The hour was four, and after they had said their last good-night to the guests whose homes lay between the Hofer mansion and their own, they met but one foot passenger as belated as themselves. This was a big man that loomed suddenly out of the fog. Isabel screamed and ran into the middle of the street, and Gwynne, who had obediently taken out his pistol, half raised it. But the man laughed.
"I'm on the lookout for thim meself," he said, in a rich brogue. "Good luck to yees."
As they let themselves into the house, Gwynne threw his hat and coat on the settle in the vestibule, and then ran his hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his head, a habit of his when he had a suggestion to make.
"I remember we were going to sit up the rest of that night—or morning—after Arcot," he said. "Are you very tired?"
"Tired? I shall not sleep a wink for hours. The fire is sure to be laid in the tower-room."
They went into the small circular room, furnished in several shades of green, that Isabel had retained for her own use, and while she shook down her skirts Gwynne applied a match to the coals. The raw morning air had penetrated the house, too old-fashioned to have a furnace, but wooden walls are quickly heated. When Gwynne had removed the blower several times and satisfied himself that the hard coals would burn, he resumed the perpendicular.
He looked doubtfully at Isabel, who was still wrapped in her cloak, and had elevated her feet, covered with the long carriage-boots, to the fender. "Sha'n't you take off those things?" he asked. "You don't look as if you meant to stay."
"You can take off the boots, but I'll keep on my coat for a few moments."
He laughed as he knelt again. "I certainly am getting broken in. I have known Englishwomen to pull off their husband's hunting-boots after a hard day's work—"
"The idea!"
"Very good idea. Do you mean that you would not?"
"Well, I might, as a return favor. You need not take all night to pull off mine."
"You might, at least, let virtue be its own reward. It's not often it has the chance."
"Well, get up and don't be an idiot. I suppose you have been flirting in the conservatory all the evening and haven't had time to readjust your mood."
"Mrs. Hofer has no conservatory. Great oversight. But I did sit out a dance or two in that room with the immense window—"
"With whom?"
"I have forgotten her name. Will you have a cigarette?"
"No, but you may smoke if you like."
He had settled himself in a deep chair on the opposite side of the hearth. There was a silence of nearly ten minutes, until Isabel, suddenly removing her coat, brought Gwynne out of his reverie.
"I cannot say that to-night was in any sense a repetition of my own experience at Arcot," he said, abruptly. "That night—I have tried to forget it—I had enough adulation to turn any man's head. I fancy it was pretty well turned, and that made the wrench during the small hours the more severe. Still, it has been an interesting evening, and one or two things happened."
"What?" Isabel was full of her own experiences, but too much of a woman to betray the fact when a man wanted to talk about himself.
"I danced for a while, but I had had exercise enough during the day, and didn't care particularly about it. Besides, all the girls I danced with, and that one I sat up-stairs with for a few minutes, not only talked my head off, but quizzed me, and I did not understand it. To my amazement, I learned not long after that they know who I am. Can you imagine how it got out?"
"They know everything. It is an old saying that the San Francisco girls scent a stranger the moment he leaves the tram at the Oakland mole, and know all about him before he has registered. The obscurest knight could not hide himself in this town. Rosewater alone saved you so long. How did they quiz you?"
"Each began at once to talk about my 'distinguished relative, Elton Gwynne.' I may be more dense than most, or perhaps I was merely bored, but I assumed that they thought I was his brother and knew his whereabouts. When supper was half over, and I was congratulating myself that I had got out of the cotillon, even with you, for it meant dancing with a lot of others, my host took me firmly by the arm and marched me up-stairs. He informed me that he was 'bored stiff,' could see that I was, and had 'coralled' a few more choice spirits. We went, not to the smoking or billiard-room, but to his own bedroom, and here I found four or five more of your strenuous millionaires, the reform editor, and the lawyer that looks like a bull-dog waiting for the word to spring at the throat of the Boss and his whole vile crew.
"Here we sat and smoked until the air inside was as thick as the fog that blotted out the lights of the city and towns opposite. Of course the talk was of the rotten state of San Francisco. I never heard the whole story before, and it made my hair stand on end. I knew that vice flaunted itself more openly here than elsewhere, but I did not guess that the thousand and one establishments of every sort, from the lowest negro dive under the sidewalk, and the snares for the very young of both sexes, straight up to the most gaudy 'French restaurants,' as well as Chinatown, Barbary coast, and all the rest, paid tribute to the gang of political ruffians that have got control of the city. No wonder the last have developed a preternatural sharpness that makes it next to impossible to bring the charges home, for they will all be rich enough in time to move to Europe and buy up such salable scions of improverished houses as happen to be on the market. The thing is as well known as I know that you are my third cousin, but, although the second-rate grafters are brazen enough, it is not worth while to attack them until the Boss is done for, and so far he has proved much too clever to be caught. A college man, although of low origin, and an accomplished lawyer of a sort, he pockets huge sums from these disreputable establishments, for himself and his minion, the mayor, and calls them attorney's fees. Naturally the panderers to vice won't admit they are blackmailed: they are between the devil and the deep sea; if the fight came on in earnest, and they gave evidence against the Boss, and the Boss won, he would clean them all out and put others in. The Reformers, if they won, would clean them out too; so, naturally, they hold their tongues and hope this reform movement will peter out as so many others have done. So do the Board of Supervisors whom the Boss also owns and through whom he blackmails the great corporations. But—and when they had got to this point in the talk there was an abrupt pause, and then Hofer turned to me and said: 'Even if you don't come in and join us, which I always hope you will do, I know a man that can keep his mouth shut when I see him. So fire away.'
