Mrs. Leslie was a brave woman, but when the judge suggested that it would be better for him to talk the matter over with Gwynne, obtain his explanation, and delicately hint the attitude of the town, she was nothing loath to renounce her mission. "The dear child," the friends of her mother all remembered, had once possessed a temper that only the peculiar circumstances of her life had chastened, and they had an uneasy suspicion that it still smouldered beneath the well-bred insolence with which she had so far received much friendly advice.
By this time—mid-December was nigh—the judge and Gwynne had discussed many subjects besides the law. Mrs. Leslie, whose hospitable instincts were too deep to be blighted even by the servant question, had placed a room at Gwynne's disposal to be used when it rained, or he talked so late with the judge that the long ride home was not worth while. He dined with them several times a week, and found both these simple old-fashioned people delightful. And with Judge Leslie, alone of all his neighbors, could he discuss the affairs of the great world, get away from the politics and the small local interests that absorbed every other man in Rosewater. Moreover, Judge Leslie was well acquainted with his past career and often manifested a keen desire for details. Gwynne was not sure that these lapses were good for him, but certainly it was pleasant, stretched out there by the big fireplace in an old room full of books, English for the most part, to talk of himself and his achievements. Isabel rarely referred to his past, never encouraged him to talk about it. His mother had become as silent as a mummy; old man Colton might have lost his memory, and for Tom Colton British politics had no existence.
But Judge Leslie understood and had much sympathy for his pupil—possibly believed in the virtue of the safety-valve. Certainly Gwynne invariably went to bed after these long talks content in mind and body; and the next day he was far too busy to trot out his ego and sit down with it. And his mind at least was happy in its new sense of expansion and acquisition, its increasing and developing powers. His studies had the further effect of moderating the purely personal viewpoint of the United States that had tormented him, and of enabling him to withdraw far enough to command glimpses of the New World as a great abstraction. And his contacts with the strange medley of small farmers and mechanics, with local politicians in back offices and saloons, even his acquaintance with the San Franciscans that were attempting to reclaim that bawdy borough, did not affect the universal idea he had at last succeeded in focussing. He had cast out disgust and disapproval as youthful and unphilosophical, resolved anew to play his part in the history of the country, letting the unborn events of his term of enforced quiescence determine what the part must be. He had not yet reached the stage of enthusiasm, but he had at least mounted to that of interest; and he had even caught himself wondering if, should a law pass in Great Britain, reducing the House of Peers to an elective body, or permitting peers of his grade to sit in the House of Commons, he would return? There was little doubt that there was more good to be accomplished in the new country.
His English great-great-grandfather had been historically active in the reforms of 1832; a great-uncle had devoted his services to the passing of the Reform Act of 1867; and a cousin to the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883. Reform was in his blood, and as, after all, the United States was as much his own as Great Britain, he hoped in time to feel for it the same passion of affection he had cherished for the country that had given him fame and honors with both hands. And he knew that his other hope of being of practical service to the United States in accordance with his own ideal was no idle dream, for it was quite apparent from the newspapers and reviews that the best men all over the country were awake at last to the perils besetting the Republic, and that a bloodless revolution was slowly making its way over the country. He had unmitigated contempt for the revolutionist of the red shirt, insatiable for the notoriety so easily obtained by appealing to the passions of men a shade more ignorant than himself; no blood revolution was possible in the United States during its present condition of prosperity. No country can be universally roused to revolt with any weapons more deadly than words until it has long felt the pinch of hunger in its vitals, and watched millions starve while hundreds consumed the fat of the land. No doubt there was grinding poverty in the crowded tenement districts of the Eastern States, but those men were not the stuff of which revolutionists were made, if only because they deliberately elected the rigors of the town rather than supply the crying demand for labor and servants throughout the country. It was only the idle that foregathered and talked anarchism or even socialism; not those that cared to work.
Here in California there was practically no such thing as poverty, or if there was, the pauper, if fairly able of body, should be set up in a public pillory. With a scale of wages the highest in the world, a corresponding cheapness of every necessity of life, with the bare exception of coal, needed in excess during one short season of the twelve-month, sun for eight unbroken months, and a soil so fertile that in many places it yielded two crops a year, there would have been no discontent had it not been for the rapacity of labor unions, and the systematic agitations of men like Tom Colton. In every human heart there is the germ of discontent, no matter what the conditions, but Gwynne recognized the possibility of diverting this uneasy parasite from imaginary personal grievances to the public good, to measures which would benefit the mass, subtly elevating man's opinion of himself in the process, and so taking the first long stride in the direction of general political reform. It was only by making the masses see their own part in the abominable political corruption that made "graft" universal, and permitted the rapid concentration of the country's wealth into a few insolent hands, that the decapitation of the swarms of professional politicians could be accomplished. In no part of the United States could such reforms be attempted with anything like the same prospect of success, as in this State with its traditions of contempt of money for its own sake, and its almost primeval sense of independence. It was true that there was no superb indifference to money in the small towns, but much of the old spirit lingered among those that lived close to the soil; and Gwynne had never seen such uncalculating lavishness, such a humorous contempt for economy as in San Francisco. He was himself generous by instinct and habit, but this gay reckless openhandedness, whether a man had anything to spend or not, had already stirred some deeper instinct still, possibly his pioneer, perhaps his Spanish, and he had never enjoyed anything more in his life than certain nights in San Francisco, when he had sallied forth with his pockets full of gold and returned to Russian Hill on foot for want of a five-cent piece to pay his car-fare. He had himself too well in hand ever to give permanent rein to any such latent propensities, and he had no intention of impoverishing himself, but the fact that the genius of the city was in his blood warmed it to the strange, fascinating, wicked, friendly, young-old city on the rim of the Pacific.
As it happened, he was not in the humor for reading on the morning after the meeting of the female clans, nor were there any clients in the outer office, and he uttered some of his impressions aloud to the judge who was sitting restlessly by the window, ostensibly watching Main Street. Gwynne had wondered at the old gentleman's sudden idleness, but fell easily into conversation this languid morning that was more like spring than belated winter.
"I can understand the fascination of San Francisco for anybody," said the uneasy judge. "I wonder—" with a sudden inspiration, "if it wouldn't be better for you to go into the law-office of a friend of mine down there for a while. I mean—" in response to Gwynne's look of astonishment, "of course I should hate to lose you—quite as much as I hated to lose my own son, and yours is the only society in which I have found any positive refreshment for years. But—well! in fact it would be as well for you to leave Rosewater for a while—until all this talk has died out."
"What talk?"
The judge felt what courage was left in him oozing under Gwynne's icy stare.
"Oh Lord! It's just this, Gwynne—just fancy I am really your father. There are a lot of infernal old hens in this town—where don't they roost, anyway?—and they have been exercising themselves over your going out to Isabel's so much, especially at night. They've got the idea into their empty heads that Isabel has come back from Europe, where she lived by herself, with all sorts of free-and-easy notions. Perhaps the real truth is that they distrust any girl as handsome as that who won't marry. The talk didn't amount to much until yesterday morning—"
"Ah!" Gwynne stood up and took his hat from the little private rack. "Suppose you ask Mrs. Leslie to tell the hens that I have spent a great many futile evening hours, the only ones I have at my private disposal, trying to induce Miss Otis to marry me, and that yesterday evening, after the fourth or fifth refusal, I borrowed her horse, having walked out, and rode half-way to San Francisco to steady my nerves. Love and the law combined are somewhat of a load to carry. I will go out now and try my luck again. Perhaps this talk will influence her a bit. In fact I promise that it shall."