to what they ought to want and to have. All this is perfectly understood between us. I, and the honest public clamoring for its rights, do not weigh a feather in the scale, in his opinion, against the might of organization."

"Very good. I suspicioned something of the sort. He can't corrupt you, and you couldn't get a better insight into corruption than through him; so fire away. What's your program, anyhow?"

"It's too soon to make one--be sure that I am willing to return your confidence with my own"--as the sharp china-blue eyes opposite contracted; "but I can do little now except win the confidence of the farmers in this district and of men like yourself. But if a reform party does achieve power, if only for a term, the first thing for it to do is to overhaul the ballot system. Before we reformed ours we were as deep in the mire as yourselves. When the American voter is under the supervision of an honest judiciary, a general system of local reforms will follow as a matter of course."

Mr. Wheaton sighed. "You would have to begin with the judiciary. If you reformed them, and had any strength left, and then reformed the ballot in the manner of your own country, I guess you'd get about anything you wanted. But you'll need a tidal reform wave, I'm afraid. However, you never can tell what one year will bring forth in this country. On the other hand, the results of certain reforms, fought and died for, have done as much to make us pessimists as any of the immovable abuses. Take the question of Civil Service Reform, for instance. In the old days when you wanted to induce a man to give you the benefit of his abilities and influence during an election, you held out hopes of preferment, and he took your word if he knew your word was good, and worked with a decent sort of ambition--all things being relative. What happens now? Few find anything promising or attractive in the competitive examination. You ask a man--the professional politician he is now, sure enough--to help you get your candidate, or yourself, in, and what happens? The gentleman coolly demands, 'How much?' and holds out his hand. You fill it or he turns his back and walks off. There is just that much less of good left to appeal to in this particular brand of human nature. Ours is a much more complicated civilization than yours, Mr. Gwynne. You were dealing with Britishers only, in 1832. We are trying to digest the riffraff of the world, and can't do it, in spite of such incorrigible optimists as Judge Leslie. Immigrants in the first generation have just about as much feeling for the American flag as a chicken has for Rosewater. They look upon vote-selling as a legitimate way of improving their fortunes, and they are the easy prey of such agitators as Colton, because they had nothing in their own countries, and want the earth in this. Of course their children go to the public schools, and become Americans, but we always have the problem of fresh hordes to deal with. And new and old--it is easy to plant the weevil in their brains that the rich have corralled all the money, and the laborer--even in California, where he gets the highest wages paid on this earth--is a miserable victim, and entitled to all he doesn't make. They never remember that nearly every capitalist in the country has risen from their own ranks, and that their dreams are mainly occupied with doing the same. But you might as well talk to the trade-winds, especially with such men as Tom Colton stirring the caldron. 'Get rich quick; and selling votes is as good a starter as any.' There you have the moral sickness of the country in a nutshell. And few professions pay better than that of the politician. The pettiest division leader, who does the Boss's dirtiest work, and has fewer redeeming virtues than the midnight burglar, makes such a good thing out of it that the prettiest Salvation Army lass couldn't convince him of the error of his ways. And he enjoys himself. To hang around saloons, prize-fights, help out shyster lawyers with their tricks, and play the game hard during election times--that satisfies him until he sees a chance of stepping into a bigger pair of boots of the same make. But, thank God, there are more honest men out of politics than in. That is the trouble, but there they are, and it will be a part of your business to round them up. Well, I guess I've held forth long enough. I'll send you round a few volumes from my Lincoln library to-morrow. I always go to it when I lose my faith in human nature. Good-night."

And he gathered up his long legs and went out.

* * * * *

In his many talks with his friends in San Francisco, Gwynne had received practically the same suggestions. The lawyer who advised this group in its necessarily intermittent campaign against the San Francisco politicians was one of the ablest in the United States. He had offered Gwynne a place in his office, a 'courtesy partnership,' when he was ready to move to the city. But Gwynne deliberately remained undecided for the present, although half inclined to practise in the country for some years. If he could not have the inestimable education of the old days, when lawyers jogged about the country with the circuit judges for months at a time, he could at least get into close contact with the plain people in a manner that in a city would be practically impossible. Until the rains began, and after his definite understanding with Colton, he had, during his hours of exercise, formed the habit of "dropping in" upon the small farmers of his political district, under pretence of asking their advice; gauging and sowing. Upon the men that had bought land of him he was able to bestow many small favors, and his old experience with the tenantry of Capheaton gave him an instinctive knowledge of their wants that added to the sum of his popularity. To his inferiors he had never shown the arrogance of his nature, and he welcomed these small toilers as a substitute for his old tenants; for he had missed the poor that kept the sympathies quick--and, perhaps, gave richer shadows to life.

His long lank American figure and slight resemblance to Hiram Otis, who had been an institution if not a favorite, his readiness to stand drinks to his farmer acquaintances, and others, whom he happened to meet in Main Street, the approachableness he had cultivated with some effort, combined with the subtle suggestion that he would not permit a liberty; a characteristic that every true man respects; his reputation for being "dead straight," and his insistence upon receiving his just dues--"all that was coming to him"--in spite of the easy terms he made with several to whom he sold land; all this, in addition to the dignity of being the largest rancher in the county, and a law partner of Judge Leslie, had quickly made him a marked as well as a popular figure. Even his accent was unnoted in that State of many accents.

He had thought out for himself all that Mr. Wheaton had suggested, and if he still had his moments of depression and disgust, and even of revolt, much of his old confidence was returning; although he sometimes reflected, with a sort of whimsical bitterness, upon the difficulty of sustaining an impression of innate greatness unaided by an occasional demonstration. But he had, at least, learned to see people merely as human beings without taking their shells into account; and he also realized that in those storms of spirit, which, at the time, he had deprecated as ebullitions from a too mercurial nature, he had developed more rapidly and precisely than many a man does by the exterior catastrophe. And impersonally his admiration for the land of one set of forefathers grew, although personally he remained cold. But he cultivated all sorts and conditions of men, and hopefully trained himself for the enthusiastic moment.

There were even times when, surrounded by his Rosewater friends, with their lapses into quaint American speech and their intense localism, the old Otis blood stirred in him very strongly; he caught himself using phrases and figures that no doubt were an inheritance with his brain cells. When the walls and furnishings of his room were obscured by smoke, and there were half a dozen pairs of boots against his stove, it was not difficult to fancy himself back in the old corner grocery on a winter's night: his companions drinking apple cider, instead of rye whiskey, and the orator of the moment sitting, by preference, on a barrel, and munching crackers.

In San Francisco, which he visited twice a week on his return from Berkeley, when alone in the long sloping streets swept with the wind-driven rain, when the gutters roared and the houses looked as deserted as their huddled beaten gardens, stories Isabel had told him of the days of the Argonauts rose like ghosts in his brain, and he would suddenly experience an overwhelming sensation of being at home. His mother promptly dispelled these visions.

On the whole his time was too fully occupied to leave him more than stray moments for the subtler mood; but as day after day, finally week after week passed, with no prospect of fair weather, the monotony and confinement affected his nerves, he tired of the unrelieved companionship of men, and wished that Isabel would move in to Rosewater for the winter months. He rang her up, when this brilliant idea occurred to him, but was informed by Chuma that she was not in the house. On the following day he telephoned again, and learned that she slept, on the third that she was engaged in the delicate operation of extracting some deleterious substance from the crop of a valuable hen. Whereupon he swore vigorously, and vowed that he would forget her until the skies cleared. But "the skies they were ashen and sober," and he caught himself dreaming over his "Torts," or during one of Mr. Boutts's ecstatic visions of Rosewater with a great hotel in the style of the old Missions, and an electric railway. (Mr. Boutts, by-the-way, never elevated his feet to the railing of the stove, but always sat on the edge of his chair, a hand on either knee.) He took the train impulsively to San Francisco, one afternoon, and talked of reinforced concrete with his contractor, and San Francisco politics with Hofer. He even called upon several young ladies, who interested him less than ever, and returned to Rosewater at the end of four days with a sense of duties neglected and a slip in his self-mastery. This put him in such a bad humor that he directed his Asiatic to refuse him to the members of his informal Club, and wished he were back in San Francisco doing the town with Stone.

III

He was glowering into the open door of the stove and wondering why on earth he had not remained in town over Sunday at least, when he became aware that his noiseless Jap was standing at his elbow.

"What is it?" he demanded, testily. "I wish you would get a pair of creaky boots."

"A gentleman," replied the impervious Oriental.

"I told you I would not see anybody."

"But he has a card." It was not often that the cool even tones of Imura Kisabura Hinomoto fluctuated, but Gwynne detected a faint accent of respect. Somewhat surprised himself, he glanced at the card. It bore the name of one of the judges of one of the benches provided for by the constitutions of both nation and State. He had a summer home on the mountain opposite and relatives in Rosewater, so there was nothing remarkable in his being in the little town on a rainy winter Sunday. Nevertheless, Gwynne's instinct of caution, more active than usual during the past year, stirred sharply.

"Show him in," he said. "And bring the whiskey--both Rye and Scotch."

This was the most perfect specimen of the bluff, hearty, breezy, almost ingenuous Westerner that Gwynne had encountered. The judge, who had been relieved of his hat and overcoat by the admirable Imura, advanced with both hands outstretched, and Gwynne could do no less than surrender his, although he had never fancied any one less. The judge was a big man with a round jolly face, set with a sensual mouth, a pendulous nose, and merry twinkling eyes. Although possibly no more than fifty-five years of age, the baldness of his head had amplified the common noble domelike American brow: behind which Gwynne had so often groped and found nothing. This man was indubitably clever, and to a less educated eye than Gwynne's his face would appeal and fascinate. His magnetism was superlative.

"My dear Mr. Gwynne!" he exclaimed. "Believe me when I say that this is one of the most satisfactory moments of my life. I was forced to come to this God-forsaken hole last night, and had it not been for you I should have taken the morning train back to the city. But when I heard that you were in town--you were pointed out to me as we both left the train--I knew that my opportunity had come. And--my dear young gentleman--I throw away no opportunities; I throw away no opportunities."

By this time Gwynne had steered him into the largest of the chairs, and offered him his choice of the whiskies. The judge, after an instant's hesitation, accepted the Scotch; and Gwynne felt that he had a tactful and dangerous man to deal with.

"Excellent!" exclaimed the judge, and he smacked his lips. He inhaled the aroma of the cigar voluptuously. "But my dear old friend, Judge Leslie, whom I ran in to see for a few moments this morning, told me--with his customary humor--that you were as remarkable for the superior quality of your whiskey and tobacco as for the many personal qualities that have so rapidly endeared you to the citizens of Rosewater."

"Thanks," said Gwynne.

The judge changed his tactics instantly. "I cannot beat about in the dark and merely turn myself loose in pleasant generalities, Mr. Gwynne," he said, gravely. "I am going to tell you at once that I am positive you are Elton Gwynne. Judge Leslie would give me no satisfaction this morning, but I needed none. I happened to be employed in old Colton's bank in my younger days--as secretary--and although that was a long time ago--a long time ago!--it came back to me, when I began to hear so much about our new rancher, that his full name was John Elton Cecil Gwynne, and that he was the only son of his mother. Or--if impressions are confused after so long an interval--I may have gathered the last fact from James Otis, whom I knew very well. He and Hi, indeed, I may honestly say, were among my few intimate friends, despite some disparity in years. So, I have a double interest and, I modestly hope, claim upon you. The former at least has been accentuated since yesterday, when your likeness to Hi struck me very painfully. You are a vast improvement, I grant, for Hi was as ugly as mud and as cross as two sticks, but the resemblance is acute, odd as it may appear. Those things are very subtle, very subtle."

Gwynne had heard the keys of his secret weakness tinkle for a full bar, but while it improved his humor it did not cloud his judgment, and he applied himself to finding out the purpose of the man's visit.

"I regret very much that I have come too late to know any of my male relatives," he said, affably. "Hiram Otis, from all I hear, was an able man, if somewhat soured, and his unfortunate brother one of the most brilliant lawyers of his day. Terrible thing, this reckless drinking in San Francisco. I was told yesterday that when--a few years ago--an editor was sent out from New York to assume charge of one of your most flourishing dailies, he made the entire staff go down to Los Gatos and take the Keeley cure. Then, for a time, he had _relays_ of sober men, at least, but until then he had felt himself a lonely Philistine--besides taking a hand in every department of the 'shop,' even setting type at times. But it's a fascinating old town, all the same. Too fascinating, I fear." And he managed to fetch a remorseful sigh.

The judge, who had laughed heartily at the anecdote, dismissed his twinkle for a moment, and looked at the young man with concern.

"For God's sake," he said, softly, "don't tell me that you have inherited that microbe."

"Oh no, indeed!" said Gwynne, cheerfully. "I never could take to drink now--a man's character is pretty well formed at thirty-two, I fancy, and I scarcely ever touch spirits when alone--prefer the lighter wines. Only, as San Francisco is so convivial, one naturally imbibes a good deal, especially with friends addicted to the 'cocktail route'--and I am afraid I shall have to give up the city for the present and stick to work."

"The judge tells me that your legal powers are really amazing--that you have accumulated more law in four months--"

"Tut! Tut!" cried Gwynne, springing to his feet and reaching the table in a stride. "Have some more whiskey, judge. And don't flatter me any more. I am afraid that vanity is my besetting weakness--"

"Thank God it is not the other!" said the older man, fervently. "And vanity keeps the heart younger than anything I know of. Lose the power of being tickled by a compliment and inflated by success, and you lose the salt of life. But I am delighted that you have taken to the law. I know your English career like a book, and although I do not pretend even to guess at the motives which induced you to fling aside not only the most promising career in England, but one of the noblest of her titles, I may say, sir--and I may speak for my fellow-citizens, the whole million of them--I am deeply flattered, and gratified, that, whatever your motive, which could only be an honorable one, you have chosen this fair State as the theatre of your future triumphs. I hope I shall see you beside me on the bench--unless, to be sure, you have higher ambitions than the mere practice of law."

"The first men in the country have been lawyers," said Gwynne, politely. "Why aspire higher?"

"Why, indeed? But I think you will. The law frequently leads either to one of the benches or into the more active field of politics. And you--with your enormous energies--you will never be content with the law, pure and simple, no matter how brilliant a reputation you might achieve."

"But honest lawyers are so rare!" exclaimed Gwynne, boyishly. "I do believe I should be an honest one. That, at least, is the intention I have set beside my ambition. I am ambitious, judge, as no doubt you have divined, and the prospect of being shelved among the lords sickened me. I wanted to make a career for myself, so cut the whole business and came here where my American properties were. Besides, as it happened, I inherited practically nothing with which to keep up my English estates. There! You have my reasons, judge, and you are welcome to them. Titles without money are mere embarrassments. Still, I really should have left, had it been otherwise--I am certain I should. I never could stand the inaction of the Upper House. Nor do I care for those compensatory honors that my position and family influence might have secured for me. And now I feel more the American every day. I have even grown keen on making money--which I rather disdained at home; for the matter of that, thought little about it. You may not know that I am--in partnership, as it were, with my mother and cousin--putting up a large Class A building in San Francisco?"

He inferred that there was little about him the judge did not know, but accepted the interested "Ah!" and rhapsodized over his new interests. The Judge listened with a benignant smile and a twinkling eye, every once in a while giving the tip of his long fleshy nose an abrupt shove, as if it impeded his breathing.

"Just so!" he exclaimed. "Just so! It is the Otis blood. No better pioneer blood in the State. Jim was the wild one. The others were as steady as rocks. Their father and grandfather--your ancestors, sir--helped to make this great State what it is. Their names will always be honored in the annals of California. Terrible pity Jim and Hi got away with so much. If they'd hung on as your mother and her mother did, Miss Isabel would be one of the heiresses. But she seems able to take care of herself, and with that face and form, I guess she can redeem her fortunes any way she chooses. I hear that young Harry Hofer can't talk of anything else."

Gwynne wondered if this were what the judge had come for, but exonerated him, concluding that he was merely rambling on in the hope of an opening.

"No doubt!" he said, heartily. "Miss Otis could marry any one she pleased. One of the best titles in England was hers for the asking, by-the-way. But like myself she is too good an American--shall I say Californian?--to live anywhere but here. She is immensely successful with her chickens, and we shall all make money on this new deal--I am certain of that."

"No doubt, no doubt. Things are booming in San Francisco. You'll get a huge rent from a building of that size--in time. Pity it has to be divided among three of you. And there will be a big mortgage to pay off first, I suppose; and it is in a very precarious district, a very precarious district." And once more the twinkle retired and he gazed dreamily at the fire.

"Oh, even golden apples have to ripen. And I have taken every precaution against fires. Have some more whiskey, Judge."

"Don't care if I do." Gwynne knew that the Scotch scalded a throat caressed these many years with the oily rye, and put as little seltzer in it as he dared. But the judge sipped it heroically. Suddenly the twinkle danced back to his eye as he turned it upon Gwynne.

"You can't delude me!" he cried. "You can't, sir. I know you intend to go in for politics. Nothing else would ever satisfy your genius. Own up, now."

"Well," said Gwynne, modestly. "I have thought of it. After my five years are up, of course--makes one feel rather like a convict. Meanwhile I can make some headway with the law: or, shall I say, build up a reputation that may be useful to me when I am able to run for office."

"Ah! Just so! Great pity you were ever discharged from your American indigenate. Then one year in California would settle the matter. Which of our parties makes the strongest appeal to you?"

Gwynne's eyes had contracted and he was staring at the stove. But his abstraction was too brief to be noticed, and he answered in a confidential tone, "Well, Judge, to tell you the truth--" And then he stopped and laughed.

"I see. You think one is about as bad as the other."

"Well, I am afraid that is it."

"Oh, my boy, they're not nearly as bad as they are made out to be--our American politics. Judge Leslie is dotty on that subject, and so are a good many of the other old fossils of Rosewater. I don't say but that San Francisco would be the better for a good spring cleaning, but the State's not nearly so bad as it's painted, not nearly so bad as it's painted."

He delivered his repeated phrases with an unctuous indulgent roll that made Gwynne long to grind his teeth. But the prospective American merely raised an interrogative eyebrow. "I don't hear much good in any direction," he murmured.

"Of course, I can understand that you have seen through Tom Colton, and that he has appalled you as much as the fossils. He's in a hurry, and if he isn't mighty careful the machine will throw him down. For all his affected simplicity he's too fond of the limelight: loves to see his name in print; and when he makes a donation to a charity or an improvement scheme he uses up all the fireworks in the State."

"I was under the impression that he was in high favor with the district Boss--"

"The district Boss is getting old, and Tom, one way or another, has acquired a great influence over him; but I happen to know that he doesn't stand any too well with the State Democratic Boss."

"If Tom were really earnest in his reforms, really had the interest of the common people at heart--although I never saw common people so well off in my life--but the point is that if Tom were really sincere he might form an independent party."

"Well, he can. It won't do him any good. It wouldn't do even you any good to work up a reform party, and your abilities are to his as a thousand to one. In fact a man like yourself would have far less chance. They would let Tom amuse himself, but they would find you really dangerous, and the upshot would be that the two parties would unite and crush you. Crush you flat. You might be a George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one, and you would emerge from the swift and simultaneous impact of those two cast-iron walls flatter than the sole of your boot. Even if you made a good running on a reform wave, so much the worse. Reform waves merely serve the purpose of making some poor devil conspicuous and recklessly optimistic, then subside and leave him high and dry--at the mercy of the ever-recuperating machine. It's enough to make a man wish he'd never been born. I've seen it more than once. There's only one of two results. They are either so disgusted with politics that they stay out of them for the rest of their lives, or they pick themselves up and make a bolt for the machine they think most likely to give them a career. Look at some of our most illustrious incumbents. Great bluff on the outside--which the machine don't mind one little bit--and the best sort of a party man inside; walking a chalked line with no rebellious wings on his feet. Wings don't grow on clay. But they are right, Mr. Gwynne, and not because they are wrong, either. In this great country organization is absolutely essential, and in all vast complicated organizations some chicanery will creep in. But take them all in all, American politics are not half as bad as they are painted, not half as bad as they are painted."

"Well, that is a relief. You certainly should know. But what of the great corporations that rule this State--as well as the country? The State Democratic or Republican Boss is president or treasurer of one of them, is he not? I haven't taken the trouble to be very specific as yet. My time is so far off. Of course I do not need to be told that organizations, trusts, or whatever you like to call them, are inevitable--because they are in the line of progress; and unabused, they would be as much to the advancement of the individual as of the country. But they have been abused, from all I can make out--quite shockingly. I am taking the course on 'The Law of Corporations' at the University, partly because I want to understand so vital a question as thoroughly as possible--and partly--well--at least, I fancied I should--for a time--for what money there might be in it--But really!"

"Oh, I don't say that some trusts are not reprehensible, and the sooner they are exposed the better. But they are sensational cases. The majority of the great complex aggregations of capital are monuments to American genius and progress; I am sure that if you waste any time on the yellow press you know how to discount it. Some of even the best of the trusts may have swollen to a size that renders them practically unmanageable, as well as injudiciously provocative of much jealousy and unrest. But the principle is sound, as you have admitted, and the great law of adjustment will correct all that is undesirable, and in a very few years. Meanwhile, get rich yourself, Mr. Gwynne. I'm delighted to learn that corporation law has appealed to you so strongly, for the money is there. I'm glad I came. I'd like to do one of your blood a good turn, to say nothing of yourself. Perfect yourself in corporation law and Leslie says you accumulate more rapidly than any hundred ordinarily well-equipped men one might name--and I can put you in the way of clearing a hundred thousand a year."

"_Could_ you?"