"And then they discussed the fact that one of their number had recently gone to Washington to ask the President to send out an able man of the Government Secret Service; they have every reason to believe that this request will be complied with. With sufficient evidence they would then make a quiet crusade in the hope of rousing public spirit to the extent of forcing in a grand jury that could not be bought by the Boss. Needless to say he has controlled every grand jury that has met during his reign, and one might as well hope to convict a wind for unroofing a house, even were he not master of every legal trick himself, and had he taken less pains to cover up his tracks. In this detective lies their chief hope at present; but what a slender hope it is, when you consider the devil-may-care character of these San Franciscans, who would dance on the edge of hell, with equal nonchalance, if only there were a screen between. There is not an outstanding excuse for forming a vigilance committee, as there was during the Dennis Kearney-Anti-Chinese riots of 1879, and there is no such aroused public spirit and indignation as sustained the Vigilantes of the Fifties. These rascals take good care to be non-sensational in their methods, and what the San Franciscan doesn't see doesn't worry him. The city is rich, prosperous, famous, tourists are pouring in, the best in drama and opera comes yearly—to be presented in fire-traps whose owners pay toll to the Boss; they already have the handsomest hotels in the world, the finest cooking, climate; even earthquakes—severe ones—have moved elsewhere. What can you do with a people like that? They are fairly insolent in their sense of security. Let the political gang make their share. There is enough for all. But don't bother us. Let us be happy. Vive la bagatelle. There you have the motto of San Francisco.
"By the time they had threshed the subject out, explaining details and plans to me, as if I were already one of them, I was feeling pretty uncomfortable. Naturally, I blurted out that I could no longer accept their hospitality and confidence on false pretences, and told them who I was. Each got up in turn, solemnly held out his hand, and said, 'Shake.' Then Hofer informed me that they had all been practically certain for some time that I was myself; being good enough to add: 'We knew there couldn't be more than one of you; and we are also able to put two and two together, occasionally. Before we thought of it, however, you struck us all as being a man accustomed to homage. Later we discovered that you were choke full of seven different kinds of ability, and it was then that the twos began to move towards each other on the board; and we decided that we must have you here, right here in San Francisco. What can a man like you find in a God-forsaken place like Rosewater, anyhow? The Eggopolis! You can't afford to hail from there; it would stick to you for the rest of your life. And we have just got to have you. We may have some of the ablest lawyers in the country in San Francisco, and a few honest ones, but we can accommodate one more; and a man that will throw over a great title and an already won name for the sake of standing on his own legs—that's the sort of stuff the old pioneers were made of. So, here you must come, and stand shoulder to shoulder with us.'
"I replied that I must finish my law studies with Judge Leslie first, and have some little practice under his direction; that I intended to go in for politics, but that for some years all the power over men I could acquire would be through the law—and I had remarkable chances for contact in and about Rosewater; where, moreover, if they learned who I was it would not matter much. It might be quite otherwise in the city. To this they agreed: that is to say, that I should remain in Rosewater for six months or a year longer; but they asked me to promise that if any great emergency arose, in which they believed I could be of use, I would come at their call. And I promised."
He rose and moved restlessly about the room. "Upon my word!" he exclaimed; and Isabel, who had not taken her eyes off him, although he had addressed the greater part of his talk to the fire, noted that he was paler than usual—and that his eyes were very bright; "upon my word, I really do feel more elated than on that night at Arcot. That small devoted band of men!—most of them with millions they might take to the most civilized capitals of the world and spend in splendid enjoyment—I never have met such patriotism! It is magnificent! And to find it out here in this stranded city—that fascinates the very heart out of you, by-the-way—I don't know that I wonder so much—I believe I shall succumb myself in time—it is like being on another planet. At any rate I hated myself to-night for any sickness of spirit I may have permitted to linger—for a while my very personality seemed to melt into what may prove an even greater cause than all that appears on the surface. The present California may be merely the nucleus of a great future Western civilization, so unlike the Eastern that no doubt it will dissever itself in time and breed still wider divergences; until the old generic term American will no longer apply to both. Moreover, it already feels that it owns the Pacific, and faces the Orient alone. And to rebuild this city—you have seen the Burnham plans—transform it into the most beautiful city of the modern world—to give it a great, instead of a merely brilliant and erratic civilization—a perfect administration—what dreamers! What imagination! It is an inspiration to come into contact with an idealism that money, and power, and daily contact with the mean and base in human nature—"
"I could love you!" cried Isabel. "If you say any more, I believe I shall kiss you again."