"Yes, sir. What the great corporations want, and want badly, even with all the good legal talent they've got, is an attorney of extraordinary abilities, and this you have. I understand that the legal luminary of that reform set in San Francisco has offered to take you into his office. That's about as great a compliment as even you could have, but there's nothing in it. They're playing a losing game. They ought to win, but they won't. The San Francisco Boss may be what we elegantly term a shyster lawyer, but there never was as clever a one; and there's no trick he doesn't know. He'll beat them at every turn. You'd only make one more of that estimable Don Quixote band. Don't waste your youth. Study corporation law with all your might and main, and _I'll_ place you where you'll make a big income from the start--and it'll grow bigger every year. Then when your turn comes to vote and run for office--why, the whole field will be open to you to pick and choose from. Corporations are not ungrateful, and with a mighty one behind you, I guess you wouldn't whistle for anything, long."

Gwynne regarded the thin sole of his house shoe with so rueful a countenance that the judge laughed outright. "Have you really had thoughts of working up a reform party?" he cried, the dancing imps in his eyes almost escaping.

"Well, I may have dreamed a bit that way. You see, I come of a family of reformers." And he gave the judge a rapid sketch of the part his English forefathers had played in the great reform acts of their country. The judge nodded sympathetically.

"Just so. I understand your point of view perfectly. Perfectly. But those great movements in England are matched here by spasms only. This country is too big and too heterogeneous. Don't set yourself between two cast-iron walls, Mr. Gwynne, because when they do get a concerted move on, they fly like hell. Join either of the parties, and you will find not only that it is not half as bad as it is painted, but that it accomplishes far more good than harm, many real reforms, that are systematically ignored by the press."

"I thought you said that reforms were impossible in this country."

"Oh, bless my soul, no. That would mean that we were going straight to the dogs. Reforms are going on every minute. The country is more tolerable and civilized every decade. What I mean is that no reform can be accomplished until the time is ripe for it. That is the reason why our spasms amount to nothing. They are always premature. But if you really want to do this country a service throw in your lot with the regulars. You would always be an influence for good, and when you saw the first opening for the correction of some crying abuse, you would have powerful machinery at hand to work with. What you want to do, Mr. Gwynne, is to become a powerful factor in the machine, not waste your time on windmills."

"Which machine?" asked Gwynne, ingenuously. "I don't fancy I could ever make up my mind. They seem precisely alike to me."

"Well," said the judge, slowly, although he brushed the tip of his nose aside with more violence than usual. "I don't like advising, particularly a young man of your distinguished abilities and achievements. But I really think I am better able to advise you than Leslie, and certainly every man of us should feel a sense of responsibility to the old Otis--and Adams!--blood. I will say frankly that in your place I should join the party that owns this State--and shows no signs of letting go; in other words, the Republican. I can well understand, that having been a Liberal--and to the extent of renouncing your titles!--the Democratic would appeal to you. But don't waste your time, Mr. Gwynne. You are thirty-two. You don't want to throw away the next ten years on a losing game, and then, tired out, arrive nowhere. You would fight so hard that all your energies would be second-rate by that time. You want to begin right now and swim with the tide. Nurse your great energies for the exactions of the victorious career. You'll need them. And need them fresh."

"That sounds like good advice, but the whole political game appals me when I consider that it will be six years before I can even run for the House of Representatives--"

"True! True! Pity your parents didn't lose you. But everything turns out for the best. Meanwhile, you can make name and fortune as a corporation lawyer. And you can't have too much money in this world, sir. You can't have too much money in this world."

It was on the tip of Gwynne's tongue to ask him bluntly what corporation he had in mind, but not only did his already boiling humor recoil from the indignity of a deliberately worded bribe, but he doubted if it would be proffered so early in the game. He had a very clever man to deal with; it was not likely he would make the mistake of a direct approach. Gwynne flattered himself that he looked as ingenuous as Tom Colton, but as he had seen through the complacent judge, it was possible that the judge might entertain suspicions of a man with his reputation. He was glad he had not spoken when his visitor rose abruptly to his feet.

"Bless my soul!" he exclaimed. "I shall miss my train if I don't hurry. And heaven forbid that I spend another night in this mud-hole. My address is on my card--when do you come down again?"

"There is a lecture at Berkeley on Wednesday--"

"Good! Now, you will dine with me next Wednesday night--and I hope on many other nights. We must have several long talks--and all about your future, young man. I am too old to talk about my own, but I remember what I was at your age. Tactful, hey? But no," dropping his voice gravely. "I want to help you. And I can. Whatever branch of the law you specialize upon, you must leave Rosewater and come to San Francisco. I can place you in an office--even should you decide upon general practice--that will carry you swifter and further than our reform friend can, because he is playing a losing game--a losing game, sir. But we'll talk of all that later. I must hasten."

Gwynne escorted him to the head of the staircase, where he resisted an impulse to kick him down, then, after a hasty glance into the dictionary, encased himself in rubber and went up the hill to the home of Judge Leslie. He was to dine there, and it was but a quarter-past four, but what he had to say and ask would not keep for an hour and three-quarters.

IV

On his way to the house he decided that he could not confide even to Judge Leslie that he had been singled out as likely spoil by the "grafters." No doubt that in a way it was a compliment to his abilities, this early-conceived determination to whisk him out of the reform field and engross his abilities, killing two birds with one stone. Probably he would be approached in a similar manner very often, until he became a definite quantity, and in time would grow accustomed to it; and callous. But at present he was hot and sickened, the more so as he felt that he had received a new impulse to believe in himself. These vast corporations--the railroad, street railways, lighting, and telephone companies, were the ones that dictated to San Francisco, and were supposed to have debauched the Board of Supervisors, all of them small laborers, elevated by the Boss to serve his ends--counted their capital by the millions; in one case, at least, by the hundred million. They had already bought much of the best talent in the country, and they wasted no time on the second-rate. Gwynne could easily guess in whose teeming and orderly brain the scheme to seduce and attach himself had been shaped, and, with the American contempt for the perspicacity of any foreigner, had selected this judge, with his breezy direct tactful manner, as certain to edge the newcomer into the fold. To Gwynne the only saving grace in the whole interview was that he had not been tempted. Had he been he should have felt utterly demoralized, disposed to take himself at the valuation of the business-like unsentimental brains in power.

He found his judge awakening from a nap before his library fire and dusting the crumbs from his beard.

"This is an unexpected pleasure," the old gentleman began, then stopped short. "What is the matter?" he asked, anxiously. "Sit down."

"What does indigenate mean?"

"Why--a purely technical term for citizenship."

"A friend of yours called upon me to-day, on the strength of having known the Otises, and remarked that it was a pity I was ever discharged from my American indigenate."

"That you renounced American citizenship upon coming of age. It is a pity."

"But I remember doing no such thing. I did no such thing. I certainly should remember it."

"You mean that you made no formal act of renunciation of your American birthright, obtained no certificate of British nationality?"

"I did nothing of the sort. It is possible that my father did it for me--"

"Your father could do nothing." Judge Leslie was staring at him. Suddenly he laughed. "You _are_ British! I am almost inclined to believe you hopeless. How did I get the impression that you had formally expatriated yourself? From Isabel, who, no doubt, woman-like, jumped at the conclusion--having known you when you were more British still. And you never brought up the subject--"

"Don't regard me as wholly an idiot. I read the Constitution of the United States half a dozen times while making up my mind to come here, and it is not likely that Article XIV.--'All persons born in the United States, etc., are citizens of the United States, etc.'--escaped me. I consulted my solicitor, and he read me from some chapter on Expatriation, as plainly as may be, that the forfeiture of native citizenship was accomplished not only by a formal act of renunciation, but followed a long severance with the relations of the government under which the person was born, or--acceptance of service under a foreign government. Considering that I had left the United States when I was five weeks old, and had fought and bled for Great Britain, besides serving in her Parliament--where, of course I took my oath of allegiance--and that I had been an Englishman to every possible intent and purpose, even wearing my titles for some weeks, it seemed to me--and to my solicitor--that I would have rather a hard time obtaining an American passport."

The judge nodded. "Quite right. All the same, I can't understand why your father did not bring the question up when you attained your majority, or why you, an ardent Britisher, did not think of it yourself."

"You would understand if you lived among us for a few years. In the first place my being born in the United States was such a mere incident that it was rarely mentioned, and then in the most casual manner. I don't suppose my mother ever volunteered a piece of information in her life, and my father rarely gave a thought to any matter but sport. My grandfather probably disliked the idea--he detested America--at all events he never alluded to the subject, and was far too British to dream that the child of British parents could be other than British were he born in heaven itself. I don't think the matter had entered my mind for ten years, when the subject came up the first night of Isabel's visit to Capheaton--and I stupefied every one by announcing that I had been born in America; but otherwise it made no impression upon them. It is quite possible that had there been any prospect of my becoming the heir, when I reached my majority, some member of the family would have recalled the fact of my birthplace; but Zeal was well then, his wife was bearing children rapidly, there was every reason to suppose she would have half a dozen boys. Do you mean to say that I have never been an Englishman?"

"Oh, you are all right as far as the British law goes. And you were a good and bona fide British subject for thirty years. Don't feel any discouragement on that score."

"Then am I an American citizen? Is there to be no long period of waiting and of comparative inaction?"

"I am not so sure. There is no provision of the Constitution so open to various construction. And none has been so variously construed. I could cite a hundred instances--that is, I could read them to you to-morrow. But I recall two, and they are fair samples. One child, born in the United States, of French parents, returned to France, and after serving his term in the French army wished to become an American citizen, and obtained his passport without difficulty. A full-grown American citizen went to Mexico and fought for Maximilian, and lost not only his own citizenship, but that of his children, who had been born in the United States. There you are, and there you are again, as dear old Dickens would say. But I must think a minute." He transferred his gaze to the coals, and was silent for a few moments.

"There is a pretty strong case on both sides," he resumed, in a musing tone. "You left this country when an infant, you practically forgot it, you entered the service of Great Britain heart and soul, and achieved high distinction. You inherited a title and wore it as a matter of course. For thirty years you never set foot on American soil, nor at any time demanded the protection of the United States, as you might easily have done in your foreign wanderings. There is hardly a doubt that if England had gone to war with us at any time during the last ten years and needed your services you would have given them. However, that contingency did not arise, so let it pass. But with an unsympathetic State Department and an active enemy or two, all the other points cited would make up as clear a case of voluntary expatriation as any on record. But there is a pretty good balance on the other side. You _were_ born in the United States, you _did not_ renounce at any time your allegiance, you have the blood of two Presidents in your veins, and--here is the important point: you have been one of the heaviest tax-payers in California for thirty-two years. Now, as I have intimated, these expatriation cases have all been decided on their individual merits. I should advise you to go at once to Washington, and enlist the influence of the British Ambassador to get you personal and private interviews with the powers that be. Then plead your own case. One of two things will happen. Either there will be much hemming and hawing, and much virtuous and judicial weighing of your peculiar case, article by article, or the President himself will decide one way or another off-hand--he being what he is. For that reason I think it would be well to approach him by degrees, let him digest it a bit. He may be delighted that you have thrown over your titles and your brilliant and promising career to become an American citizen, invite you to take the oath of allegiance forthwith, and order the State Department to issue a passport. On the other hand he may fly off at a tangent and be righteously indignant that a man with the blood of the Otises and Adamses in him, who had the good-fortune to be born on American soil, hesitated a moment after reaching man's estate--more particularly that he never gave the matter a thought. Nothing could be more problematical. I wouldn't bet a twenty-dollar gold piece either way. But, I repeat, you must go yourself. Otherwise the affair would hang on interminably. Moreover, you must tell no one the object of your journey. Tom Colton would pull every wire within his reach, and he is no mean rival, to postpone your admission to citizenship, and so, I fancy, would others."

He shot a keen glance at Gwynne. "I think I know who your visitor was, to-day, and what he came to Rosewater for. That speech of yours, and its effect on the crowd, never escaped the attention of the party bosses, and of course you are a marked man in this small community--to say nothing of your intimacy with the reform set in town. The judge, who started somewhere in this neighborhood as a poor boy, rose from various minor situations to be the secretary of Colton's bank, saved his dimes and studied law. So far so good; the average self-made American. The law leads a good many of us into politics and it wasn't long leading him. He was an invaluable party man, with that bluff honest exterior, that superabundant magnetism, and that twinkling eye. The world always associates a fine upright nature with a twinkling eye. I have one myself and I believe that is the main reason why I have always been afraid to do wrong. Well, our friend got the bench when he wanted it, and he has been a mighty good friend to the corporation that put him there. And it has done well by him. He owns a fine house in San Francisco, entertains, goes into the best society, has visited Europe several times, and, although he is now rising sixty, continues to fool all but a few. He might climb higher and become a United States Senator, but the corporation finds him too useful here. He rather resents that, but they make the sacrifice worth his while. I can well conceive they have spotted you, and you may be sure there is little about you they don't know. Of course they have made up their minds you are erratic, and have not the least doubt that they can manipulate that loose screw. They have bought thousands, these ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- (it was not often the judge swore, but when he did he took some time). Grafters, that are debauching the country and will soon make it impossible for an honest man to live; and although they will no doubt have the grace to approach you with less brutal directness than commonly, I knew that was what they were after the moment that old rascal began to talk to me this morning. He never fooled me. Well, we'll fool him. You go to Washington and get your passport, and if you can't hasten matters don't let an outsider know what you are after. Plunge into society and let them think you need a change from California. Of course you will give your real name. Cat's out, anyhow. Perhaps they will think you are on your way home to England. Flirt with the girls and be a frivolous young blood. The judge asked you to dinner, I suppose? I thought so. You would meet more than the judge; if not the first time, then the second and third. Write him a note, telling him you are obliged to go south to take a look at your mother's ranch. Then obey a sudden impulse and go East by the southern route. In Washington be seen as much with your ambassador as possible. I don't think these rascals will suspect, for they take for granted that you were duly 'discharged from your American indigenate'--I can hear him! If they did there would be the devil to pay, but I don't think they will. However, don't waste any time."

Gwynne was staring at the fire, his inner being chaos, but he replied in a moment that he would start for Washington on the following day.

V

There had been no stormier night during the winter. Isabel's old house creaked and rattled and groaned like a ship in a whole gale, and the wind sent great waves of rain along the veranda. A northern window had been blown in and hastily patched. Although but nine o'clock the sky was as black as midnight. For several days there had been merely a quiet steady fall, but during the afternoon the northern rain belt had sent down another great storm and it had been rising ever since.

Isabel, unable to go out, had washed her hair, and was still sitting on the hearth-rug, drying it, when she heard a shout outside, then the slam of a door at the back of the house, and voices in the kitchen. She was too warm and comfortable to be interested. If it were a tramp he was welcome to the shelter of the house; if a burglar there were two men to dispose of him, and her jewels were in a safe-deposit box in San Francisco. She loved a storm and had given herself up to one of those moods of pure delight in the present moment, although she had been in anything but a good-humor of late, and solitude had palled. But a raging storm, the sense of the absolute dominance of nature and the littleness of man, always exalted her. She knew that the old house was secure on its foundations, and, but that she loved comfort and warmth, she would have liked to be out on the marsh in a boat; tense with the difficulties of keeping the channel and avoiding the shoals and mud-banks obliterated by the risen waters. It amused her to imagine herself out there, while dwelling pleasurably, in a doubled consciousness, upon the warm red tints of her room. Her dreams were barely disturbed by the unknown interloper, but they were shattered a moment later by Gwynne's voice and rapid step in the hall.

She had intended to greet him with a cool hauteur after his neglect of nearly a month, but she could not rise in time; and, enveloped in a mass of hair, spread over a yard of the floor, it was impossible to be dignified. So she resolved to be charming.

"I had to come in the back way like a tramp and leave my oil-skins in the kitchen," he announced, abruptly, as he entered. "Don't get up. I have always wanted to see your hair down. So did Jimmy, I remember. Did he?"

"Certainly not. Neither would you if you had not chosen such an extraordinary time to call. I am delighted to see you once more after all these years, but--what on earth possessed you?" His eyes were glittering, although he had dropped his lids, and he did not sit down, but moved restlessly about the room.

"Your mother is much better," said Isabel, tentatively.

"Oh yes, and she is looking forward to her motor trip, and telephoned this morning that her room was a mass of flowers. I fancy she is a bit touched by so much kindness, for she has not been half decent to any one but the Trennahans."

"Does she say anything about returning to England? She had it in mind--just after the earthquake."

"She has made one or two casual allusions to her return, but she never plans far ahead--does what takes her fancy at the moment. But this life will never suit her. I imagine she will go before long. London is in her blood. Now that she can live properly--will have all she can, or ought to want, when the building is paying, there is no object in her remaining here."

"How goes the building?"

"How can anything go in this infernal weather? The old shanties are down, and the contractor had a sort of tent erected and has done some work on the foundations. I should have come directly to California if I had had any idea of the money to be made by selling off my superfluous land and putting up that building. It might be finished, by this time. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I am only remodelling my own brain on business lines by slow degrees, and no echo of this building fever reached me in Europe. You will remember that I did write, while you were wandering about America, that Mr. Colton suggested it for both of us. If I did not dwell on the subject it was because I had a feminine horror of the mortgage--and no idea that you were so keen on making money."

"I am thinking principally of my mother. When a woman has always had the world I doubt if she can live long out of it. San Francisco is all very well for the young and adventurous, and for those with a strong sense of the picturesque, but I can imagine that to a woman of her age and experience----Do you know--" he burst out. "I don't know where I am. What an extraordinary thing heredity is! I doubt if most people, although they would call that a platitude, realize that heredity is anything more than a telling word. There are times when I am sitting at my stove, surrounded by all those typical American men, who seldom mention a subject but politics and farming--for I tabû chickens--or the intensely local interests, more or less affected by politics,--there are times when I actually feel the nameless ambitious young fellow--not born in a log-cabin, perhaps, but next door to it--and endowed with that keen compact pioneer determination to stride straight to my goal, whether it is the White House or--well--the Presidency of a Trust Company. I forget--good God!--_Are_ those years behind me in England? I have caught myself wishing that I had kept a scrap-book like other idiots. It escapes my memory altogether at times, that I have but to take a steamer out of New York to reach the top of civilization again in less than a week."

"Perhaps it suggests itself when you remember that with the income you can command before long, life in England will be more worth while."

"That was as nasty a one as you ever gave me! No one knows better than yourself what brought me to America, and that those conditions cannot be altered by money. Could I not have had Julia Kaye's fortune? You need not be nasty again! You forget that not only was I in love with her--or thought I was--but could have given her the equivalent. She would be the last to claim that she was to pay too high a price, even with me thrown in. If you don't beg my pardon I'll leave the house."

"I beg your pardon," said Isabel, hastily. She was thrilled with curiosity; she had never seen him so nearly excited, with the exception of one memorable and painful moment. She fancied that she could see one of the barriers between them sway.

"It may be that this sudden prospect of wealth, or rather of a goodish income that would enable me to keep up a decent establishment in town, and a bit of a place somewhere in the hunting country, has upset my equilibrium, but it occurred to me this morning as I was splashing through the mud--I had to go out to the ranch--in fact it came over me with such a rush that I felt like Don Quixote, and every landmark looked like a windmill--what is England to-day but the very apex of civilization? The Mecca, the reward, of every man and woman with the breeding and the intelligence to appreciate it? The best of everything goes there, you have but to turn round to help yourself to an infinite variety--to be found piecemeal everywhere else on earth. And the very best is mine, by inheritance and personal effort. Why in thunder am I out here on this ragged edge of civilization struggling with almost primitive conditions?--elemental badness, sure enough! What is my object? Merely to bring about a set of conditions that exists in England to-day. I have them there. Why am I wading into filth up to my knees, for the sake of an alien race, when they are mine already?"

"But you had too full a measure. That was the reason you emptied the cup and turned your back. You wanted hard work--to use your gifts."

"What does it all amount to? Suppose I insidiously work up a reform movement in this State, and am shot into Congress over the head of the machine? Suppose my gifts are as extraordinary as I have been led to suppose--ordinarily a man feels damned commonplace--and by force of those gifts I hold my own against the formidable organizations I shall encounter there at every turn? Suppose this reform spirit in the United States grows and strengthens, and I come along in time to benefit by it, and am landed in Washington--even in the White House? What of it? I had a thousand times rather be prime-minister in England--in other words the real head of eleven million square miles of the earth's surface, dictator to a good part of the world, for that matter. Your public men are servants--or ought to be, according to your Constitution. In England we render service by courtesy, and rule the roost. In this country every man in public life is not only at the mercy of his constituents, but in daily terror of having his head cut off by the man above him. Even the President has to be a politician above all things."

"You used to talk in England--as if you were not wholly swayed by personal ambition."

"It is not so difficult over there to conceive high and mighty ideals--fool yourself, if you like. But I'll be hanged if I can see myself baring my breast for poisoned arrows, with a seraphic smile on my lips, over here! It is all so crude! I want to be a main instrument in reform as much as ever--Oh yes! But I am not sure that one motive is not to make the life and the game more tolerable. And the everlasting machine! There won't be a day, inside or out of it, that I won't run up against every damnable meanness that human nature is capable of. I must handle these men, placate them--or get out. History has not yet failed to repeat itself. If I succeed, in favoring conditions, in forming a new party, I may end as a boss myself! Exalted ideal! Inspiring thought! Better go home and live like a gentleman. I could have some sort of a career, and I have seen enough in this country to drive me towards the conclusion that there are worse things in life than curbing one's youthful ambitions a bit."

He was still striding up and down the room, his expressive hands as restless as his feet. The color was in his face and his eyes were blazing. There was a curious magnetism about him that Isabel had never been sensible of before, although she had heard much of it in England. It was as if his spirit were fully awake; at other times he appeared to live with his cool critical brain only, while his inner self, with its intense slow passions, slept. She wisely made no comment, and after shoving the books violently about the table he went on:

"You may argue that if public men were elected directly by the people and the President held office for one term of ten or fifteen years only, that a long stride would be made towards the millennium. But it is doubtful if even then, forty or fifty different tribes--for that is what your State and territory lines effect--could be managed without machinery, and machinery develops the lowest attributes in human nature. I saw enough of that in the few rotten boroughs we have left in England, but my imagination never worked towards the full and original development in this country. We have other faults; the serenest optimist would never deny them; but, faults or no faults, we crown civilization to-day. The richest man in America has not the least idea what it means to live like a gentleman in our sense. And there is no flaw in my appreciation of your country. In many respects it is the most marvellous the world has known--but--I sometimes wonder if the pioneer blood in my veins is red enough to stand it. No matter what the most successful reformers accomplish, there will be no high civilization here in our time--no background. Unconsciously, or otherwise, I shall always have the goal of England in my mind--and if that is the case, why am I here? Isn't civilization the highest that man is capable of accomplishing, the best that Earth has to offer any of us? What sense is there in going back to the beginnings and plodding or fighting towards a goal you were born to? It's more than once I've felt like Don Quixote. The whole infernal country is a windmill--and a large percentage of its inhabitants are windbags."

"Of course you have a streak of Don Quixote in you. All men of genius have, I suppose. You felt that you had a mission--to pack a great deal into a convenient phrase. You could do nothing in England but sit down and sup with the elect. You would have choked very quickly. And if you went back you would not stay. You would not only be bored, but you know now how badly this country needs one disinterested man of genius."

"I am not disinterested. I never felt more selfish in my life."

"You have an immense capacity for disinterested statesmanship. Of course all motives, especially with the highly gifted, are complex. You have said yourself they would be fanatics otherwise. And you are far more American than you know, although you have just confessed that you do know it well enough at times. All your American ancestors may be living again in you. It was your own instinct, no influence of mine, that sent you out here, filled with mixed but high ambitions. No full-blooded Englishman would ever do what you have done. Insanity and inebriety skip a generation. Why not Americanism? Heaven knows there is nothing American about your mother. And when the political cleanup comes, as it is bound to--"

"Oh, I am sick of this everlasting optimism: 'Everything is bound to come out all right,' 'God's own country,' and all the rest of it. I can understand it well enough out here, though. It is a wonder to me that any Californian has energy enough to care. Life is easy at the worst. The scoundrels batten unnoticed--although they are sending up the price of everything; and the most ungrateful and rapacious labor class on earth never get their deserts. The labor class hasn't a leg to stand on, so far as bare justice goes. Pity they can't have a taste of Eastern factories and wages and climate for a while. If it were not for its bay and the tremendous significance of its position opposite the Orient, California would be what it ought to be, the pleasure gardens of the world. No politics, no labor-unions, merely a succession of estates, big and little, where a man could live a happy animal existence for one-third of the year, after working the other two-thirds--that is a sane division. But if I stay here I work. And for what ultimate object? England, as sure as fate."

"You cannot possibly tell how you will feel twenty years hence--"

"Twenty years! That is a fair estimate, no doubt! I believe that the real secret of discontent has been the prospect of this cursed period of inaction. Nice substitute--coruscating as a blooming barrister; and it's mighty difficult to travel along for four years without showing your hand. It requires a tact that I may or may not have. If I have it, there may be other depths of hideous guile, as yet undiscovered. I have had glimpses of them already. All these farmers that I am nursing? What if my beneficent virus works too quickly--before I can represent them? Some other fellow reaps the benefit; and when my turn comes, likely as not there will be a reaction. I've to keep and increase my hold on these men of every nationality under the sun, as well as upon the seasoned old Americans, lest they should break away from me. Nice job I've cut out." He hesitated a moment, but added: "Beastly idea to subject all to the same law. It should be ten years for immigrants, and one for the man-of-the-world anxious to take the oath of allegiance--not that I am frantic to take it."

"I never knew any one so keen for obstacles; and now that you have found more than you bargained for--"

"It's not the obstacles that daunt me. If I were only sure of accomplishing any result worth while, if I had the materials to work on--if I were sure I cared! The American is an unhatched Englishman, but he won't be hatched out in my time----I even long for the close compact drama of English life. Everything is spread over such a vast loose surface here. These four years through which I may--must stumble along with my hands tied, are a fair example. And it seems to me that I never go to bed without seeing a face on the dark trying to enunciate: 'What for?' 'Why?'"

He sat down suddenly on a chair in front of her and took his head in his hands. "Do you ever ask yourself those questions?" he demanded, abruptly.

Isabel nodded. He noted absently that she looked like an elf with her face half-hidden by her hair, and that he could see but one little black mole, but a narrow ring of blue about the dilated pupils of her eyes, the tiny dimple at the corner of her mouth. She wore a loose blue wrapper, and the wood fire leaped in high flames behind her. The storm was terrific. He suddenly realized that this was the only homelike room he knew outside of England. He felt as if nothing would ever give him peace again, but he was suddenly and overwhelmingly glad to be there--and comfortably alone with Isabel on this raging night. He stared at her until his own pupils dilated, but she replied more tranquilly than she felt.

"_Cui bono_ is the motto on Earth's coat of arms. The only thing that saves us is that we don't see it all the time. There are long intervals in which we eat and sleep and dance and love and play at politics and enjoy the storm--and our best companions."

"We certainly are not here to spend our lives preparing for another world. Otherwise there would be no sense in the complexities of civilizations. A man could do that much in a cave. It is merely the diabolism of instinct that prompts the young to believe that the race is all. Certainly love is not the only source of happiness. I have been ecstatically happy when writing--thinking, in the fever of composition that I was dashing out the finest thing in literature. I have been happy under fire, or excited enough to think so. And I have felt enough exultation with exaltation to make happiness when I have been on a platform and carried a hostile crowd off its head and to my feet. If two people were indescribably mated--I don't know--"

"Why not deliberately accept the doctrine that there is a purpose, even if you are not permitted to read the riddle of life--"

"All very well, but what have politics to do with it? You may answer that a man should lay up all the credits he can, and that he can possibly get more by cleaning out the political trough than in any other way. If those are my lines I suppose I shall work along them, but my higher faculties whisper that to live this life on the intellectual plane, fighting for your country when necessary, is the rational existence for those that have the luck to be born to the good things of the old civilizations. Here they don't know any better, or if they do they can't help themselves. If that plane isn't meant to live on, why is it there? Has a man the right deliberately to step off the high plane upon which a long succession of circumstances have planted him--pull up his roots and plant them in a virgin soil?"

"Perhaps it is his duty to go where he is most needed--where his riper instincts and experience--"

"Your arguments are always good, otherwise I should not be here arguing with you. What do you really think of love?"

She jumped with the suddeness of the attack, and then drew backward a little, for he was leaning towards her and she felt his masculine magnetism as she had never done before. It pulled and repelled her, fascinated and filled her with resentment. And she was fully alive to the romantic conditions, the wild night, the isolation, the vibrating atmosphere. But she replied, soberly:

"I don't think about it. I buried all that--"

"Chuck it on the dust-heap! It served its purpose: women should have some such experience in their first youth as men have others. You are the better for it, because you worked off on the poor devil all the morbid and ultra-romantic tendencies that were spoiling your life. But let it go at that. It was no more love than my first Byronic madness for one of my mother's friends when I was sixteen--"

"You were thirty when you were in love with Mrs. Kaye. And she was not even your second--nor your tenth, no doubt."

"Quite right. I do not understand and shall waste no time on the effort. All men run pretty much the same gamut. That attack was the most commonplace sort of passion, no madness in it, no idealization, no sense of mating--"

"And how, may I ask, do you expect to know when you really do fall in love--"

"I'll know, all right. I wish you would put up your hair. You look uncanny, not like a woman at all. You have too many sides. I like you when you are human and normal."

"If you think my hair in its proper place will accomplish that result--my hair-pins are up-stairs on my dressing-table--"

He disappeared instantly. When he returned she was standing and coiling her hair about her head. Her sleeves were loose and the attitude bared her arms. As Gwynne handed her the pins, one by one, he stared, fascinated; but when she had finished and shaken down her sleeves, returning his stare with two polar stars, he turned his back suddenly and resumed his tramp of the room.

"I have changed my mind," he said, abruptly. "I had intended to marry you on any terms, merely because you suited my critical taste. But I believe that if I married you in that way I should beat you or kill you--or you would kill me. You are capable of anything. Love would square matters with us--nothing else."

"Then is the engagement broken?" asked Isabel, placidly. She did not sit down, but stood with a foot on the fender.

He relieved his feelings by kicking a stool across the room, then came and stood in front of her.

"Could you love me?" he demanded.

"I am not the village prophet."

"Have you made up your mind you will not marry me?"

"Oh yes--that."

"Because you couldn't love me, or because you are determined not to marry?"

"I won't feel and suffer and have my life torn to tatters when I can keep it whole! I had rather marry you without love, if I believed myself indispensable to your success in life."

"Much you know about it. I won't have you on any such terms."

"You are in no imminent danger. Heavens, what a wind! You must stay here to-night. If the spare room is too cold you can sleep on this divan."

"If that is a polite hint, I am ready to take it. I have been here long enough."

"Oh, but I mean it. I will not hear of you riding back in this pitch darkness. You would be more likely to go into the marsh than not. You can return to Rosewater so late to-morrow that Sister Ann will infer you have made a morning call."

"I shall return to-night. It was as dark when I came, and I am not altogether a fool. Neither is my horse."

"But you are not so familiar with the road," murmured Isabel, irrepressibly.

"That is the one decent thing you have said to me to-night. It is these sudden lapses into the wholly feminine that save me from despair. What a night for romance, and you and I sparring like two prize-fighters! That is as far as we have ever got. If you would ever let me know you--sometimes I have an odd fancy that I can see a lamp burning in your breast, and that if ever I got at it, and searched all the nooks and crannies of your strange nature by its light, I should love you as profoundly as it is possible for a man to love a woman."

"I am afraid it is only a taper in a cup of oil. At all events it is not a search-light, even to myself. I fancy people only seem complicated to others when they do not wholly understand themselves."

"Do you understand yourself?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Are you perfectly satisfied that you never could love me?"

She reddened and her sensitive mouth moved, but she brought her teeth together. "That has nothing to do with it."

"Everything!"

"Nothing!"

"Do you mean to tell me that you are literally contented with your life as it is?--living out here alone with nothing to do but read and look after those confounded chickens? You have the most romantic temperament I have ever met, and the way you gratify it would make an elephant laugh."

"I dream and think of the future."

"Future? You saw what that amounted to when you were in town--"

"I have shaken off the impression. It must have been that I had too much at once--and the purely frivolous, which offended my puritanical streak--"

"You don't like the Bohemian crowd any better."

"There are plenty of others. When I am ready I shall make the plunge and forbid myself to shrink from realities--"

"And the only people that will interest you will be those deep in public affairs. A woman to be a political power must be married. Otherwise she becomes the worst sort of feminine intriguer."

"I am interested in the women that are interested in the improvement of all things."

"And what is their ultimate aim, for heaven's sake? The franchise. Do you mean to tell me that you intend to become a Club woman? I had sooner you wrote a book."

"I have no intention of doing either--"

"In other words you are a plain dreamer, and a selfish one at that--"

"I try not to be selfish. I visit no ill-humor on any one--but you!--and I do good where I can. I should be more selfish if I ran the risk of making--some man unhappy in matrimony."

"Well, I'm sick of the subject. I came to say good-bye for a time. I'm off to the south to-morrow, and then east on business. I don't know when I shall be back--Oh, you can turn white--I can make you turn white!"

"What do you expect when you fire such a piece of news at me? What is behind this?"

"I have told you enough."

"Don't you trust me?"

"Oh, you can keep a secret. I don't know that I want to tell you."

"Very well."

"Oh, well, it would be beastly ungrateful in me not to. I have had a hint that, not having de-Americanized myself formally when I came of age, I may still be an American citizen. Judge Leslie has advised me to go to Washington and find out, and I am going. Are you really so interested?"

"Oh yes," said Isabel, softly. "I am interested! I have been afraid you might become discouraged and disgusted. Four more years would be a long time. Are you glad?"

"I don't know whether I am or not. When it comes to taking the oath of allegiance to the United States--if that is sprung on me in Washington--I shall feel more like taking the next steamer for England and making my oaths there. It is a little too sudden."

"All this hesitation and doubt are natural enough until you are settled down, and become too accustomed to the country to think of anything else--"

"I accept the balm. But I have less hesitation than you imagine--whatever the doubt and disgust. And I really believe the secret of my unrest is you! Good heavens! _Do_ I love you--_already_--that would be the last straw!"

He was staring at her, and something in his face blinded her. She turned cold from head to foot; but she moved her glance to the baskets on the mantel-shelf, and replied, quietly:

"It will take some time for you to know whether you are in love again or not. You have seen me too constantly--barring the last month. I have become in many ways necessary to you. When you move to San Francisco, as I am convinced you will, and have many other resources----propinquity is all there is to ninth-tenths of what we call love----and then a little more kills it! Even if I were under the same delusion as you are I should not yield to it."

"I do love you," he said, as slowly and clearly as he was capable of enunciating. But his voice was hoarse, and she was sensible, without turning her head, that he was rigid. "It is different--quite different. I am willing to wait, however. I understand your hesitation. When I return--"

"Doubt of the reality of your--well--"

"Love," said Gwynne, grimly.

But Isabel could not bring herself to utter the word. "One way or the other, it does not alter my determination not to marry."

"Let that rest for a while. What I want to know is, could you--do you love me?"

"Oh, I don't know! I only know I don't want to. You have a tremendous influence--you have made every one else seem commonplace and uninteresting--I have resented very much your neglect this last month. I am willing to tell you all this--also, that I have dreamed, imagined myself in love with you. But I am convinced that if you let me alone I shall get over it."

"I have no intention of letting you alone."

She moved backward suddenly, and he laughed. "I wouldn't touch you with a forty-foot pole," he said, roughly, "unless you wanted me. That, perhaps, shows how far gone I am. But precious little you know about men. Or yourself. If I kissed you this minute you would succumb--"

He turned suddenly and was down the hall and had slammed the kitchen door behind him before she realized that she was actually alone, that he meant to leave the house. For a moment she clutched the edge of the mantel-piece in a passion of relief and regret. Then her femininity was swept aside by her hospitable instinct and vehement fear. She ran down the hall and into the kitchen. But even his rain garments and boots were gone. She opened the back door and peered out into the inky darkness. A light was moving in the stable. The rain was falling in a flood and the wind almost drove her backward. But she gathered up her gown and ran as fast as she could make headway to the stable. He was alone, and tightening his horse's saddle-girths by the light of a dark lantern. He gave her a bare glance and went on with his work.

"You must not go!" She was forced to scream. "You shall not. Why, you are mad. The marsh--such conventionality is ridiculous. I refuse to recognize it."

He rose to his feet and led his horse outside. But before he could vault to the saddle she caught his arm and dragged him backward. "You shall not go! You shall not!" She could hardly hear the sound of her voice. But she heard his, and there was nothing in either storm or darkness to blunt the sense of touch. For a moment she felt as if the whole had never been halved, as if they two were youth incarnate; and his arm was like vibrating iron along her back. She thought he was going to kiss her and dazedly moved her head towards him. But he cried into her ear instead:

"I stay if you marry me to-morrow."

"No, no, no!" Her will sprang through her lips, and before it was beaten down again she saw a spark of light engulfed in the dark, and stood alone in the storm, wondering if the world had turned over.

VI

"_Monday Morning._

"This is merely to announce that I survived the marsh, and that upon my return we will resume where we left off last night. E. G."

Isabel received this note early in the morning. That night she had accepted an invitation of some weeks' standing, and was established in the old Yorba mansion on Nob Hill. She anathematized her cowardice, but solitude was beyond her endurance for the moment. She had made up her mind that she would not think of Gwynne at all, much less give herself opportunities to miss and desire him; and her will, reinforced by conditions, was strong enough at times to persuade her that she hated him.

And there was nothing in the Trennahan household to try her nerves, everything to soothe them. Although the old buff walls and terrible carpets of Mrs. Yorba's day had gone long since and the house had been completely refurnished, it looked like a home, not a museum. Trennahan had taken his family to Europe many times, and they had brought back much that was rare and beautiful; but nothing stood out obtrusively, not even a color. They entertained constantly in a quiet way, and if Magdaléna was far too Spanish to seek out the clever of all sets, and Trennahan too indifferent, at least Isabel met daily such of the _haute noblesse_ as were not completely fossilized, and many men that interested her well enough. Moreover, as Mrs. Trennahan now had a grown-up daughter, she was obliged to take her to the cotillons and other routs given under the merciless supervision of the Leader. Isabel accompanied her as a matter of course, and when she declined an invitation her guest was at liberty to go with the ever faithful Mrs. Hofer.

For three weeks Isabel did little thinking. She went to the ranch once a week for the day only, spent an occasional hour with Lady Victoria. Even then she was barely reminded of Gwynne. She was busy during every moment while in the country, and her relative was no more communicative than of yore. Only once did Victoria remark casually, that, by a sort of poetic justice, Gwynne was detained in the south with a sprained ankle, and was hurling maledictions at fate from the classic shades of Santa Barbara. Isabel grudgingly admired the restraint with which he denied himself the possible solace of correspondence with herself, and it crossed her mind once or twice that the young man might have the understanding of women that proceeded from instinct, if not from study. But she deliberately dismissed him, and although his name was frequently mentioned in her presence, she soon ceased to turn cold, and forced him to flit with a hundred others across the surface of her mind.

For the first time in her life she flirted desperately, and with others besides young Hofer. She was quite wickedly indifferent to consequences, and was inspired to woo the fickle goddess of popularity. The peace and charm and intellectual relief of the Trennahan home did much to modify her shrinking from realities, and the effort to please, and the abandonment to the purely frivolous instincts of youth, were the only aides her beauty needed to achieve that popularity she had abstractly desired the night Gwynne brought her the stars. She no longer desired it at all, but she disguised this fact, and reaped the reward.

Moreover, although her analytical faculty slept in the darkest wing of her brain, the mere fact that she was stormily loved and desired by a man to whom she was powerfully attracted, that for a moment she had been awake and eager in his embrace, had warmed her blood and given her an insolent magnetism that she had never possessed before.

Through Mr. Colton she received a formal request from Gwynne to dedicate the Otis Building--named in honor of the creator of the family fortunes--on the day the last of the foundation-stones was laid. In company with half a hundred other young people in automobiles, she astonished South of Market Street, one beautiful spring day--the spring was making desperate assaults upon the lingering winter--and amidst much mock solemnity and many cheers, deposited into the chiselled crypt of one of the great concrete blocks upon which the building would rest, a strong-box containing three of Concha Argüello's Baja California pearls, several family daguerreotypes, and the original deed of sale which had transferred the property from the city to the first James Otis. When the ceremony was over the contractor shook hands with her approvingly.

"That's as good a place as any for a deed of sale in this here town," he remarked. "For no shake will ever budge them concrete pillars. They're down to bed-rock. And no fire'll ever crack them, neither. We'll begin on the steel frame to-morrow, and you must come down occasionally and cheer us up. It'll be worth it. The Otis's goin' to be the cock o' the walk. Better make up your mind to have them terra-cotta facings."

"Oh, they would not raise the rents, and would hardly be appreciated by their present neighbors," said Isabel, lightly. "I am going to send you a bottle of champagne to-night, and you must drink to the health of The Otis."

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 Institute of Art on Nob Hill, the wooden Gothic mansion with bow-windows, erected in the Eighties by a railroad millionaire who had barely survived his nimble victorious assault 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 fortitude 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 sexless 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 titillated the nerves of an ambitious and heartless young flirt. It was not the first time that Isabel had deliberately elected to play a rôle 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 rôle 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 passport, 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 Washington 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 shifting 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 passionately 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 anticipate, 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 assumed 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 buttercups, "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 lustiness 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 pæan 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 passion, 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 passing 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 hoarse 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 passing in and out. As she entered the garden she saw one of them tie a knot of white ribbon to the bell knob.

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!"

Then Isabel, greatly to her own surprise, dropped into a chair and burst into vehement tears. For the moment the child was hers, she suffered pangs of maternal bereavement that seemed to tear her breast and twist her heart. But there was a terrible silence in those two rooms, and in a few moments it chilled and calmed her. She looked up to see Anabel staring at her with blank expanded eyes.

"What are you crying for? You?" demanded the young mother. "I never saw you cry before. And it's not your baby."

"I know it," said Isabel, humbly. "I suppose it is because I am so sorry for you. I am--terribly."

"I never thought you had that much feeling," said Anabel, dully. "You were always the strong one. Come and see my baby."

Isabel rose, trembling and unnerved, but no longer shrinking, and followed Anabel into the nursery, where the child, looking like a little wax-work, lay in its crib.

"She is dead!" said Anabel, in the same astonished indignant voice. "My baby!" She caught Isabel's arm and shook it violently. "It isn't true," she commanded. "Say it is not. How can it be? She spoke and laughed only two hours ago. The relapse was nothing. The doctor said so. That is not my baby." And then her brain stopped for a moment, and Isabel carried her into the other room.

She remained with her until after the funeral. Anabel, when she recovered her senses, cried hopelessly for hours, but gradually controlled herself and rose and went about her affairs with a stern calm. It was her first trouble, but not for nothing had she been given a square jaw and a sturdy little figure. She was filled with dumb protest, and laid away her bright careless youth in the child's coffin, but she accepted the inevitable.

Mr. and Mrs. Leslie were in the south when the baby died, but arrived for the funeral. Until then Anabel clung to her friend, and so did young Colton, who was far more demoralized than his wife. He did not brush his hair, nor go to bed, but wandered about the house like a bewildered spirit, occasionally smiting his hands together, or embracing the other two children convulsively. He had no support to offer his wife, and Isabel was glad to stay with the brave stricken little creature; but when Mrs. Leslie arrived she felt herself superfluous and returned home.

She had had little time to think of Gwynne, but it had crossed her mind that she would accept this heartrending episode, in which she had been called upon to play an intimate part, as but another warning; one, moreover, that would stand its ground did she attempt to force it aside. But Gwynne entered and filled her dispossessed mind the moment she sat down under her acacia-tree, which was perhaps an hour after her return home. But this time her dreams did not flow upon a smooth golden scented tide. She searched the accumulated newspapers for mention of him in the despatches, wept stormily at his neglect, tormented herself with the belief that Julia Kaye was in Washington; at all events that he had discovered that his love for herself was but one more passing fancy, born of propinquity.

She saw mention of him. Twice he had dined at the White House, and his name was frequently in the list of guests at other dinners and functions. He was not visiting at the British Embassy, and Isabel drew her only comfort from the fact: he might be enjoying himself too much to think of her, but his purpose was unaltered, or he certainly would be the guest of a man whom she knew to be his friend: Gwynne was the last man to embarrass anybody, and if the ambassador had enemies they would find his connivance at the Americanization of a useful British peer vastly to his own discredit.

Isabel enjoyed no further peace of mind. The flames of uncertainty devoured her. The worst she could endure, but suspense spurred her always ardent imagination to such appalling feats that she barely ate or slept. But she was far too high-handed to suffer actively for long. She buried her pride in one of her many crypts, summoned her feminine craft, and wrote Gwynne a letter. It began in the brief and business-like manner the iniquities of their builders demanded--they were on strike--and her facile pen flowed on with various other items of information, more or less unpleasant. Mr. Clink, the lessee of Mountain House, had absconded with all the furniture, including the doors and windows, and she hesitated to refurnish, not knowing if Gwynne would return in time for the salmon-fishing. Nor had she been able to find another tenant, although she had spent two days in the mountains. She thought it might be a good place for a sanitarium, if he were inclined to form a company. Some sulphur springs had recently bubbled out of the ground near the house, which would add to the value of the property; but she must confess that they ruined the place for her. She distrusted the sudden advent of mineral waters; one never knew what was coming next. Then, after more cheering, but equally practical information, she rambled off into gossip, told the sad story of the Coltons' bereavement, and asked him a few friendly questions about himself. Of course he had not succeeded in getting his passport or he would be home--unless, to be sure, the Britisher was too strong in him after all, and he would not return. This alternative she contemplated with a lively regret, for she had had no one to talk to since he left, and so much business sat heavily on her shoulders. Then she announced herself his affectionate cousin; and it was not until the letter was gone, and quite a day of self-gratulation at her own adroitness, that it suddenly occurred to her that Gwynne had made up his mind that the first letter should come from her. For a few moments she was furious, then concluded that she did not care; she wanted to hear from him on any terms. She counted the days, intending finally to count the hours and minutes; but this agreeably breathless task came to an abrupt end at the close of the sixth day. Gwynne answered by telegraph. He thanked her for her interesting and more than welcome letter. He was well, and bored, and hoping daily to settle his affairs and start for home. In any case he should have returned to California: he was surprised at her doubts. She was not to bother further about his affairs out there. He had telegraphed to the contractor that he could wait as long as the strikers. He added that he longed for California.

Isabel wondered if he had not dared to trust himself in a letter, finally concluded that this was the secret of the long telegram, dismissed her apprehensions, and, with a soothed but by no means tranquil imagination, yielded herself up again to dreams and the spring.

VIII

It was close upon the middle of April when Gwynne left the train a mile from Lumalitas, and, being unheralded, walked across the fields to his house. He had intended to get off at Rosewater, hire the fastest horse in town, and ride out to Old Inn; but he had been seized with doubt and diffidence, and while he was still turning hot and cold the train moved out of the station. It was now nearly ten weeks since he had seen Isabel, and during that time he had received one letter from her. This letter he had read and reread until its contents were meaningless; and he was still in doubt as to what might lurk between the lines. He was reasonably sure that he had forced her to write, but whether mere pique and curiosity had been his aides, he was far from being able to determine. She had been right in assuming that he dared not trust himself to the tempting privacy of the letter. He had no idea how he stood, and would not run the risk of making a fool of himself; not until he was face to face with her could he pretend to decide upon any course of action. But he had been tormented for ten weeks as he had never expected to be tormented by any woman. Although he still assured himself that he intended to marry her, the riot in his mind and blood bred distrust of himself and evoked terrible images of Isabel at the altar with another. He should hate to the day of his death the beautiful old town of Santa Barbara, where he had been without any sort of refuge from his thoughts; and in Washington, although he had managed to occupy his mind and time profitably, there were still hours which he must spend alone, and he had dreaded them.

And he was beset by other doubts than those of the mere lover. He was conscious that in these weeks of absence and longing, he had idealized Isabel, until the being he dwelt with in fancy was more goddess than woman. He knew many sides of her, but much had eluded him, even after he began to study her. That she was gifted in large measure with what the Americans so aptly termed cussedness he had good reason to know; and whether this very definite characteristic so far controlled her nature as to hold her nobler qualities in durance----or were there nobler qualities? She had brain and common-sense; both attributes had compelled his respect long since. And she had character and pride--loyalty and independence. He had had glimpses of what he would unhesitatingly have accepted as heart and passion had he not known himself to be dazzled by her beauty and wilful powers of fascination. That she was wholly feminine, at least, he was convinced; she was too often absurdly so to keep up, with any one that saw her constantly, the fiction of the sexless philosopher. The very devil in her was of the unmistakable feminine kidney. All this gave him hope, and he knew, that when caprice permitted, she would be unrivalled as a companion. Intellectually, at least, there was no thought of his she could not share and appreciate; and her sense of humor and her feminine perversities would always delight him. If only there were depths beneath. The longings of the spirit are always formless, vaguely worded, a little shamefaced. Gwynne hardly knew what was the great extreme he wanted in his wife, but he knew that if he did not find it he should be miserable. He was by no means the young man that had fallen blindly in love with Julia Kaye. He had had little time for introspection, for intimate knowledge of himself, in those days.

The spring was invented to remind men what mere mortals they are. Gwynne would have felt restless and disinclined for law and politics this morning had he never seen Isabel Otis. Every lark in the great valley was singing madly. Blue birds, yellow birds, sat on the fences and carolled at each other as if the world were always May. The very earth seemed to have sprouted into color. He had never imagined wild flowers by the billion, nor such a harmonious variety of color. The fields were green, the cherries, black and red and white, glistening and luscious, were ready for picking in his orchards. As he approached his house, he saw that all the white oaks, bare in winter, were in leaf; large soft young green leaves, that almost hid the pendent sad green moss. The air was warm and light, the sky so blue it seemed to laugh with a promise of eternal good things. The whole land breathed hope, and youth, and allurement to every delight, of which she alone possessed the store. He was soon to learn what a liar she was, but although it was many a long day before he took note of any phase of nature again, save her weather, he had an elusive presentiment that he should never cease to be grateful for that moment of quick unreasoning exultation in his youth and manhood, and in the mere joy of life.

He was not surprised, as he turned the corner of the veranda, to find Imura Kisaburo Hinamoto sitting with his feet on the railing, a cigarette in his mouth, and a volume, issued by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, on his knee. But as the servant saw the master he rose promptly to his feet, extinguished the cigarette with his fingers, and stood in an attitude of extreme respect. He even smiled, but not propitiatingly; it was almost patent that the return of his chance superior was welcome.

Gwynne nodded. "Glad to see that you still improve your mind," he observed. "Tell Carlos to hitch up and go for my luggage: I left it at the station." He looked at his watch. It was half-past eleven. He hesitated a moment, then decided to postpone his visit to Isabel again. He did not feel in the mood to sit down and eat with her. "My horse at two o'clock," he added. And the Jap disappeared.

Gwynne went into the kitchen, and Mariana, who was peeling onions for an _olla podrida_, screamed and embraced him.

"No could help," she said, philosophically. "Very glad, señor, very glad."

Gwynne was not in the humor to repulse anybody, and assured her that she really made him feel that he had returned to his home. Several of her tribe were in the kitchen and looked expectant. He informed them that he had a box of New York sweets in his trunk, and retreated.

On the veranda he sat down facing his mountain, which like the rest of the world was a mass of delicate color, where it was not merely green, and seemed to move gently under the pink shimmering haze. Beyond was the blue crouching mass of the old volcano. "The eternal hills" was a phrase that never occurred to him when he watched these mountains, always veiled under a colored and moving haze. They looked far more likely to pull up their feet and walk off. But Gwynne, although the border beneath his veranda was full of sweet scents, and the roses on the pillars hung about him, and the air was a soft caressing tide, was no longer concerned with nature. He was nervous and full of doubt, of uneasy anticipation that he would not appear to advantage at three o'clock that afternoon. He knew that if he were really panic-stricken and attempted to carry it off in the masterful manner, she would laugh in his face. If he could work himself up to the attitude, well and good. At the same time he was vaguely conscious that this period of alternate hope and fear, of cold fits and hot, would one day be sweet in the retrospect, and regretted with some sadness; an episode in the lover's progress gone beyond recall.

There was a sound of wheels on the county road, then on his own property. He wondered at the unusual dispatch of his Carlos, but realized in a moment that a buggy was approaching, not a wagon. Then there was a light slouching step on the veranda, and he rose to greet Tom Colton.

"By Jove, old chap, I'm glad to see you," he began, and thankful that he had written his condolences; but he paused abruptly. Colton ignored the outstretched hand.

"So you've got your passport?" he said. And his ingenuous blue eyes were full of a hard antagonism.

"Yes," said Gwynne. "I should have told you in a day or two. How did you find out?" he added, curiously. "I took my oath before the passport clerk in the innermost recess of the State Department."

"There's not much I don't find out. Only, I got wind of this a little too late. So did some others, or you might have hung round Washington for the next four years. Do you call it square not to have told me of this before you left?"

"I saw no obligation to take you into my confidence. In the first place the result of my pilgrimage was very doubtful, and in the second you would have done all you could to balk me. When have I given you reason to write me down an ass?"

"You are too damned clever," muttered Colton. "Too clever by half. Much better for you if you had stayed where you were. You had no enemies when you left, but now, let me tell you, you've got a bunch that it will take more than your cleverness to handle."

"They can do their worst. I thought that all I needed was hard work, but I fancy that what I missed most was the stimulus of enemies."

"Well, you've got it all right."

Somewhat to the host's surprise he suddenly seated himself and tipped back his chair. Gwynne remained standing, leaning against a pillar, his hands in his pockets. Colton surveyed him frankly. His eyes were still hard and he was very angry, but he saw no reason why he should be uncomfortable, and although he could disguise his feelings when he chose, he knew that here it was safe to allow himself the luxury of frankness. He was the more annoyed, as what friendship he was capable of he had given to Gwynne. That would not have stayed hand or foot a moment, were his path in the least obstructed, but he regretted that they had come to an issue so early in the game. Indeed, he had hoped to manipulate Gwynne's destinies so subtly that they would be politically bound for life, with himself always a length ahead. It was true that once or twice he had felt a misgiving that the Englishman, with all his aristocratic disdain for devious ways, might match him and win, but the shock of this early outwitting had been none the less severe.

"Did you have a hard time getting it?" he demanded.

"Rather. Never heard so much palaver in my life."

"Well, I wish there had been more. I think I have at least the right to ask what you intend to do next."

"Return to Judge Leslie's office to-morrow--for the matter of that, I have read a good deal since I left. In September I shall have been a year in the State, and of course I can vote. I am not so sure that I shall."

"Yes! That is all, I suppose?"

"For the present. You are too good a politician to fancy that American citizenship has invested me with a halo. Except to a hundred odd farmers, Rosewater, a small group in San Francisco, and a party boss or two, I am unknown. No doubt I shall be several years achieving sufficient prominence either to run for office, or to accomplish anything whatever--outside of Rosewater. So far as I can see, this immediate citizenship has effected two results only: I am now in a position to take advantage of any political change that may develop, instead of sowing for another to reap--and--"

He hesitated, and Colton shot him a keen glance. "It has made a change in you, I guess. I noticed that the minute I laid eyes on you. If anything was needed to make me madder, it was that."

"Yes--I am changed. That is to say, I am poised. In spite of the determination to absorb Americanism with every pore, there was always the lurking doubt that it wouldn't do; that some day I should make a bolt for England. Now the matter is settled forever. I not only am an American but always have been. The highest legal opinion in the country was called in, and that was what finally decided the question. I accepted it as literally as the others did, and in so doing I relegated my English life to the episodical backwaters: among my adventures in India and Africa. I fancy that if England came to a death struggle in my time, and every man counted, I should fight for her. I certainly never should fight against her. But it is a profound relief to me that I am not throwing her over, that we have no legitimate right to each other. I fancy that that, too, demoralized me a bit."

"How did you feel when you took that oath?" asked Colton, more and more curious, almost forgetting his grievance. "It's a kind of solemn oath. I've had a sort of chill when I've heard it taken once or twice."

"There could hardly be a more solemn oath. I don't know that it gave me a chill, but I certainly read it over several times before I took it. And I took it without any reservations."

"Did you feel an American the moment you took it?"

"Yes--I did. That is to say I felt a certain buoyancy. The die was cast. There could be no more hesitation and doubt. My new life had actually begun."

"It's begun, all right. Jiminy, but you'll have a tough time. They're onto you now. You haven't the ghost of a chance to make a move they won't see before your hand is off the board."

Gwynne replied with even more than his usual fluency.

"Yes," replied Colton, with a sigh. "I guess that's where we'll all bring up. But meanwhile? Are you going to throw me over?"

"It will depend upon yourself. I have no objection to confide to you such plans as I have been able to formulate. Judge Leslie advised me to play about in society, in Washington, but I was in no humor for anything of the sort. I had uncommon opportunities to study men and conditions, and I took full advantage of them. I doubt if I shall vote until the next Presidential election. Then, if an independent party of consequence has not been formed, and I see no prospect of working up one in this State, I shall vote the Democratic ticket. As things stand at present, it is the less of two evils, and would at least accomplish a reduction of the tariff, and something towards a redistribution of wealth. I haven't the least doubt that the Democrats, if they get in--unless they have a really good man up their sleeve--will abuse their power quite as much as the Republicans have done; but that will take some time; and meanwhile a new party is sure to grow up, for the best men in the country are thoroughly roused. There's no doubt on that point--and it is a point you would do well to remember. There have been chapters before in the world's history when right has paid."

"For a while," said Colton, dubiously. "The point is now that you are likely to join the Democrats."

"To vote with them. Theirs are the soundest principles. I stick to that point."

"I don't question it. I only wish elections weren't two years off; I'd like to get to work." He took a bag of peanuts from his pocket and began to munch thoughtfully. "But you are turning me off. What do you mean exactly?"

"I shall have nothing to do with the machine. I shall speak and make propaganda, that is all. My object is not so much to get the Democrats in as the Republicans out. I shall do nothing to split the Democratic party--and play a losing game--unless a really great movement should rise, gather strength, and sweep the country. It is on the cards that there will be such a movement, and I throw myself into it the moment I am persuaded the split will not work to the advantage of the Republicans."

"How much enthusiasm have you pumped up?"

"Enthusiasm!" Gwynne's eyes roved over his "fair domain." Isabel, at least, was not far from its borders! "I cannot say that I am at boiling-point, but I don't fancy that matters much. I have my work cut out and I shall do it. Perhaps I shall work more disinterestedly without enthusiasm. Certainly I shall be more clear-sighted. If ever there was a time in the history of a country to sink individual ambition, it is now."

"Gwynne!" said Colton, abruptly. "What in thunder does it all amount to, anyhow? What difference does it make--will it make a thousand years hence--that you and I are sitting here on the very edge of creation, solemnly discussing the rottenest subject of our little time--American politics? What's the use of the socialists frothing, and nations trying to overturn one another? I had rather die on the spot than that the United States should be conquered for five minutes by Japan or any other Asiatic power, although I could endure the victory of a people that I recognized as our equals. Why are instincts planted so strongly? There may be a reason for a few years; but that's just it, a few mean little years and it is all over. What difference does anything really make, so long as we are comfortable? Everything else, every other instinct, is artificial. My wife is a religious little body and believes in reward and punishment hereafter, that we must spend at least a certain part of our time in this life preparing for the next. I'd like to believe the same, not only to please her, but because I could look forward to meeting my child again; but, somehow, I can't. The present has always been about as much as I could tackle. And I fancy that when I'm through with it, I won't want any more. But although the present whirls so fast that I don't have time for the sort of thinking intellectual people like you and Isabel do, still it does sometimes dash across my mind--that question: 'What is it all for? And why do we sweat through life for what amounts to exactly nothing in the end?'"

"You cannot be sure it amounts to nothing. Sometimes I have the fancy that the entire round globe has just one inhabitant, of which we merely appear to be individual manifestations: that we are, in fact, a part of the earth herself, and she absorbs and casts us forth again, as she rushes along to her own destiny as sentient as ourselves. All the planets are alive in the same way, and they are all racing to see which will make the greatest showing on what we call down here the Judgment Day--that is to say, which shall have produced the most balanced and perfected being; which shall have whirled away the most original sin and sifted out a man, great and good without self-righteousness--to my mind the worst of mortal failings because its correlative, injustice, is the source of most of the unhappiness. That will be the millennium, and having no windmills and evils left to fight, we minute visibilities will welcome deindividualization. Then, no doubt, there will be a grand final battle between the great body of good thus formed, and the evil cast out, but roaming space and joining forces. If we do our best here we shall win, and be happy ever after. There is no question, that if you follow your higher instincts you are happier in the long run than if you fall a slave to your base and mean; and that, to my mind, is the proof that the highest instincts are meant to be followed to some greater end."

"Hm. I have heard a good many theories, first and last, and that sounds as plausible as any."

"All this is very casually related to American politics, except that we had better clean up when the opportunity is vouchsafed us; for nothing degrades human nature nor retards civilization so much as politics gone altogether wrong. As far as you are concerned, although it was understood that the compact was to end with my citizenship, I have no thought of ending it unless the conditions I hope for shall crystallize meanwhile. If it seems best to keep the Democratic party unsplit I shall do your canvassing and speaking, for it will make me known, and give me the opportunity to inculcate the principles I purpose to advocate. If you ignore them when you are in office, so much the worse for you, and better for me; for, as I have told you more than once, the moment I am in power I shall devote my energies to pulling you and your like down and out. But I should advise you to join the third party if it arises."

"No doubt I might, if it were strong enough," said Colton, frankly. "I don't propose to play any losing game, and if the Democratic party goes by the board, T. R. Colton doesn't follow. And if a third party came in to stay it would have to have a boss--"

"Not your sort."

"Oh, well, time enough." Colton's ill-humor was now somnolent under some two pounds of peanuts. He rose and shook hands with Gwynne. "Glad to see you looking so well--you're some heavier than when you came to California, by-the-way, and it suits you first rate. Be sure you call on my wife the first time you come to town."

He declined Gwynne's invitation to dinner, and drove off, looking slothful and amiable once more. But what went on behind that mask, within that long ill-built cranium, Gwynne had never pretended to guess. Nor, to-day, did he care.

* * * * *

At three o'clock he gave his horse to Abe, was told that the lady of the manor was out walking, and went into the house. He had a fancy to meet her again in the room that harbored the sweetest of his California memories. It was dark and cool. Only one window, looking upon the garden, was open. Beside it was a comfortable chair which he took possession of and looked out into the wild old garden so different from the excessively cultivated plots of Rosewater and his own meagre strips. There was no veranda on this side of the house, and the great acacia-tree, with its weight of fragrant gold, was but a few feet from the window. The entire garden was enclosed by a hedge of the Castilian roses of which he had heard so much, rare as they now were in California. The dull green leaves and tight little buds could hardly be seen for the mass of wide fluted roses of a deep old-fashioned pink. And there were large irregular borders covered with the luxuriant green and the blue stars of the periwinkle, beds of marguerites and violets, bushes of lilac and honeysuckles, roses and jasmine. The blended perfumes were overpowering, however delicious; Gwynne had sat up half the night before talking to his mother after a long hot journey; he fell asleep.

Perhaps it was his late conversation, perhaps something more subtle, but he felt himself transported to a void. In a moment he realized that the void was not space as he knew it, but rigid invisible substance. He slipped along through rocky strata, hearing strange echoes and inhaling the disagreeable odors of healing waters. Suddenly he found himself in a vast hollowed space, empty but for many pillars. His vision grew keener. In the very centre of the hall he saw two pillars of a colossal size, and standing between them a being almost as large. This unthinkable giant had an arm about each pillar and strained as Samson had strained at the pillars of the temple. Then a new and powerful force drew him upward once more, and he awoke.

He turned his head towards the dim interior of the room and for a dazed moment thought that he beheld Spring herself. She wore white and had dropped a mass of wild flowers at her feet; she looked as if rising out of them. Her hat was covered with poppies and wild azalea, and she had a sheaf of buttercups and "blue eyes" in her belt.

"I haven't changed my ideas one bit," she said, with a shrug, as Gwynne rose and came towards her. "But I can't help it!"

IX

Isabel rose as usual at five, but, instead of dressing at once, stood at her window idly and looked out over the marsh. Thirteen hours before she had made a decision on the instant, or so it seemed to her, and in that instant changed her life so completely that she was still a little dizzy, and the future as yet had taken on no coherent form. She had even told Gwynne she was positive she could _stand_ him for ever, and this, with her varied if incomplete knowledge of his sex, she took to be even more significant and hopeful than the uncompromising sense of loving him. No doubt there would be many interesting battles before two such developed personalities became more or less one, but at least he had none of the petty and selfish and altogether detestable qualities of her father, her uncle, and Lyster Stone; and he was entirely human. And he was young and she was young. It all seemed very wonderful; wonderful to be so happy, and yet to feel that she had relinquished nothing, or at least not the tenth of what she would have lost if she had married Prestage--or any other man. If she had not met Gwynne she knew that she never should have married at all, and, not having had the best within her ken, been happy enough.

And yet she was a little sad, and it was by no means the gentle melancholy of reaction. She had reason, and felt a disposition to box her own ears. She knew that Gwynne, triumphant and happy as he was, had ridden away vaguely dissatisfied. He had turned and given her a keen questioning glance as he mounted, and had not turned again. She had laughed, and waved her hand, and felt a new desire to tantalize him.

She had abandoned herself to sheer happiness the day before, to the mere pagan delight in an ardent lover come in her own ardent youth, to the sense of an unbroken circle of companionship, and to so wild a triumph in having brought Gwynne to her feet, made him quite mad about her, that she had fairly danced about the room, and tormented him as far as she dared.

This was Wednesday. They were to be married on Saturday, that Lady Victoria, who was leaving for England in the evening, might nod them a blessing. Then, no doubt, Gwynne would have his way in most things, and she already felt the stirrings of mere female ductility. But meanwhile she should exercise and enjoy her own power to the full. And she had good reason to believe that no woman had ever been more charming, distracting, provocative. If Gwynne had been in love when he came, he had kissed her very feet when he left, and had been as bewitched as anyone so clear-brained could be. Moreover, she had promised him everything he wished, agreed without demur to the hasty marriage, and even, when he asked her whether she would prefer to live in her house or his, had sweetly left it to him to decide. They were to spend the honeymoon in the house on Russian Hill. She was incapable of looking beyond that. There had been at least twenty bewildering hints that when his time came one rein, at least, should be his--in all matters of great moment, two--and although no doubt she would break away very often, what more delightful than to recapture and subdue? What more could a man want than the most fascinating woman in the world, whom only his own passion could shock from mere existence into the fulness of life? But Gwynne, in the depths of his swimming brain, had wanted something more, and Isabel knew that if he had slept as ill as herself, the doubt had more than once assailed him if she were anything more than a charming beautiful and clever creature, save perverse and egotistical; who would keep him distractedly in love with her, but leave the best part of him unsatisfied.

Her perversity had gone with him, and during a more or less wakeful night she had repented, and even wept at the thought that something might occur to exterminate him before ten o'clock on the following morning--when they were to meet again--and he would depart unconsoled by the knowledge that it was the greater needs in his own nature that had called to hers. At least she hoped this was so, and, in an excess of humility, wondered if she really had enough to give--the power to insure their complete happiness. She had lived in a sort of fool's paradise, and no doubt imagined herself a far more rounded being than she was. Well, she could grow, and finally she had curled down into her pillow and fallen asleep.

This morning she was rather tired, and although still repentant, suspicious that when he returned her femininity would fly up with her spirits, and she would be more than content to fascinate and bewilder him. Like all women in love and fumbling blindly through the outer mysteries, she was eagerly psychological, discovering once for all her sex and herself.

Her eyes had been fixed dreamily upon Tamalpais, but suddenly they were drawn irresistibly upward by the pricking consciousness of something strange. It was a moment before she realized that she had never seen a sky just like that before. Her back was to the east, and although the sun was rising it was still low; at this stage of the dawn the sky was generally gray. This morning it was a ghastly electric blue. And then, while her eyes were still staring, and something in her brain moving towards expression, she heard a noise that sounded like the roar of artillery charging across the world. She fancied it rushing through the Golden Gate and up the bays and marsh, before it hurled itself with a vicious and personal violence against the wall beneath her window. She braced herself against the sash as the house shook in the strongest earthquake she had ever felt. It appeared to be brief, however, and she was turning away to dress herself, when it commenced again with a fury and violence of which she had never dreamed the modern earth to be capable. She threw herself on her knees the better to grip the window-ledge, but her only sensations were surprise and an intense expectation. Electric flames, as blue and ghastly as the reeling sky, were playing all over the marsh, she saw the long bare line of Tamalpais charge down and up like a colossal seesaw; and in that terrific plunging and dancing, that abrupt leaping from one point of the compass to the opposite, or towards all at once, that hysterical shaking and struggling as if two planets had rushed from their orbits and were fighting for life in midspace, Isabel expected the entire globe to stand on end, and was convinced that the finish of California, at least, had come. She had read of earthquakes that lasted for hours, and even days, and no doubt this one was merely getting up steam, for it increased in violence and momentum every second. The house rattled like a big dice-box. She expected it to leap down the slope into the shivering marsh. Pieces of rock fell down the face of the cliff opposite, but so great was the roar of the earthquake, so close the sound of creaking and straining timbers, of falling chimneys, and china, and even plaster, that she could not hear the impact as they struck the ground and bounded high in air.

Then, there was a bulge of the earth upward, a twist that seemed to wrench the house from its foundations, and the earthquake ceased as suddenly as it had come. Isabel waited a few moments for it to return, incredulous that the mighty forces beneath could compose themselves so abruptly; then rose and began to dress herself.

Human blades of a fine temper meet a sudden and terrific onslaught of Nature in one of two spirits: utter cowardice, or an attitude of impersonal curiosity. It is not a matter of heroism but of nerves. The bravest may become abject, if their will has been weakened by some drain on the nervous system; others, that would run from a mouse or prove unequal to the long-heralded danger, rise, in the intense concentrated excitement and surprise of the moment, to a state of absolute and even cynical indifference. One of the unwritten laws that has descended from father to son in California is that an earthquake, no matter how severe, is a mere joke, and should incite prompt and facetious comment. Isabel being both heroic and hardy, paid the California tradition the tribute of a smile and a shrug, and regretted that she had not been in San Francisco; she "liked being in the midst of things." Sentiment, psychology, egoism, had literally been bounced out of her. She knew that Gwynne might easily have been killed, but although she intended to find out in the least possible time, to feel merely human in the face of such a stupendous exhibition of what nature could do when she chose, was a descent of which she, at least, felt herself incapable.

She hurried on her riding-clothes, dropped her braid under her jacket, and ran down the stairs. Chuma, trim and spotless, was sweeping the hall, white with fallen plaster. He gave her his usual good-morning grin and went on with his work. She paused and regarded him curiously.

"What do you think of our earthquakes?" she demanded.

"Oh, very big shake," he said, cheerfully. "Very big shake."

Vaguely nettled she took her hat from the rack and went out by the back way. Mac had knocked on her door immediately after the earthquake, and was now with Abe in the colony on the hills. He came running down when he saw her, and it was patent that his rheumatism, for once, was forgotten. His old red face with its prominent bones set in thick sandy gray hair was more animated than Isabel had ever seen it.

"Glory be!" he exclaimed, as he reached her. "That was about the worst! I was just tellin' Abe that I felt the great earthquake of '68 in this very house, in that very room, by gum, although I was up and dressed, for it was eight o'clock, and I'd gone back for my pipe. So, I know what I'm talkin' about, Miss Isabel, when I say that this was about four times as bad--"

"Please saddle my horse."

"Yes, marm. Wisht I could have got out of bed. I'd like to have seen if the earth rose and fell in a long wave like the shake of '68. Land's sakes, but those chickens did squawk." And although he saddled Kaiser rapidly, he never paused in his reminiscence of the last Northern California earthquake to pass into history. "But this one! By Jiminy! Well, I guess we take the cake in everything out here, earthquakes included."

Isabel patted the still shaking horse. "Get the launch ready," she said, as she mounted; and Mac nodded. It was characteristic that neither thought of the danger of sudden shoals, of the always possible tidal wave, or of some new and diabolical trick of nature. The nerves were still keyed too high for anything so shabby as prudence.

Kaiser, no doubt glad to put himself into motion, bounded forward as his mistress lifted the bridle, and although Isabel did give an occasional glance ahead, to make sure the earth was not yawning, she never drew rein, and the horse galloped with all his might towards Rosewater. As the marsh narrowed she saw that the town was still there, and that there were no fires. As she approached the great iron bridge that connected Rosewater with the continuation of the county road, a horseman entered at its other end and galloped across, regardless of the law or a graver danger still. The next moment Isabel and Gwynne had shaken hands casually, and were riding towards Old Inn.

His eyes were shining and almost black. "I saw the mountains rock!" he exclaimed. "Rock? Dance. Then I thought they would plunge down into the earth and disappear. And St. Peter is flat. All the business district, including the four hotels, are down, and everybody in them buried in the ruins. A man dashed up as I was mounting, and I told all the men on the place to go to the rescue. The news came just in time to prevent the murder of Imura by Carlos, for not admitting that we had had the greatest earthquake in the history of the world. It was the first symptom of patriotic fire I ever saw in Imura, but he stoutly maintained that in the matter of earthquakes Japan could do as well as California."

"That is all very well, but I have read a lot about Japanese earthquakes, and never of such an _extraordinary_ one as this. Has anything terrible happened in Rosewater?"

"I saw a few chimneys down, but no buildings except the old brick school-house. Mrs. Haight was sitting on the curb-stone in her night-gown, wailing like a banshee, but although all the rest of the town appeared to be in the streets, and similarly attired, they were quiet enough. As I passed the cemetery I gave it a hasty side glance, half-afraid of what I might see. All the monuments are down and pointing in every direction. What gyrations! Do you suppose they've had it in San Francisco?"

"Do I suppose--much you know about our earthquakes! San Francisco always gets the worst of it, or seems to, there is so much more to shake. Your mother is probably in hysterics, although up on the hills one is safe enough. It is the sandy valley and the made ground down by the ferries--up to Montgomery Street, in fact--that get the worst of it. I have ordered the launch."

"Good. I wish my mother had gone east from El Paso, as she had half a mind to do. But she wanted to see her doctor again. I am afraid she won't look at this as we do. I never was so interested in my life. Was sure we were going to smash, but that it was worth while in anything so stupendous. I suppose it is too early to telephone."

Isabel pointed to the wires. They were sagging, and two of the telegraph poles were down. "Doubtless the tracks are twisted, too. We are fortunate to have the launch."

X

Mac, so swollen with the prideful experience which enabled him to compare two great earthquakes, and his accumulations of practical data bearing thereon, appeared ten years younger, and, as Gwynne and Isabel rode up, was lording it over his fellow-hirelings. He had forbidden Chuma to make a fire in the kitchen stove until the chimney, what was left of it, had been repaired, directed him to bring down-stairs the oil-stove Isabel had bought for the old rheumatic's comfort, and cook breakfast upon it. As even the stovepipe in the out-building, used for preparing the elaborate repasts of the Leghorn, was twisted, Abe had been ordered to drag the great stove into the open, build a screen about it, and "do the best he could, and be thankful he was alive." Poor Abe, who had not been extant in 1868, and had even missed the considerable earthquakes of the Nineties, was in a somewhat demoralized state, and wondering audibly what people supposed he cared about chickens, anyhow.

Isabel and Gwynne sat down in the dining-room and ate their breakfast--on fragments--calmly and methodically, talking constantly of the earthquake, it is true, but instinct with that curious casuistry that a certain safety lay in following the ordinary routine of life; perhaps--who knows?--so great is the egoism of the human spirit--that the unswerving march of man in his groove might restore the balance of nature.

After breakfast Isabel went up to her room and dressed hastily and mechanically in a short walking-suit, as mechanically expecting the same earthquake to return to the spot associated with it. Gwynne wore his khaki riding-clothes, but it was doubtful if any one would be critical in San Francisco that morning. Nothing, as it happened, could have suited his purpose better, and it was long before he took them off.

When the launch was under way Isabel told Gwynne of the blue flames that had danced over the marsh during the convulsion. "If electricity is not a cause of earthquakes, it certainly is let loose by them," she added. "I expected every moment that we would blow up and fly off into space."

"I saw something of the same sort on the hills, and expected to see St. Helena spout flames."

In a few moments they were sensible that the constant artificial vibration of the boat was the most grateful sensation they had ever known, and of the wish that they could leave it only for a train, to be transferred at the end of a long journey to another train, and still another. But these sentiments were not exchanged, and their conversation was purely extrinsic. Here and there along the shore an old shanty lay on its side, or had tumbled forward to its knees; but for the most part dilapidated chimneys and fallen poles were the only visible symbols of the tumult beneath the smiling beautiful earth. Never had Earth looked so green, so velvety, its flowers so gay and voluptuous. Even the sky, now its normal deep blue, had this same velvety quality, the very atmosphere seemed to breathe the same rich satisfaction. But no birds were singing, and there was nothing normal in the groups of people, gathered wherever there were habitations: they wore bath-robes, blankets, overcoats, anything, apparently, they had found at hand, and had not re-entered their treacherous habitations. No trains were running, but the drawbridge that separated the marsh from San Pablo Bay opened as usual.

Gwynne steered the launch, and his conversation and Isabel's drifted to speculations as to what had happened in the city.

"Thank heaven I had the foundations of that old house replaced," she said, "or I am afraid your mother would have shot right down to the Hofers' doorstep. I am fairly at ease about The Otis, for in spite of the old drifting sand-lots that district is built on, its foundations go down to bed-rock, and thanks to the strikers there is nothing to fall off the steel frame. But I am rather worried about the islands. San Francisco Bay is supposed to have been a valley some two hundred years ago, and if it dropped once it might again. Those islands are only hilltops."

The islands, however, looked as serene as the rest of nature, although most of the chimneys were fallen or twisted, and there were the same groups of people in the open, awaiting another throe. These, however, had had time to recover their balance and clothe themselves. The launch, which had a new engine, had been driven at top speed, and it was not yet seven o'clock, barely the beginning of day to these luxurious people, but a day that would doubtless be remembered as the longest of their lives. On the military islands, routine, apparently, had received no dislocation, and on the steep romantic slopes of Belvedere the villas might have sunken their talons to the very vitals of the rock. The most precariously perched had paid no toll but the chimney.

As the launch bounded past the long eastern side of Angel Island, Gwynne contracted his eyelids. "Have you noticed that black cloud over the city?" he asked. "At first it did not strike me particularly--but--it looks as if there might be a big fire."

Isabel, who faced him, turned her head. "There are always fires in San Francisco after an earthquake," she said, indifferently. "And about seven a day at any time. There are none on the hills, so your mother is not having a second fright. Poor thing! I am afraid she is terribly upset. I wish she had gone."

She sat about, to observe the city more critically. Already its sky-line was changed, for every chimney, smokestack, and steeple, commonly visible, was shattered or down. The smoke cloud, which looked like a great ostrich plume bent at the tip, was as stationary as the hills, and had a confident permanent air that they would lack for some time. And fixed as it was it seemed to grow larger.

"Steer to the east of Alcatraz," said Isabel, suddenly; "and towards Yerba Buena. I should like to see where the fires are."

When the launch was well off the point of Telegraph Hill, they saw several large fires on the western side of East Street, the wide roadway that divided the city from the water-front and Ferry Building. Far down, in the South of Market Street district there appeared to be other large fires.

"Warehouses, probably," said Isabel. "What a sight!" She indicated the collapsed sheds about the moles, and the twisted and toppling appearance of the tower on the Ferry Building, which stood on the edge of the made ground. It was an immense structure of great weight, and only an uncommon honesty--and vigilance--in building had saved it from destruction. Had the piles been hollow, or too short to reach bed-rock, it would either have sunken or tumbled.

And then they noticed that the bay was silent and deserted. It was a moment before they realized that of the several lines of ferry-boats none appeared to be running. "That means that the tracks are out of working order," said Isabel, grimly. "We may have had the best of it, bad as it was. Ah!" One of the Oakland ferry-boats pushed out of its San Francisco mole. It was black with people. Isabel stared with wonder. "It looks as if people were running away from the city. Or perhaps a good many that live across the bay came over on the same mission as ourselves, and have been turned back. That would mean that all East Street was on fire and they could not get into the city. Well, let us hurry. Even although the fires are so far off they may terrify your mother. I remember she told me once in England that she had never seen a fire. I have a queer sensation in my knees."

Gwynne laughed. "I should think you might be used to fires by this time. And you have a celebrated fire department. I fancy you are just feeling the reaction."

"I was not a bit frightened during the earthquake!" said Isabel, indignantly. "But there is nothing _phenomenal_ in fire to brace one up--and those had a sinister determined look--and that boat-load of people! I only hope your mother has not run away--under the impression that San Francisco alone was shaken. We wouldn't find her for a week."

"My mother's nerves are not what they were, but I am positive she will not run. She is certain to wait for us at the house."

A few moments later they ran the launch up to the landing at the foot of Russian Hill. There were a few tumbled shanties on the slope, but none of the well-built houses had been dislodged, and the great buildings on this water-front were in good condition. Mr. Clatt was not visible, but left his cottage at Isabel's call, and gave them something more than his usual surly greeting.

"Glad to see you are all right," he said. "Been expectin' you. Jest stepped in to git my pipe."

"Much damage done?" asked Gwynne.

"Considerable, but I guess the shake'll take a back seat. City's on fire."

"There are always fires after earthquakes," said Isabel, angrily.

"City's on fire. Thirty broke out s'multaneous. Water main's bust. Chief of Fire Department killed in his bed, or as good as killed. There's plenty left to fight the fire but nothin' to fight it with. Guess the old town'll go up in smoke this time."

"My knees feel rather weak, too," said Gwynne. He turned to the wharfinger, who was pulling leisurely at his pipe. "We--my mother and Miss Otis, at least, may need this launch to leave the city with," he said. "Can I rely on you? You shall have a hundred dollars if you let no one steal it; and if the fire should reach this side, you are welcome to a refuge on my ranch."

"I'll see daylight through any one that looks at it," said Mr. Clatt. "This ain't no time to stand on ceremony. The army's called out already to help the police keep order--the lootin' was disgraceful for about an hour. Every rat tumbled out of his hole, and of course they went for the saloons. I'm well enough known along here to be let alone when I show my teeth. Your house is all right, miss."

This side of the hill was almost deserted; nearly every one seemed to be watching the fires from the crest; but occasionally Gwynne and Isabel passed a solitary person clinging to his possessions, or a small group; and invariably were greeted with the same remark: "City's on fire. Water mains were broken by the earthquake."

As they passed through the crowd on the hill-top, they received similar information, although many added confidently that "something would be done. The wind was sure to change to the west."

And so far, at least, the picture from the heights was by no means appalling. There were a number of fires in the south, and a wall of flame and smoke along the water-front near the Ferry Building. Had the earthquake spared the mains they would merely have been spectacular.

Gwynne and Isabel, as they made the slight descent to the Belmont House, saw two of their Japs sitting on the roof throwing down the bricks of the fallen chimneys. Then they turned the corner and found Lady Victoria, an opera-cloak thrown over her night-clothes, pacing up and down the veranda.

"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed. "I did not dare to wonder if you were dead or alive. Why did we ever come to this God-forsaken country?" She did not offer to embrace them, but her eyes were brilliant, and there was a color in her cheeks. And no one had ever heard her talk so fast. "Was it as dreadful with you? Did you get out of the house? I was awake when I heard that awful roar. Somehow, I knew what it meant, and before the earthquake was well begun I was out here. I never ran so fast in my life, although I was flung against the walls. And I almost wished I had stayed in the house. Such a sight! That awful reeling city! Just imagine thousands of buildings plunging, and leaping, and dancing, and toppling. Towers bowing to you so solemnly that I almost disgraced myself and had hysterics. And steeples pitching off, or huddling down like corpses. And that awful loud deep steady roar and crash of a thousand walls and chimneys falling. And the dust that seemed to swallow the city. For a moment I thought it had gone, and expected the hills to follow. Then it rose and everybody on earth seemed to be in those streets--and in white. They looked like Isabel's Leghorns. Such pigmies from up here. Pigmies! That is what we all are. And Angélique, the wretch, has run away."

"Well, she cannot go far, as all the railroads but one seem to be injured," said Gwynne, soothingly. "Better go in and dress and we'll walk down and take a look at things. That will divert your mind."

But it was not until Isabel had assured her that the worst force of an earth movement in California spent itself in the first great shock, and offered to help her dress, that Victoria could be persuaded to enter the house. Gwynne fetched Isabel's field-glass and studied the scene below, picking out the more disastrous work of the earthquake. All the new solid buildings, and most of the old, appeared to be unharmed, and the residence district, built of wood on stone foundations, for the most part, was much as usual, save for its altered sky-line: every chimney and skylight had disappeared. But tall slender factory chimneys had broken raggedly in half, and the great tower of the City Hall, standing high against the blue sky and advancing smoke, seemed to shriek like a man whose flesh had been torn off with hot pincers until only the shamed skeleton was left. Nothing but the steel cage that had supported the bricks remained: eloquent of the millions that a dishonest city government and its confederates had stolen.

Gwynne, as his eyes travelled more precisely, picked out more and more evidences of the power of the earthquake. Steeples were gone, walls fallen outward, roofs caved in, or yawning where a heavy chimney had gone through, old houses were on their knees, or had fallen into their cellars. Great cracks and rifts in walls and asphalt, fallen cornices and shattered windows detached themselves from the general picture of the half-ruined but oddly indifferent city. Almost immediately, through the smoke in the southeast, he had caught a glimpse of The Otis, an immense skeleton of steel, that had defied the earth, and offered nothing to the fire. But although he experienced a passing gratitude that he should lose nothing by the disaster, he forgot the incident in a moment: he felt wholly impersonal.

Everybody in the city, apparently, was out-of-doors. The squares were black with people, quiet crowds, it would seem, moving slowly where they moved at all. He saw mounted officers and parading soldiers, and groups of firemen standing impotently by their hose and engines. In the burning South of Market Street district rivers of people were pouring towards the great central highway, their arms and shoulders burdened; fleeing no doubt with their household goods. Then Gwynne began to study the fires, and it dawned upon him that he was looking down not upon a mere conflagration but a burning city. It was more than likely that the fires would not cross Market Street, and that those near the water-front would be extinguished by water pumped from the bay; but "South of Market Street" was a city in itself, and not only did he feel a certain pity for all those terrified black pigmies down there, but a pang for the extinction of a region so identified with the early history of San Francisco. Rincon Hill was obliterated by the smoke, but no doubt she would go; with all her pretty old-fashioned houses, so unlike the horrors on the plateau below him--and South Park with its tragic memories. Moreover, if all the factories and warehouses, and the blocks devoted to the wholesale business, were destroyed, the city would be poorer by many millions.

He shifted his glass away from the fires. More and more details arrested his eye. Inert forms were being carried out of houses where chimneys or skylights had gone through the roof. Automobiles were flying about, hundreds of them. Mounted orderlies were dashing at breakneck speed between the Presidio and the city. For a moment he wondered, then remembered that General Funston lived on Nob Hill. He inferred that the Mechanics' Fair Building, down in the western section of the valley, had been turned into a hospital, for automobiles were constantly dashing up and delivering limp and helpless burdens. The old Mission Church, Dolores, was unharmed, but not far away, and in that crowded district built upon the filled-in lake, or lagoon, of the Spanish era, he saw that a large building, doubtless a cheap and flimsy hotel, had sunken to its upper story, and that people were digging frantically about it. Every house in the immediate neighborhood had dropped into its cellar or lurched off its foundations. But it was all like some horrid picture by Doré: the smoky darkening atmosphere, the jets, the bouquets, the square masses of flame, each seeming to embrace a block if not more, the dark slowly rolling clouds not far overhead, the tides of humanity dwarfed by the distance, the broken dislocated houses, the great haughty defiant buildings, with the superb conflagration behind them.

One of the neighbors, who lived on the crest, returning from a reconnoitring expedition, paused and informed him that the mayor had been persuaded to call a meeting of the more prominent citizens, to decide, if possible, what might be done to save the city, and to keep the people from falling into a panic. Mr. Phelan, the "Reform Mayor"--of the city's last period of municipal decency--had suggested sending to the military islands for dynamite enough to blow up a wide zone beyond the fire; but property-owners were already protesting. Many felt sure the fire would not cross Market Street, others were as certain that the whole city would go. A corps of marines had been despatched from Mare Island immediately after the earthquake and would undoubtedly save the Ferry Building and the docks, but if the fire ran over from Market Street a few blocks higher up, nothing could save all that great business, shopping, and hotel district; to say nothing of Chinatown, and possibly these hills. All South of Market Street was in motion, making for the ferries or the bare western hills, the Presidio and Park; they must answer for many of the fires, as they had not given a thought to cracked chimneys when they wanted their breakfast; but of course crossed wires and the overhead trolley system were responsible for as many more. Then he advised Gwynne to order that all the bath-tubs in the house should be filled with what water was left in the pipes, and that a stock of provisions from the neighboring grocer and butcher should be laid in. "Personally I don't believe the fire will ever come as far as this," he said. "But there'll be a famine, no doubt of that. The wires are all down, scarcely a train is running, the country may be as hard hit as ourselves--and all that crowd down there to feed!"

Gwynne thanked him and replied that the launch was in waiting; but when the man had gone he called the Japs, gave them money, and ordered them to follow his neighbor's suggestion. He realized that he had no desire to leave this city where life was suddenly keyed to its highest pitch, and retire to the security and inaction of the country. Moreover, he recalled the promise he had given Hofer and his other friends on the night of the ball: this might be the emergency, and what services he could render should be given freely enough.

Lady Victoria and Isabel came forth, and they all made their way rapidly down to Nob Hill. The stair was more rickety than ever, and many of the older houses they passed looked badly shaken within, if not without--every door was open. The floors were covered with plaster; more often than not the furniture and ornaments, and even mantels, were massed in an indistinguishable heap. The Hofers' door, like the rest, was open, and they saw that the spiral marble stair was a pile of glittering splinters and that the pictures had been turned completely round or flung across the hall. Mrs. Hofer had been too eager to reign on Nob Hill to wait for a new foundation. Several of the servants were sitting on the steps, and informed Gwynne that all the family, including the children, had gone out in two automobiles an hour before, to see the city.

They walked down the hill, stopped many times by returning citizens anxious to impart information. The Italians on Telegraph Hill were mad with terror: "they were no Californians," in accents of bitter contempt. Portsmouth Square was full of Chinamen laughing at the women that had run there from the hotels without shoes on their feet, and only an opera or automobile cloak over their night-clothes. Even more amused were those Oriental philosophers at the white scared faces of the prisoners clinging to the bars of the jail. Nobody could tell how many people had been killed by falling roofs and walls, although the wildest stories were current, but so far there were more doctors and nurses attending to business than patients to care for. Down in the Mechanics' Fair Building, which had been converted into an emergency hospital, they were working as methodically, with book and pencil, as well as with bandage and instrument, as if earthquake and fire were a part of the daily routine. "Almost everybody was quiet, but there were sights down there, Oh, Lord, there were sights!" One man button-holed Gwynne, as he had button-holed others on his ascent, and informed him that he had "got down there" just in time to see two hundred and fifty thousand dollars go up in smoke. "Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and it has taken me twenty years to make it!" he reiterated, with an excited bitterness that was almost hilarious. He did not ask Gwynne if he had lost anything, but passed on to button-hole the next man and pour out his tale of individual protest; upon him the earthquake and fire had made a personal attack.

"How strange it seems to be in the midst of so much _life_--mere physical life," said Lady Victoria. "A whole city tense and helpless! I wonder that man could think of himself. We are all mere fragments of one great whole."

Her eyes were still restless and bright, her mask had fallen, and with it, curiously, many of her years. For a time, at least, the heavy burden of self had slipped from her tired spirit.

Few stood in the doorways, or even gardens; nearly every one not exploring the city was in the middle of the street. In the boarding-house district, half-way down the hill, the corners were crowded with people watching the fires, although as many more had gone to the heights to command a better view. Some were still dazed and white with terror, a few looked distraught; more than one man was as nervous as his wife. But the majority were calm, although they wore an expression of being ready for anything. A few, mindful of the California tradition, were joking and relating the absurdities of their experience. There was no question that the shock had been far greater in the city than in and about Rosewater, and both Isabel and Gwynne, to Lady Victoria's disgust, expressed a regret that they "had missed anything." But it was possible that the convulsion had been even worse elsewhere. St. Peter was built over a known fault, and San Francisco was not; and indeed news was already coming into the city of coast hamlets that had literally been torn to pieces. Other wild rumors were flying about. New York had disappeared. Chicago had been swept by a tidal wave. As the telegraph wires were all down no one attempted to account for these items of news, but so much had already happened that if the eastern hemisphere had dropped to the level of Atlantis, no one would have stared.

When they reached Union Square they found it so crowded that they hardly could make their way. Not only the guests of the St. Francis Hotel, that flanked it, had taken refuge in the open, but those of many other hotels. A few of the men were still in pyjamas, and of the women in dressing-gown or opera-cloak, caught up as they fled. But the majority had ventured back and dressed themselves, so that the "sights" were not what they may have been an hour earlier. But no one seemed to care for shelter; at all events they liked companionship in misery, although few besides the foreign members of the Grand Opera Company were voluble. Gwynne and Victoria and Isabel saw many of their acquaintance, not all recognizable at first, for even those that had returned to their rooms to dress themselves had taken little pains with their hair. One woman of great beauty, however, whose husband's hat surmounted her flowing locks, was just informing Isabel that she had reached that frame of mind where vanity was pressing apprehension to the wall, when there was an explosive sound, another as of rushing wings, the crowd stumbled against one another, and the large buildings about the square rocked. Again there was an exodus, and some clutching and gasping; but only a few of the refugees from the burning district, sitting on the furniture they had dragged with them, screamed. It was over in a few seconds, and then Gwynne pressed his women gently out of the crowd and down, through the tide of refugees, to Market Street. They walked in the middle of the street, for the sidewalks in this business district, where many of the buildings were of brick or stone, were littered with the débris of fallen cornice and shattered windows and chimneys. Market Street was kept open for automobiles, and the crossing refugees; the spectators stood on the edge of the northern pavement only, and in some cases on the top of bricks that represented an outer wall. A number of the refugees were marching towards the ferries, although a curtain of smoke bounded the lower end of Market Street. Others were moving stolidly towards the western hills. All were burdened with pillow-cases packed with clothing, or dragged trunks, cribs, baby-carriages, in which was a strange assortment of utensils, children, and household pets. The scrape, scrape of these unwieldy objects could be heard in a monotonous reiteration above the distant roar and crackling of the flames. Behind the tide of humanity rolling in from the burning district, at the end of every street, was a vista of flame and smoke. And the dark clouds were mounting higher and higher, lit with a million golden sparks. The temperature was tropical.

People were already beginning to talk in phrases: The doomed city. The fire zone. Razed to the ground. Brains were not active, and any one energetic enough to put a few expressive words together was sure of disciples. Here, more than elsewhere, it was apparent that the army was in possession of the city. Mounted officers rode slowly up and down, and at the mouth of each of those dusky and menacing avenues was a guard with drawn bayonets. They permitted the unfortunate to emerge, but few to enter. In spite of the audible energy of the fire, the slow tramp of the refugees, the scraping of their furniture on the ill-paved streets, the city was extraordinarily silent. People scarcely spoke above a mutter. There was no shouting of orders. Even the children were not whimpering, the tawdry women were not hysterical, not a parrot raised his voice nor a dog whined. Faces were dazed, blank, imprinted with a stolid determination to get to a place of safety and keep families and belongings together. The present moment was as much as they could grasp, and truth to tell there was a good deal in it.

Some of the sightseers speculated mildly--those that owned no property in this district--as to what would happen if the wind drove the fire much farther north. The opposite side of the street was lined with some of the greatest business houses in the city. The Palace Hotel looked like the rock of Gibraltar. Not a vase in its court had been overturned, some one said. The other buildings were of stone, brick, concrete. They had stood the earthquake; even the great square tower of the Call Building, unsupported by other buildings, had barely lost a cornice. Was it possible that the fire would take them? But the fire was rolling nearer every moment, for it met little to resist it but wood. Down by East Street several of the Market Street buildings were blazing. But no doubt the marines would extinguish those, and surely that sea of flame would break and retreat before the wall of rock opposite; and behind it were other structures of stone and brick and concrete. Now and then a refugee, permitting his attention to be drawn from his own little affairs, told that the back windows of these buildings were already hung with wet blankets, and that people stood by the cisterns on the roofs, hose in hand. But the South of Market Street fraternity shook a united head, and when the new phrase, The doomed city, was wafted into its dull ears, it adopted it promptly, and marched on muttering it over and over.

XI

Already a number of automobiles had flown by, some filled with people anxious to leave town before it might be too late, but most of them containing surgeons and their assistants, or relays of firemen, alone permitted to enter the burning district; or prominent men bound for the citizens' meeting to be held in the cellar of the old jail in Portsmouth Square, a site upon which their ancestors had gambled and Jenny Lind had sung. Gwynne, who was already beginning to chafe at inaction, to feel the excited blood shake his pulses, was revolving excuses to send his mother and Isabel home, when an automobile came charging down Market Street at a terrific rate of speed. From some distance he recognized Hofer sitting beside the chauffeur. Not in the least considering his act, he stepped in front of the crowd and made a signal. Hofer responded with a shout, the automobile slowed slightly, two men stood up and clutched Gwynne, dragging him into the machine. Gwynne's long legs flew backward as if he were plunging head first over an embankment, and he had only time to right himself, turn and shout "Go home," before the automobile had regained its speed and was out of sight.

Victoria turned to Isabel with wide eyes. "It looked like kidnapping!" she exclaimed.

"I fancy they merely want him at the citizens' meeting. No doubt they want every steady clear brain they can muster. I think I had better go out and see what has become of Paula and the children. Will you come?"

Victoria shook her head. "This is all too interesting," she said. "I must see more of it, and I am no longer afraid. When I am tired I will go home. Shall we agree to meet there for luncheon?"

Isabel nodded and started up Stockton Street alone, intending to take the first car that led in her sister's direction. Some of the trolley wires were down, but no doubt others were uninjured, and the cable-cars had always seemed to her as fixed as fate. She could no more conceive of their system being dislocated for more than an hour at a time than of the city burning. So far she was merely interested, and although sorry for the unfortunate poor, felt that the fates had conspired to do the city a service in cleaning out so objectionable a quarter. Of the millions invested in that district she did not think, but sighed as she thought of South Park and Rincon Hill. Still, they would have been obliterated in the course of events and before long; and as for the fire itself it would be stopped by the great walls of masonry on and near Market Street. She looked eastward down the deserted streets towards the bay, and although the vista there also was closed with flame and smoke, the fires were far away, and the marines were fighting it.

She passed many people ascending and descending, some with pressed lips, others arguing with a certain fettered excitement against the pessimistic attitude. After she left the business blocks the sidewalks again were free of débris, although she could see the ruin within. The disreputable section of this street, known as the "Red light district," was crowded with women, to whose rescue or comfort no man would seem to have come. Isabel looked at them with an irresistible curiosity, but no sense of repulsion; she even stopped and answered their eager questions as best she could. She was possessed with the idea that there was but one person in San Francisco that day, no matter what the optical delusion. She was not at all dazed, but utterly impersonal.

Even in the blazing sunshine most of these women were handsome, and young. But all assurance was gone; when not strained and haggard from the recent and the menacing terror, they looked indescribably forlorn. But they were very quiet. Isabel heard but one excited cry, and something of its thrill ran along her own nerves. "My God! The wind is blowing from the southeast and it's blowing strong!"

Isabel glanced back. It seemed to her that the great suspended waves of smoke, red-lined, were rolling with more energy, and they certainly were inclining west as well as north. She wondered, with some irritation, why the wind blew from the southeast when the first of the trades should be roaring in from the Pacific. A strong steady west wind and the fire would be blown towards the bay, where it could be extinguished from the marine boats. Every time a gust ruffled her hair she shook her head irritably, wondering that she had ever loved the wind.

She reached California Street. The cars were not running. Far down where they should have started she saw nothing but smoke. Nor was there the usual rumble indicating that the cable was at work, a sound which was among the first of her memories. She turned west and climbed the almost perpendicular blocks to the summit of Nob Hill. The beautiful massive pile of white stone, to be known when finished as Fairmont Hotel, and which had already done so much to redeem the city from its architectural madness, looked as serene and unravaged as if it crowned a hill of ancient Athens; but so, for that matter, did its neighbors, two as faultless in their way; the others appearing even more outrageous than usual, inasmuch as they had had their opportunity to disappear and failed to take advantage of it.

From the summit of the hill Isabel gave a hasty glance southward, then walked rapidly west; the fires seemed to cover far more ground than when she had first looked at them from Russian Hill, an hour ago.

After she had tripped over two large paving-stones that had met in an upward bulge, she took more note of detail. Some of the houses had private cisterns, and their roofs and walls were still quite wet. Pretentious garden walls, and stone pillars supporting façades, had fallen, while next door an apparently more delicate structure was intact. It seemed to be a matter of foundation. And everywhere there were groups of silent people watching the fire. Even when the Red Cross men and women carried out the injured, Isabel did not hear a groan. And all were losing their dazed and frightened expressions. The careless philosophy of the city was reasserting itself, although in a more dignified phase.

At Van Ness Avenue, the wide street that runs through the residence part of the city from north to south, Isabel shuddered for the first time, and, as she was ashamed to run across, stood and stared with a new sense of fascination at the inexplicable old earth. The street lay in a narrow valley, what would have been a mere cañon in the mountains, and the soil was loose and sandy, although the great houses sat upon most of the brief level and held it firm. But the stone blocks in low garden walls were bulging and broken, and the street itself was horribly torn. Here and there it had sunken, and looked as if a wave had passed over it and left an impress. A large stone church had fallen, one tower into the street and another upon the neighboring house. The stone walls of houses were cracked; one of the "mansions" had a zigzag crevice from top to bottom.

And the proudest had brought forth chairs and were sitting in their gardens or on the pavement. Isabel recognized a girl who had been one of the belles of Mrs. Hofer's ball, clad in a bath-gown and a pair of socks, and another, noted for her gowns, passed in a wagon, a handkerchief tied about her head and a half-filled pillow-case on her lap. Isabel knew that both had lived in one of the beautiful private hotels on the avenue, and she had already heard that it was so badly wrecked that the guests had been thankful to get out alive and had not ventured to return for their clothes. The stately building had been run up in a night, its feet set in sand, and the wonder was it was not lying across the avenue.

Many of the refugees had already reached this third and last wide street of refuge, and although the greater number were still down at the southern end, others had pushed on, intending to walk to the Presidio, where they were likely to be fed. They were resting on their cumbrous belongings, strange groups, unkempt and half dressed. Many of the householders had sent within for food, and one wealthy dame, whose maid had had time to build her coiffure and groom her properly, sat with a dirty frowsy baby on her lap and was coaxing it to take milk from a spoon, its bottle having been overlooked in the flight. The mother was sitting on the bureau her husband had rescued, by no means abashed, nor even surprised.

Isabel crossed the street and ascended and descended again, traversed several blocks to the north, and finally approached the house in which the Stones had their apartment. Although high-perched, it was uninjured, and as Isabel climbed the hill she saw Paula and her children seated, with many others, on the long flight of steps. Paula waved her hand and walked down composedly to meet her sister. She was dressed, laced, and painted. A sufficient time had elapsed since the earthquake to permit her ruling passion to regain its throne.

"Well, I am glad to see you!" She greeted Isabel with something of the grand air. She felt almost pompous with the sense of playing her part in a great event, fancied herself, perhaps, its central figure. "Of course, I knew you were all right up there, especially as we came off fairly well. But you should have been here. You've missed it!"

"I know," said Isabel, humbly. "But I am glad you were not hurt. And not frightened?"

"Oh, fearfully. And being up so many flights of stairs made it seem so much worse. But Lyster and I managed to get out of bed and into the nursery before it was half over, and hold the children in the doorways. I didn't make a fool of myself like so many others, and run out in the street before I was dressed; my hair was up on pins. Lys was more frightened than I was--it's a wonder he has any nerves at all--and now that there are so many fires he is fearfully excited at the idea that all his favorite haunts may go. He has gone down-town to see what is happening--also," in a happy afterthought, "to try and borrow some money. He literally had not ten cents in his pocket. We have some in the bank for a wonder, but everybody says the banks will go, and also that there will be hard times."

Isabel handed over her purse mechanically. "Victoria and Elton have plenty, I shall not need it," she said. But the desire to save Mrs. Stone's feelings was superfluous. The purse disappeared with a polite "Thanks, dear," and Paula hastily changed the subject, lest the luxury of a carriage for the return to Russian Hill should appeal to Isabel. "Of course you'll go back to the ranch where you can be comfortable," she remarked.

"I have no plan. The launch is ready for us, but it will depend upon the others. Should you care to go to the ranch? I don't suppose you are in any danger from fire, out here, but things may be very uncomfortable for a time."

"Oh, I'll take the risk," said Paula, easily. "I should be bored to death up there, and here there are so many people to talk to. I have heard about fifty experiences this morning, and all fearfully interesting. I guess we'll make out. It will only be for a day or two anyhow, and everybody that has food in the house is offering to share with the rest. I never have much on hand, but Mrs. Brooks, who lives under me, always keeps her store-room filled, and has invited me to lunch. You had better stop, too."

"I have promised Victoria to return. Just suppose the fire should come out here, what should you do?"

"Oh, take a mattress or two out to the Presidio. It's not far, and would be a regular picnic. But it won't."

"Well, I'll go, then. If you change your mind you can have the launch. Only come to me first. Mr. Clatt is standing over it with a six-shooter."

"Thanks. Sorry you won't come in. Lys won't sit down for about a week, he's _that_ nervous, so you'll probably see him up on the Hill."

Isabel started for home, and when she reached Fillmore Street discovered that she was tired. It was then that she regretted not having reserved a dollar or two; but no doubt Victoria was at home by this time. She found a livery-stable, and asked the proprietor, lounging in the entrance, if he could send her to the foot of her bluff.

"Yes, for fifty dollars," he said, coolly. Fillmore Street was a prosperous slum, another brief level between two steep acclivities. It was not yet aware of the proud destiny that awaited it, that for the next year or more it was to be the teeming centre of the abbreviated city's life, but there never was a time when it was burdened with manners, or the grand point of view. When Isabel stared, the man continued: "Yes, ma'am! Fifty's the ticket. And two hours later it may be five hundred. Some people are getting mighty nervous, and I've let five hacks and buggies already, at my own figure, to them as wants to get out of town quick."

Isabel turned her back on him, and climbed and descended again. Lower Van Ness Avenue was even more torn and lumpy than where she had crossed it at California Street, and hundreds of the South of Market Street refugees were sitting or lying in the middle of the street, worn out but stolid. Just beyond, she caught up with a teamster, who, noticing the fatigue in her eyes, stopped his horses and offered her a "lift," provided she was "going his way."

Isabel gratefully climbed to his high perch, after stating that she had no money, and being royally silenced.

"Oh, shucks!" said the man. "I guess this is the time to do other folks a good turn. You'd do the same for me, I'll bet. What do you think of this business, anyhow?"

Isabel replied hopefully, but he shook his head.

"City's doomed. Far as Van Ness, anyhow. Nothin' ain't goin' to stop that fire but water, and water's just what they haven't got. Lord! to think of that bay on three sides of the city. Talk about the Ancient Mariner. I don't live in the city, but I'll be sorry to see it go. Lord! warn't that a shake? I was flung plumb out of bed and against the wall, and the house next to mine, or the one I war in, went plumb out into the middle of the street. Lord! what a yellin' there was inside! Nobody hurt, but one woman went plumb out'r her mind. They've got her tied to the bed-post now. And what a lootin' of saloons there was until the soldiers marched in! Now, I hear, that there mayor has issued an order, which is to be pasted up all over, that any man caught lootin' anything, saloons or otherwise, is to be shot dead and no questions asked. Good job, that. I guess we're in for high old times, miss. I'm makin' for Oakland, where I live. I brought in a load last evenin' and stopped over. Some of my friends live down by the ferry, and I'll pick them up, if they want to get out. Don't you want to come along? My wife and me'll be glad to put you up if you can't do any better."

Isabel thanked him warmly, and assured him that she would be safe in any case, then discovered a loose half-dollar in the pocket of her jacket. The man accepted it philosophically.

"You were welcome to the ride, but I'm not the one to say nay to a bit of silver so long as you say you're not hard up yourself. Guess it'll come in handy. Well, s'long. Good luck to you. I've enjoyed your society very much."

XII

The teamster had deposited her at Taylor and Jackson streets, and as she passed the Trennahans' door it occurred to her to ask how they fared. The house appeared to be uninjured, but the electric bell was useless, and it was not until she had knocked several times that an old Mexican servant answered the summons. Then she learned that the family had left for Menlo Park in their touring car immediately after the earthquake, as the boys were at the country-house with their tutor. The woman had been maid for many years to Mrs. Polk and had lived with Magdaléna since her aunt's death. She was a privileged character, and during Isabel's visit had accepted her relationship to the house of Yorba and waited on her personally.

"So tired you look," she said. "Come in, no?" Then, as the invitation was declined, she leaned her stout shapeless figure against the door-frame and begged Isabel for an account of her experience. Isabel gave it briefly, and the old woman shook her head. "So terreeblay thing!" she sighed. "Seventy years I live in California and this the more bad earthquake I never feel. My mother she feel the great earthquake of 1812 in the south, when the padres plant a long straight branch in the middle of the square of San Gabriel, and it never stop shake for four months. Ay yi, California! I theenk we all go into the bay this morning, and I fall down twice when I run to see how little Señorita Inez she feeling. Ay yi!"

"Why did you not go to the country?"

"And who take care the house? The car come back bime-by for the other servants, but I no go. Si, I can go in the train--then--perhaps. But no in automobilia. Is devil, no less."

"Well, if you should be frightened come up to me," and Isabel went on hurriedly to her own home, suddenly reminded of the uncertainty of her relative's nerves. But Victoria was standing on the porch staring outward with such an intensity of gaze that she took no notice of Isabel's approach. And when Isabel reached her side, she too stood silent for a time. _The Call_ Building was on fire. This square tower of seventeen stories and a dome, with some seventy windows on each side, had caught fire at the top, and as the flames devoured the contents of one floor as quickly as possible that they might dart down another flight and gorge themselves anew, in an incredibly short time the two hundred windows in sight, and no doubt those in the rear, were spouting flames like the mouths of so many cannon: each sharply defined, owing to the indestructible nature of the walls. Volumes of white smoke poured upward to be lost in the black clouds above. At times the fire and smoke, on either side, torn by the wind, seemed to dance and gyrate in a Bacchanalian revel, taking monstrous forms, that exploded in showers of sparks, glittering like the fabled California sands. Above the burning district the smoke clouds changed form constantly. Sometimes they reeled along like colossal water-spouts. The roar of the fire waxed louder as one listened to it: a deep persistent energetic roar, as of a sea climbing over a land its time had come to devour.

Suddenly a curtain of smoke swept down and obliterated the scene, conveying a sense of respite, challenging the memory, although a moment later it was shot with a million sparks.

Victoria announced briefly that they were to have lunch of a sort, but for her part she would prefer a bath.

A bath, however, was out of the question, and, without washing the cinders from their faces and hands, they sat down to beefsteak fried on one of the oil-stoves used for heating the Mansard story, and canned vegetables. That much indulgence they might have permitted themselves, but human nature is prone to extremes, and they were tuned to a severe economy that might embrace more than water for some weeks to come.

Isabel sent a plate of sandwiches and a bottle of beer down to Mr. Clatt, and the servant returned with the information that the faithful wharfinger was sitting on a chair in front of the launch, a pistol on his lap; and that already a small crowd was crouched like buzzards in front of him. Isabel asked Victoria if she cared to retreat, but the older woman shook her head.

"Do you?" she asked.

"Oh no. I shall remain until the last minute, certainly until I know what Elton's plans are. If the launch is seized we can go down to Fort Mason or out to the Presidio. Every one is in the same boat. I should hate being too comfortable. But I don't think you should sleep out-of-doors. It is always damp at night."

"I can stand as much as you can. I am quite fit again. And this is the first time, for heaven knows how many years, that anything has interested me. I shall stay till the last minute; and surely no fire could climb this hill. Did I tell you that Mr. Trennahan came up at once and asked me to go to Menlo Park with them? Ungrateful--but I have not thought of it since."

Isabel announced her intention to take a nap. "No one knows what may happen to-night," she said. "And I feel as if I had not slept for a week."

She fell asleep at once. Lady Victoria awakened her by bursting unceremoniously into her room.

"You must get up and look!" she cried. "The Palace Hotel and the other big newspaper buildings are on fire. The sight is something awful--and wonderful."

Isabel ran to the window. All the valley was a rolling sea of flame, and all space seemed to be filled with enormous surging billows of smoke. From every window of the Palace Hotel, an immense square building of some seven stories, from the great newspaper buildings, and from other brick and stone structures near by, tongues of flame were leaping; the wooden buildings were mere shapeless furnaces. Again a volume of smoke descended, and for the moment nothing was to be seen but a red blur somewhere in the midst of rolling black.

Victoria communicated to Isabel the information she had received from the neighbors, always coming and going. People were pouring out of the city, not only by the Southern Pacific boats to Oakland, and indirectly to Berkeley and Alameda, but by freight-boats and launches to the Marin towns. They were obliged to make a long detour round the base of the northern hills, as the water-front and the streets behind were a roaring furnace, although the fires had not crossed East Street. All houses in the towns across the bay had opened to the refugees, tents had been erected in the public squares, and emergency hospitals had been started before nine o'clock. The militia had been called out to assist the regulars, and also the Cadet Battalion of the State University. A Citizens' Patrol had been formed to protect the still unburned districts, each man provided with arms at the Presidio. People on the lower slopes were now in full flight towards the western parks and hills, as well as the Presidio, many being under the impression that the ferry-boats were not running. It was doubtful if a hotel or a boarding-house would harbor a soul that night; not east of Van Ness Avenue, at least, and many in that region were preparing to sleep in the Park and squares, lest the fire attack them from the south. Refugees, exhausted, were lying on the doorsteps and in the streets of the Western Addition.

Victoria relapsed into silence and Isabel gazed down upon the beautiful terrible scene--the curtain had rolled upward again--at the enormous tongues of flame leaping from every window, the showers of golden sparks, the swooping and soaring clouds, many of them white, with convoluted edges, and faintly tinted like the day smoke of Vesuvius. These curled white masses rolled among the black waves towards the west, and the low deep roar waxed louder as one listened to it.

All the wooden bow-windows of the Palace Hotel had been eaten off, but it would be hours before the stoutly built old hotel ceased to feed the flames. Sometimes sheets of fire seemed to drive from the apertures across the great width of Market Street, to be beaten back by a solid wall of flame. In the intense clear yellow light that bathed the street Isabel could see the twisted car tracks. More than once she fancied she saw a prostrate body, but it may have been an achievement of the shifting flames, and certainly nothing living moved down there. The mounted officers and their men were patrolling the blocks along all the northern front of the fire.

"Are you not in the least worried about Elton?" asked Isabel, abruptly.

"Not a bit. I never worried about him when he was a child. He was always the most agile and ready youngster I ever saw."

"But he is very venturesome. He might be caught in one of those furnaces as well as another, or killed by falling bricks."

"He is a man of destiny," said Victoria indifferently. "He will live to accomplish what he was born for."

Isabel, in truth, found worry as impossible as any other common emotion, nevertheless thought it odd that he did not come to them for a moment or send a message. She could appreciate his wholly masculine mood, his temporary indifference to the charms of her sex, but he had an ingrained sense of responsibility, and was more considerate than the average man.

Lady Victoria returned to her vantage-point on the veranda, and Isabel went down to the garden fence where the three Japs were standing, and asked them if they intended to remain--half the servants had already fled from the city. Two replied that later in the day they should go to Oakland where they had friends. Isabel told them that she should not part with what little money there was in the house, and they answered politely that they expected to wait for their wages. The oldest of the three, a respectable man of thirty, who looked like, and no doubt was, a student, announced his intention to remain.

"I can cook," he added. "Not well, but perhaps well enough for a few days. And perhaps if we are driven out I may go to the country with you. I should be willing to work for anything you could pay me until things were restored to their normal condition--if you would be good enough to give me my evenings for study."

Isabel promised him the protection of her ranch-house, and stood talking to him for some time. His English was unusually correct and his remarks were more intelligent than those of the average man of her acquaintance. He told her something of Japanese earthquakes, and was good enough to add that he had never felt quite so violent or so peculiar a series of earth movements as California had achieved that morning. He was curious to see the result as recorded on the seismograph, and to know at what hour it registered in Japan.

"I think Professor Omori will come over," he said, modestly. "This earthquake will interest him very much. He will wish to study the ground."

"Were you not frightened?" asked Isabel, curiously.

"I appreciated the danger, but frightened--no, miss, I think I have never felt frightened. But I do not like fire. I have seen Tokio burn. I shall walk about constantly and see that it does not steal upon us from the north or west. Some silly person might make a fire, and all the chimneys must be cracked."

"I feel much relieved to know that you will patrol," said Isabel, wondering if she were being gracious to a prince. "Would you mind going up to the top of the hill and asking some one if he knows whether all the injured were taken from the Mechanics' Pavilion? It is blazing like a wood pile."

He went up the hill and returned with the information that all the patients, as well as the doctors and nurses, had been taken out, the last of them while the roof was blazing, and conveyed in automobiles to other emergency hospitals far away; and that the prisoners in the City Hall had been transported, manacled, to the army prisons in the same manner.

"One of the gentlemen said he saw Mr. Gwynne running an automobile full of nurses and patients--one of Mr. Hofer's machines," he added. "And that he returned twice at least. All the young men that own machines are acting very well, they say, transporting the injured, and making themselves generally useful. Many are on the roofs of the greater buildings with the firemen fighting the fire with blankets, and hose attached to the cisterns. A few buildings have been saved in that way, but not many, and more or less of the water has to be turned on the men, who catch fire repeatedly from the sparks."

Isabel went into the house and put on her hat. "I cannot keep still any longer," she said to Victoria, a moment later. "And now I am quite rested. I shall go down and see Mrs. Hofer, and reconnoitre for myself. If Elton should come, ask him to wait for me here--he must need a rest--or walk down Taylor Street."

XIII

She found her lower neighbors still sitting on their doorsteps or standing in groups, but was told that many more had already gone out to the Western Addition with their valuables, fearing that the fire might come up the southern or eastern slopes before night. A large touring car was standing in front of the Hofers' door. The children and their nurses were in it, and Mr. Toole came out and took his place as Isabel reached the house. He greeted her for the first time since she had known him without a smile; and he looked very old and sad. Isabel heard Mrs. Hofer's light high rapid voice within. She was standing in the large drawing-room, giving orders to a group of servants. When she saw Isabel she cried out as if confronted with a ghost.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, but not kissing her as usual; her mind apparently was divided into many parts. "I am relieved to see that _you_ are all right. I didn't know what might have happened up State. Did you _ever_? Well!--Great old country this. Talk about living on the side of Vesuvius. And now everything is going, everything!"

"I keep hoping for a change of wind."

"Perhaps, but I've pretty well given it up. We are in disgrace to-day, sure enough. And anyhow Mr. Hofer has lost millions, millions! However--" She recovered herself with a bound. "He made them, so I guess he can make more. And do you know what he's thinking about already? He burst in here half an hour ago--as black as your hat--with orders that I should take the family down to Burlingame at once, and then began talking about the Burnham plans, and the opportunity to clean up the city politically. There's a raging idealist for you. And do you know what he and Mr. Gwynne are up to now? Carrying dynamite, no less, between Fort Mason and the fire line. The two of them are running an automobile apiece and have put themselves at the disposal of the authorities. Nice thing for me to be thinking of all night. Don't you want to come along?"

Isabel shook her head.

"Well, I'll move on then--before they change their minds and impress my car. So far I have a gracious permit to keep it. The servants have buried the silver and the pictures, but--" She glanced at the beautiful frieze, which, without its electric lights, looked a mere blur of blue and black, then shrugged her shoulders. "I just won't believe my house will go," she said, defiantly; "not till the last minute, anyhow. When the fire's over, or Mr. Hofer lets me, I'll come back and do something for those poor wretches that have been burned out. Gather up what food there is to be had in the country, and start an eating station or something. Mr. Hofer says food will come pouring in from every direction presently, and then they will need organizers. I'm good at that. Can I rely on you? It will be an experience, anyhow; and of course it's my place to do that sort of thing. Besides, I do feel terribly sorry for those poor things, and I won't be able to sit still for a month."

"You can count on me. When this is over I shall find you somehow."

"Oh, don't worry. The newspapers won't miss anything. They're burned out, but I hear that the editors are already over in Oakland scurrying round after a plant. Well, _adios_. If you say the word I'll send the car back for you--although I doubt if it would pass a squad without those children in it. I suppose it would hold several tons of dynamite! Heigh-ho, I suppose it is all in the day's work. What can you expect if you live in an earthquake country?" They had reached the pavement and she put her lips close to Isabel's ear. "I'd like to get out of the damned place and never see it again," she whispered. "I'll keep a stiff upper lip, but those are my sentiments and I guess I have company."

She stepped lightly into the car, nodded with a grim gayety, and in another moment had disappeared round the corner of Taylor and California streets.

Isabel started down the hill, and almost immediately met Anne Montgomery. She had not recognized her as they approached each other, for the glare was in her eyes; but Miss Montgomery ran forward and kissed her.

"What on earth did you come to this God-forsaken place for, when you had the country to stay in?" she demanded. "Oh, Lady Victoria? I did not know she was here. Just come with me and look at a sight."

She put her arm through Isabel's and led her rapidly for several blocks along California Street, then down Hyde towards moving columns of people. The fire was far south of these refugees as yet, but they looked down every cross street and saw it; and more than once during their slow flight they had seen the soldiers at the visible end of each long vista move a block farther north. "I tramped a long way with them," said Miss Montgomery, "carrying things for a woman I never saw before. Then a man took the burden over and I started up the hill to see how some friends were faring."

From this point they could hear the roar and crackle of the fire and the crashing of walls; but even more formidable was that tramping of thousands of feet, the scraping of trunks and furniture on the tracks and stones. Isabel, still feeling like a palimpsest, lingered for an hour looking at these refugees. They were vastly different, in all but their impotence, from those of the early morning. Hundreds were from the "boarding-house district"; others were householders; a large number, no doubt, owned their carriages or automobiles, but those had been impressed long since. It was a well and a carefully dressed crowd, for by this time nearly every one had recovered from the shock of the earthquake; many forgotten it, no doubt, in the new horror. They had not the blank expression of the poor, dazed by the second calamity following so close upon the heels of the first, but their lips were pressed, eyes were straining towards the distant goal, and all would have been pale but for the glare of the fire. Fortunately for most of them, men as well as women, they had either children, pets, or even more cumbersome belongings to claim their immediate attention; no time for either thought or despair. They pushed trunks to which skates had been attached, or pulled them by ropes; they trundled sewing-machines and pieces of small furniture, laden with bundles. Many carried pillow-cases, into which they had stuffed a favorite dress and hat, an extra pair of boots and a change of underclothing, some valuable bibelot or bundle of documents; to say nothing of their jewels and what food they could lay hands on. Several women wore their furs, as an easier way of saving them, and children carried their dolls. Their state of mind was elemental. They lived acutely in the present moment and looked neither behind nor before--save to a goal of safety. Misfortune had descended upon them, and ruin no doubt would follow, but for the present they asked no more than to save what they could carry or propel, and to get far beyond that awful fire. The refinements of sentiment and all complexity were forgotten; they indulged in nothing so futile as complaint, nor even conversation. And the sense of the common calamity sustained them, no doubt, deindividualized them for the hour. Soon after they became their normal selves once more, and accepted the hard conditions of the following weeks with the philosophy that was to be expected of them. But underneath all the recovered gayety and defiant pride of the later time more than one spirit was sprained, haunted with a sense of dislocation, permanently saddened by the loss not of fortune but of personal treasures, of old homes full of life-long associations, never to be replaced nor regained. Many no doubt were better off for losing those old anchors that held them to the past and emphasized their years, besides keeping their sorrows green, but others had one reason less for living. Nevertheless the philosophy born of a lifetime in an earthquake country, of the electric climate, of their isolation, as well as the good Anglo-Saxon strain in so many of them, brought a genuine rebound to all physically capable of it, both old and young. But to-day they were primitive--and entirely human. They helped one another, the stronger carrying the weaker's burdens as a matter of course. The men were bent almost double with increasing properties.

Isabel felt neither pity nor admiration for them; they were a mere unit, these thousands reduced to their primal component, the third fact in the great day of facts.

Suddenly, however, she caught sight of Lyster Stone. He carried a baby on one arm and several rolls of painted canvas under the other. Beside him walked the mother pushing a loaded crib; and behind him the artist friend, to whose aid he had evidently gone, dragged a large canvas trunk bound with an ingenious system of ropes. Stone nodded gayly when he saw Isabel.

"Hallo!" he cried. "I was going for you later on. We'll all sleep out to-night. Better come along." Then as Isabel only shook her head he said, hurriedly: "Awfully sorry I forgot--promised Gwynne I'd go up and tell you he was in for a long day's work--transporting hospital patients and hauling dynamite. He sent peremptory orders that you and his mother were to go to the country with the afternoon tide."

The crowd bore him on and Isabel and Anne walked up the hill again, meeting other streams of refugees, but thinner, as most of them preferred the easier slopes. Isabel looked at Anne curiously. There was an unusual restlessness about her, nothing of the rudimentary expression of the crowd. Isabel was wondering if her apparent and unusual spirits might be due to the fact that her flat was in the Western Addition, and that she had hired a wagon at the first alarm of fire and carried her silver to the Presidio, when Anne suddenly began to explain herself.

"Do you know," she broke out, "I have a wonderful sense of freedom!--of--of--hope. Something has happened at last. All the ruts have been ploughed over. Life will never be the same here, in my time at least. It will be like beginning all over again, with a hundred barely imagined possibilities and an equal chance for every one. It may be a reprehensible thing--to feel as if the destruction of your city had set your individual soul free--but I do, and that's the end of it. And I can tell you I've seen that _expression_ in the eyes of many a man in the last few hours. Not in those of the older men, perhaps, for they wear out early enough in this climate, anyhow, and those that are close upon sixty don't look as if they had much left to live for--although I've seen a few flying about as if they had dropped thirty years; its all a matter of temperament and physique. But for the rest of us! The still energetic men, and the women that have been cankered with the tedium vitæ, and have the brains and brawn to work. It will be the Fifties all over again--not only something more than a bare living in prospect, but a constant, exciting, interest in life. I saw a good many men, just after the earthquake, looking as if they had believed the end of the world had come, but they braced up directly the city was threatened by something they could pit themselves against. Every man worth his salt is fighting fire, rescuing the helpless, dragging mattresses out to the hills and Park, and helping the women down here save their belongings. All with automobiles and carriages are helping the authorities and hospitals. Political factions and personal enemies are working side by side, particularly down on the fire line. Even the mayor has won a day's respect from his fellow-citizens, although I'm told he's terribly torn between the Committee of Fifty and the military authorities on the one hand, who want to blow up a wide zone, and the property-holders who won't have their precious possessions sacrificed when the wind may change any minute. Meanwhile the fire has a headway that will give it the best part of the city. I never felt so alive in my life; so vividly in the present. Can you remember the name of a book you have read, that there is any world outside these seven square miles?"

"Yesterday is a mere dream and to-morrow is only a bare possibility! The Fifties! I feel as if we were at the beginning of things on another planet. I shall never trouble my head with problems or psychology again. We are mere dancing midgets on the scalp of stupendous forces that we do not even dimly apprehend. Earth lets us play until her patience is exhausted with our pretentions as mere human beings, at our insane delusion that the intellectual are not only the equal but the superior of the physical forces; and then she merely shakes herself, and the wisest is as helpless as the idiot, the prince even worse off than the pauper because he has a bigger house to run out of. They all dance to her tune like so many wooden marionettes. Hofer is no better off than his blacksmith--whose savings are probably in the fireproof vault of some bank, while I happen to know that more than one millionaire has not insured his Class A buildings, thinking the expense unnecessary. No wonder you have a sense of freedom. So have I. We are dancing to the tune of the unseen forces. They will do the thinking. I wonder, by-the-way, if deep down in the brain of that fleeing ruined tide of elemental beings there is not a prick of gratified vanity that they are in the midst of a great and horrible experience? We have been reading so much lately of the horrors in Russia, we have read, all our lives, of horrors and atrocities somewhere, and this State has grinned at us so unintermittently. Now we, too, are actors in a great life-and-death drama. I don't fancy any one is doing even that much analysis, but I can't help thinking that the vague appreciation of the fact sustains them in a way--possibly gives them a calm sense of superiority to the rest of the world----Look at this."

They had reached Jackson Street on the flat of Nob Hill. It was now evening and the exodus from Chinatown had begun. The Mongolians were streaming up from their threatened quarter, and, like the others, tramping silently out to the Presidio. The merchants had put on their fine clothes, and their families--exposed to the Occidental eye for the first time--wore gorgeous garments of bright silks covered with embroideries. The poor little respectable wives tottered along on their foolish feet, held up by their lords or their "big-footed" serving-women, while their children trudged along uncomplainingly and stared at the fire with big expressionless eyes. Mingling freely with the wealthy autocrats of Chinatown were the coolies, and the disreputable women with which the quarter swarmed. The Chinese rarely import their wives. The coolies wore their blue blouses and soft felt hats, and the women had painted their faces and built up their hair as usual, shining tower-like coiffures stuck with large-lobed pins, cheap or costly, according to their grade. All were as stolid as their own wooden gods. They would have looked like a solemn procession on a festa day had it not been for the bundles and strong-chests they carried.

"Come up to dinner, such as it is," said Isabel, to Anne. "What are you going to do to-night?"

"Camp down in the sand-lots by Fort Mason and see what I can do for those poor refugees. There will be great suffering, I am afraid. Many women should be in hospital with every attention; and with all this excitement who knows what may happen? I fancy either a tent-hospital will be erected, or the worst cases will be taken into the fort. I am a good nurse, and I told the Leader I should be there. There will be many children to look after, too. The parents, the best of them, won't be up to much."

"Perhaps I will go down later. But I shall wait at the house until I have seen Mr. Gwynne--he may need food, or be hurt in any of a dozen ways. If you see him--and no doubt you will, if you are to be at the fort--tell him that I have not gone to the country and have no intention of going."

XIV

They had passed members of the Citizens' Patrol on every block, and they found one pacing the plank walk on Russian Hill. He told them that the edict had gone forth that not so much as a candle should be lit in a house that night and that all cooking must be done out-of-doors. The spectacled Jap was boiling soup on one of the oil stoves, which he had carried into the garden and half surrounded by a screen. Beside him was what looked like an open newly-dug grave, and the girls, startled, demanded what it meant.

Sugihara, apparently, never smiled, but his eyes flickered. "Before Cusha and Kuranaga went I made them dig a hole for the silver," he said. "It is too heavy for the launch. If we are driven away, I will cut your ancestors from their frames and take them with us."

"Well, you are a treasure," said Isabel, with a sigh. "You shall do nothing but read when you get to the ranch."

Lady Victoria was pacing slowly up and down the porch, her eyes seldom wandering from the fire. When dinner was ready, she merely shook her head impatiently, and Isabel and her guest sat down in the little tower-room, which was brilliantly illuminated from below. Sugihara had made a very good soup of canned corn and tomatoes and had fried bits of meat and potato. There was little conversation. The dynamiting was now something more than sporadic. The detonations were so terrific that it was not difficult for the San Franciscans to imagine themselves--supposing they had a grain of imagination left--in a besieged city. Isabel suggested, and Anne agreed with her, that they might have been far worse off than they were; nature at her extremest is never so pitiless as the human brute when the lust to kill is on him.

Isabel prepared the remains of the feast for Mr. Clatt, and asked Sugihara if he would object to relieving the watch, that the wharfinger might snatch a few hours' sleep. There was no longer any danger of fire except from the conflagration itself, and now that the dynamiting had begun in earnest it was possible that the flames would be isolated before midnight.

The Jap went off with the dish in one hand and a book in the other, hoping that he would be allowed to light a candle on the launch. He returned in a few moments, and for the first time he was smiling.

"Mr. Clatt will not give up his watch," he said. "He says he might miss the chance to put a hole in some--dago (his language was very bad, Miss). He says there's not a wink of sleep in him."

"No doubt but that he will hold on to it, unless the military step in," said Anne. "Then, I fancy, he would surrender very meekly. They have impressed a good many launches for prisoners and dynamite. But I hope not, for whether the fire comes up the hills or not, there is going to be terrible privation. Heaven knows how many days it will be before we have enough water even to drink, and I heard a little while ago that as soon as food comes in the authorities will establish relief stations, where everybody, from the millionaire to John Chinaman, will have to stand in line and wait for his loaf of bread. Wouldn't it be better for you to go at once?"

"I fancy I can endure as much as any one, and if I am driven from here I will go down to you. I shall go down anyhow when I have seen Mr. Gwynne. I do not propose to lie in a hammock while several hundred thousand people are sleeping on the ground. What do you take me for?"

"Somehow I don't see you as a nurse, or amusing children, or doling out bread and raiment. You would be much more in the picture encouraging Mr. Gwynne. However--I am going to impress your linen and a clothes-basket to carry it in. No doubt the philosophical Sugihara will help me carry it to the fort."

"Take what you like." Isabel directed her to the linen-closet, and went down to the veranda. She paused abruptly in the doorway. Victoria's face could be seen only in profile, but its expression, as she gazed down upon that tossing twisting furious flame ocean, needed no analytical faculty to interpret. It was voluptuous, ecstatic.

Isabel crossed the porch in a stride.

"What are you thinking of?" she demanded, imperiously.

Victoria did not turn with a start. She did not turn at all. "I am thinking," she replied, automatically, as if in obedience to the stronger will--"I am thinking that at last I understand what it is we are so blindly striving for from the hour when we can think at all; what it is--that unsatisfied desire that urges us on and on to so many fatal experiments in the pursuit of happiness. The great goal, the real meaning of our miserable balked mortal existence is not that dancing will-o'-the-wisp we call happiness, for want of a better name. It is Death."

"Well?" Isabel's voice rose, but she kept the anxiety out of it.

"I cannot imagine anything more delicious," went on Victoria, in the same low rich tones, "than to walk straight down those hills and into that sea of flame. I have always admired Empedocles, who cast himself into Etna. Once I saw a friend cremated, and the brief vision of that white incandescence, before the coffin shot down, seemed to me the apotheosis, the voluptuous poetry of death. I could walk down into that colossal furnace without flinching, and I believe that my last moment, as the world disappeared behind me, and those superb flames took me into their embrace, would be one of sublimest ecstasy."

Isabel caught her by the shoulders and whirled her about. "Well, you will do nothing of the sort," she cried, roughly. "In the first place you couldn't get through the lines, and in the second you are wanted at Fort Mason. Anne is going down with a basket of linen for the poor women who will be confined to-night. You are an uncommonly strong woman, and you can make use of every bit of your strength. Anne and the Leader are frail creatures, and no one else that I know of is going. They need you, and you will soon have your hands so full that your head will be purged of this nonsense. It is the fire lust--the same lust that incited a boy to-day to attempt to set fire to a house in this district that he might watch the whole city burn. I hope your egoism exploded in that climax. Here comes Anne. You must go."

"Very well," said Victoria, suddenly dazed, and with a will relaxed after the long tension of the day. "I will go."

"Where are your jewels?"

"Down in the bank."

"Well, gather up any other small things you treasure, and either conceal them about you or give them to me."

"I shall not take anything. My laces are in the chiffonnière. I do not care to enter the house again."

Isabel fetched her hat and jacket, for in spite of the fire it would be cold near the water; and a few moments later she stood on the edge of Green and Jones streets, on the other side of the hill, and watched Victoria and Anne, carrying a large clothes-basket between them, carefully making their way down to the level. They had a walk of some thirteen blocks before them, but the streets were full of people and of ruddy light.

She returned to the house and sat down on the porch, her eyes diverted from the fire for a moment by the picture of Sugihara, a pair of eye-glasses in front of his spectacles, comfortably established on a chair in the garden and reading by the lamp of the burning city. It was apparent that he had forgotten the 18th of April.

Isabel was alone but a moment. Stone burst in upon her. He had approached from behind, and came running down the hill.

"Isabel," he cried. "Get a bottle of champagne."

"Champagne?"

"Yes. It may be six months before I see another--but that is a mere detail. I want to drink to the old city."

Isabel, who liked him best in his dramatic moments, found a bottle of champagne. He knocked the head off, and filling the glass, went down to the first landing of the long narrow flight of steps. He held the glass high, pointing it first towards the middle of what had been Market Street, and was now a river of fire, then slowly shifting it along towards Kearney and Montgomery, as he named the restaurants that had given San Francisco no mean part of her fame.

"Here's to Zinkand's, Tait's, The Palace Grill! The Poodle Dog! Marchand's! The Pup! Delmonico's! Coppa's! The Fashion! The Hotel de France! And here's to the Cocktail Route, the Tenderloin, and the Bohemian Club! And here's--" By this time his voice was dissolving, and the glass was describing eccentric curves. "Here's to the old city, whose like will never be seen this side of hell again. Pretty good imitation of heaven in spots, and everything you chose to look for, anyway. And the prettiest women, the best fellows, the greatest all-night life, the finest cooking, the wickedest climate. Here's to San Francisco--and damn the bounder that calls her 'Frisco!"

Then he drank what was left of the contents of his glass and hastily refilled it. After he had finished the bottle luxuriously, he held out his hand to Isabel. "Come along?" he asked. Then, as she shook her head: "I must go back to Paula and the kids. The mattresses are out in the Park already. You are in no danger, what with the neighbors above and the patrol. Good luck to you," and he vanished.

Isabel was alone at last, a state she had unconsciously wished for all day--it seemed a month since the morning. She sat down and leaned her elbows on the railing. Now that the sun was gone, the heavens, or the smoke obscuring them, were as red as that sea beneath which seemed to devour a house a minute as it rolled out towards the Mission and worked with all its might among the great business blocks between Market Street and Telegraph Hill. Some one had estimated that the columns of fire were seven miles high, and they certainly looked as if they had melted the very stars. Here and there was a play of blue flames, doubtless from some explosive substance, and when the dynamite shot the entrails from a house there was a gorgeous display of fireworks--the golden showers of sparks symbolizing the treasure that blackened and crumbled in dropping back to earth.

Before sitting down she had swept the distant hills with her field-glass and seen thousands of people lying not ten feet apart, like an exhausted army after battle. In that intense glare she could even study the eccentric positions of the fallen headstones and monuments in the old deserted cemeteries--Lone Mountain and Calvary. The cross on the lofty point of the bare hill behind the Catholic cemetery was red against the blackness of the west; and hundreds of weary mortals were huddled about its base. She tried to pity all those terrified uncomfortable creatures out there, but again the part they played in the greatest natural drama of modern times occurred to her, and she thought that should console them.

She wondered at her lack of sentimental regret at the destruction of her beloved city. But sentiment seemed a mere drop of insult to be cast into that ocean of calamity. Moreover, she was pricked by a sense that it was a living sentient thing, that city, and was getting its just dues for the hearts it had devoured, the lives it had ruined, the merciless clutch it had kept upon so many that were made for better things. To its vice she gave little thought; she fancied it was not worse than other cities, if the truth were known; it was the picturesqueness of its methods that had held it in the limelight. But that it was one of the world's juggernauts, and the more cruel for its ever laughing beguiling face--of that there was no manner of doubt.

She wondered also that she was not in a fever of anxiety about Gwynne. She had interrogated the sentry and been informed that the automobiles carrying dynamite dashed straight down to the fire line, often within; that a number of the soldiers, whose duty it was to lay the explosive, had been wounded and carried to the hospitals; that there was always the risk of a laden machine being suddenly surrounded by fire, for many houses were ignited by the sparks, and, in that wooden district down there, burned like tinder. Perhaps, like Victoria, she was too sure of his destiny; perhaps the picture of the future with him that she had conceived refused to alter its lines; or it may be that there was no place in the impersonal arrangement of her faculties the double catastrophe had effected, for fear; or for anything beyond the impressions of the moment. Her mind worked on mechanically. She was determined to remain as long as there was a possibility of Gwynne's returning for food or care. But the soul beneath was possessed by an absolute calm. She had the sense of having been taken into partnership with nature that morning; so sudden and personal had been that assault, from which she yet had issued unscathed. She felt that everything that would follow in life, excepting only her love for Gwynne, would be too petty to regard more seriously than the daily meals. Not that she had more than a bare mental appreciation of the phases of love at the moment; but it possessed her and it was infinite.

She sat motionless until nearly two o'clock and then went up to her room and lay down. It was not possible to sleep for more than a few moments at a time, for the detonations were almost incessant, but she forced herself to rest, not knowing what work the morrow might have in store. When she finally rose and looked out of her window she saw that the fire was coming up the hills.

XV

She barely touched the breakfast prepared by the methodical Sugihara, who had already buried the silver, and cut the pictures from their frames, rolled, and tied them securely.

"It is only a question of a few hours," he said. "The dynamiting so far has done more harm than good. They take a house at a time instead of a block, and as it falls apart it ignites another on the opposite side of the street. The army doesn't like to interfere, and the mayor has too long been obsequious to capital. Mr. Clatt is still there with the launch behind him. I took him down his breakfast some time ago. He told me to tell you that he'd 'got his job cut out for him now, as the Dagos were beginning to leave Telegraph Hill.'"

Isabel had one or two moments of panic as she watched those waves of flame beat up the hill, and pictured them raging up the eastern slopes as well; but the panic passed, for she knew that there were two exits still open. The heavens were black. A disk like a sealing-wax wafer indicated the position of the sun. The heat was terrific. The dynamiting was incessant, but it did not drown the roar and the eager furious crackle of the flames, the reverberating crash of falling walls. And the flames were the redder for the blackness above. Cinders were falling all over the heights, and the smoke burned the eyes.

"I shall feel like Casabianca presently, and rather ridiculous," she reflected, "but I shall stay till the last possible moment." She went within and packed a pillow-case with Lady Victoria's laces and other portable objects of value and adornment, then gathered up similar belongings of her own, tied the case firmly about the neck, stood it where it could be snatched in flight, and returned to the porch.

The boarding-house district, several blocks of large wooden houses, seemed literally to be swept from its foundations by those rushing pillars of fire. The whole quarter was wiped out in an hour, and then the fire turned its attention to the higher slopes.

It played with them for a while, darting west and returning for a morsel at which it leaped with the agility of a living monster, went west again; then, its appetite whetted and its greed insatiable, it started straight for Nob Hill. The soldiers drove the faithful servants out of the houses at the point of the bayonet. Then--in a moment--the familiar curtains were blowing out of the windows--shrivelled to a crisp and pursued by the red rage behind.

Sugihara did not go through the form of cooking luncheon. He knew that his mistress would not eat, and he had as little appetite himself. He folded his arms on the top of the fence and waited for the signal to retreat.

Isabel went into the house repeatedly and dipped her burning face into a basin of water, but returned quickly to her post. The fire was running from the east along California Street hill; she saw the men who had been cutting pictures from their frames in the Institute of Art flee to the west, then watched the Gothic structure flare up and burn like an old hay-stack: that monument to a millionaire whose name would be already forgotten had it not been tacked to the gift. The fire reached California Street, on the edge of the plateau, from the south, coming up the west side of Taylor Street. Other great houses of the rich were so many roaring furnaces--several were curiously neglected and isolated by the fire, that seemed to have gone mad with its own lust. The eastern slopes were a mass of smouldering ruins, not black, but the most exquisite tints of violet, rose, chrome, gray, sepia, yellow. They looked, with their arches and columns, towers and broken walls, like the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill on a colossal scale. About and through them floated clouds of fine white ashes, ghostly restless dust of unthinkable treasure.

Suddenly, hardly crediting her eyes, Isabel saw an automobile labor up the steep acclivity, through that swirling furnace, and dart across California Street and in the direction of Russian Hill. She knew that Gwynne was in it, and a moment later Hofer discharged him at the foot of the steps, then ran the car out Jackson Street at the top of its speed.

Gwynne walked up the steps and along the plank walk. Isabel recognized him by his carriage, for he was as black as a coal-heaver and most of his hair was burned off.

"I should like to wash first," he said, as he came up the house flight. "The water will go with the rest."

"Of course. Do you want anything to eat."

"No, I had some sandwiches a while ago."

He went up to his room and Isabel awaited him in the farthest corner of the living-room, where it may have been a trifle less hot and less noisy than elsewhere.

He came down in a moment. "That was a close shave," he said. "We didn't know what we were in for, and it was either go on and hope for better luck at the top, or dive down into a very good imitation of a live volcano."

He was recognizable, although his khaki clothes were black and burned, and one side of his head made him look as if he had just been discharged from a military hospital.

"I shall rest for a few moments and then go back," he said, throwing himself into a chair opposite Isabel. "I never forgot you, but I made sure Stone had delivered my message and that you were on the ranch. I saw my mother and Miss Montgomery an hour ago. You must get out of this at once."

"Tell me what you have been doing," said Isabel evasively.

"I have been alive," he said, intensely. "Never in all my days have I found life so wonderful. Battle is nothing to it. For the best part of two days I have been dodging the open jaws of death every minute; and the sensation of pitting one's puny human strength and the accumulated wit of several thousand years of varied civilization against an element in its might has inspired me with the only consummate approval of life that I have ever known--although I might have known it the day before yesterday if you had looked as you do now." He sat steadily regarding her for a few moments without speaking, but he was sensible of no immediate wish to touch her. That, too, belonged to a possibly greater but far different to-morrow. He was keyed very high. He did not feel himself so much a human being as a component part of one force disputing every inch of the progress of a mightier.

"Great God, what men!" he burst out. "I have been with some member of the Committee of Fifty, on and off, these two days, to say nothing of last night--Mr. Phelan invited me to serve on it yesterday morning. They are superb, not daunted for a moment, talking already of the new city, of the opportunity this conflagration has given them to make it over in every way. Architects were engaged before three o'clock yesterday afternoon. And the young business men that have been cleaned out! They talk only of the enormous possibilities of the future. I remember reading once of much the same spirit exhibited by Londoners after the Great Fire. It is the most wonderful thing in the world that for a few days at least you are permitted to cherish an unleavened respect for human nature. Every mean cowardly and selfish trait that chains man to earth is moribund to-day, in the normal at least; and the rats have run to other holes. The higher qualities, those that have inspired the world since it began, are in full possession. And, by Jove, it is going to be the pioneer life over again! Do you remember that I regretted once I could not be in at the foundation and growth of a great city, also that the drawback to such an opportunity was that one was never conscious of his part? Well, now we are back to the conditions of the Fifties, and we know it. We shall work for tremendous stakes, and in no doubt of the result."

"The enthusiastic moment has come," said Isabel.

"Rather. Here is my part cut out for me. Here I stay and become a chief factor in making this city greater even than before. That is enough for any man. And there will be plenty of fight. Politics will crawl back to new strongholds, as soon as men become egos again, but I shall fight them here, not in the country."

He stood up, and Isabel asked, hastily: "Have you had no sleep?"

"Hofer and I broke into an empty house in the Western Addition towards morning and slept on the floor for three hours. I have known harder beds. I must go. I felt that I must look at you and order you to leave at once."

"I don't want to leave the city."

"You must go. The fire will have taken this house before midnight. You will be ordered out before that. They may save the city west of Van Ness Avenue, for the mayor at last has consented that several blocks shall be blown up at once. I am carrying dynamite. If I saw Russian Hill on fire and was not sure that you were out of harm's way, it would unnerve me, and I need all the nerve I've got."

"I can go down to Fort Mason."

"I want to know that you are out of the city. I think my mother is better off where she is. She is working with a will down there and absolutely refused to leave. I did not insist--no fire could cross those sand-lots, and I fancy she needs occupation. But you must go."

"I should be as safe."

"Perhaps. But I should be beset by fears that you had ventured too far. I can be quite impersonal, keen, steady of hand and brain, if you are out of the city."

"Very well, I will go."

"The day the fire is over I will go for you and we will marry and live in any shanty we can find--begin life together like any Forty-niners. You can help others as much as you choose then. There will be work for all--but now there is not, cannot be until organization begins. And I must be free to take care of you. Will you go at once? The launch is still there."

"Yes, I will go at once."

He left her, and a few moments later she was walking down the other side of the hill, the voluminous pillow-case slung over her shoulder. Beside her trudged Sugihara, the ancestors under one arm, and his library under the other. The street along the water-front was a moving mass of refugees from Telegraph Hill, and Mr. Clatt was standing in the launch, on the alert. He gave a shout of delight as he saw Isabel, and she waved her hand. As she reached the wharf and forced her way through the Italians and Mexicans, who regarded her with no great favor, she noticed a small party of Chinese evidently in distress. The woman, magnificently arrayed, and hardly larger than a child, was huddled against the sea-wall, dumbly protesting that she could go no farther. Her face was twisted and her eyes were staring with pain and fright. A pretty child in three shirts of different colors, all silken and embroidered, was wailing in the common language of his years, and the young husband argued with his wife in vain: she made no response, but her passive resistance was as effective as if her feet had been six. She would not let her maid touch her, and her husband dared not relinquish his hold on his strong-box while surrounded by his formidable neighbors of Telegraph Hill.

Isabel, glad to be able to do something for some one, told him to hand the box to Mr. Clatt, then carry his wife on board the launch. The nurse followed with the child, while Isabel and Sugihara, having cast their own burdens on board, and drawn their pistols, brought up in the rear.

As the launch entered the current that would carry it east of Angel Island, Isabel looked at her guests--the Chinese wife and her child lying on the cushions of the cabin, stolid once more; the big-footed maid and the husband, his strong-box between his knees, seated opposite; the Japanese, sitting cross-legged on the roof, his back to the land--no doubt to emphasize his contempt for the rabble; Mr. Clatt, shaking his fist at a group of vociferating Italians--and smiled grimly as she recalled the romantic boat party that escaped from Pompeii. She did not feel in the least romantic, but she felt something greater and deeper.

She turned her head many times to look at the wonderful spectacle of the burning city, the red curtain in the background, along whose front rushed the pillars of fire driven by the rolling masses of smoke. Where the fires on Nob Hill had burned low the flames looked like red sprouting corn. Fairmont had caught at last. It stood, a great square pile of white stone against the red background, and from its top alone poured a steady square volume of curling white smoke. The windows, and there were many hundreds of them, looked like plates of brass. The last thing she saw, as the launch shot up the bay towards San Pablo, was a wave of fire roll down Telegraph Hill, and hundreds of black pigmies fleeing before it.

It was a beautiful evening of perfect peace when the launch entered Rosewater creek. The marsh was bathed in all the faint colors of the afterglow. The birds were singing. People were sitting under the trees in their parks or gardens. A fisherman was sailing up to Rosewater with his catch. But for the red light in the south and the faint sound as of a besieging army, there was nothing to recall that a civilization had been arrested and a great city was burning down to its bones.

THE END

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE CONQUEROR A FEW OF HAMILTON'S LETTERS THE ARISTOCRATS SENATOR NORTH HIS FORTUNATE GRACE PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES RULERS OF KINGS THE TRAVELLING THIRDS THE BELL IN THE FOG

(_CALIFORNIA SERIES_)

REZÁNOV THE DOOMSWOMAN THE SPLENDID IDLE FORTIES A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE THE CALIFORNIANS AMERICAN WIVES AND ENGLISH HUSBANDS A WHIRL ASUNDER