"If you do," said Gwynne, deliberately, "I shall neither pinch you nor push you away. But you may regret it, nevertheless."
He threw himself once more into his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. "It is an astonishing fact," he said—"This—I was reading the history of the Kearney riots, only the other day. The commentator was very severe on the Irish and German element that imperilled the city for purely personal reasons; that was responsible for the most remarkable and reprehensible of all the State Constitutions. That was not quite thirty years ago. Whether any of these men, who are mainly of Irish or German descent, are the sons or grandsons of any of those old Sand-lot agitators I have no means of knowing; probably not, their fortunes were no doubt already in the making, and the founders had graduated from the class that went to sand-lot meetings and shouted, 'The Chinese must go.' But it is certainly one of the oddest evolutions in history that it should be the descendants of that foreign element alone that take any real interest in this city; that are ardent to reform it, beautify it; that are willing to devote their time and a good part of their fortunes to that end. So far, although I have met in the clubs many old gentlemen of charming manners and prehistoric descent—that is from '49, or even the more pretentious East and South; and, at all sorts of places, their sons—who are either building up new fortunes or spending old ones—there is not one, so far as my observation serves me, that has lifted a finger to fling off this octopus. Hofer says they have even ceased to grumble. Their incomes are assured. Some are merely well off, others immensely wealthy—with a sufficiency invested elsewhere. All can command about the same amount of luxury, however their establishments may vary in splendor. And nothing can exceed the luxury of their Clubs. The older men at least—and they are not so old—have subsided into a slothful content that makes them a cross between a higher sort of carnivorous animal and the tacit supporters of the criminals in power. These friends of mine, whose fathers may or may not have listened to Kearney in the Sand-lots, are worth the whole lot of your ancient aristocracy—hybrid, anyhow—and if I do 'hang out my shingle' here in San Francisco, they are the only ones I care anything about knowing. They are the only real Americans I have met, for that matter—according to your own standards—" He broke off abruptly and leaned forward, smiling at his companion. "I meant to ask you as soon as we got home to tell me all about your first great party in your beloved city, but I have been led away by my natural egotism. You were, by general acclaim, I fancy, the beauty of the evening. Did you enjoy it all as much as you expected?"
"I fancy I should have enjoyed it more if I had been up-stairs with you. I found it more of an effort than I had imagined to make conversation with those young men. Of course I enjoyed being openly admired and besought for dances. Who wouldn't? But I never deluded myself for a moment that I was anything approaching those old-time belles. As the conditions have passed away, however, my vanity doesn't suffer. At all events I am going to carry out my program and rush about to everything that is given this week, to forget Rosewater, every aspiration, all that ever happened to me. Every girl should have one girl's good time, and although mine is belated, it would be silly to let it pass. Besides, I am curious to see if I really can—well, delude myself."
"So am I! I have an idea you won't. You are quite different from all those girls, who are at the same time the brightest and the most frivolous, the most feminine and the most modern, the most daring and the most indifferent, I have ever met. Those that have been as carefully brought up as our ninetieth cousin, Inez Trennahan, are simply moulds for the future to run into. There were several young persons that looked as if they might go pretty far in a conservatory—perhaps that is the reason Mrs. Hofer has none. She appears to have Irish virtue in excess, and I expect the larky would get short shrift from her. But you—you are quite unlike them all."
"I am a Californian," said Isabel, defiantly.
"Yes, but of a very exclusive sort—to say nothing of the peculiar circumstances that were bound to breed seriousness of mind. And you have quite a distinguished collection of real ancestors, and intellect instead of mere cleverness. It is only once in a while that your—let me whisper it—Western frankness and ingenuousness leap out—the impulsiveness, the electric passion. When a certain amount of readjustment has gone on inside of you and your more natural elements work their way up and take possession, I really believe I shall fall in love with you, and marry you out of hand—if you remain as beautiful as you are to-night."
"All right," said Isabel, pretending to stifle a yawn. "That would be interesting. All the clocks are booming something. Let us go out and see if the sun is rising."
She wrapped herself in her cloak once more, and they climbed to the crest of the hill and watched the sun rise behind the Berkeley mountains and bathe San Francisco in trembling fire. It routed what was left of the fog, although for a time the walls and waters of the Golden Gate looked darker than before, and Tamalpais was a mountain of onyx. In a few moments the smoke that wrapped the San Francisco day in a brown perpetual haze began to ascend first from the little chimneys and then from the great stacks. But until then every steeple, every tower, the great piles of stone and brick in the valley, the old gardens full of eucalyptus-trees and weeping willows, the strange assortment of architectures on Nob Hill, even the rows of houses on the tapering half-circle of hills beyond the valley, miles away, stood out as bright and sharp and shadowless as if caught and imprisoned in a crystal ball. It was the drifting smoke that seemed to bind all together and make the city fit for humanity.
Gwynne pointed to a spot far to the southeast, in the valley between Market Street—the wide diagonal highway that cut the city in two, and ran from the ferries almost to the foot of Twin Peaks—and the high mound known as Rincon Hill. "There," he said, "are the hovels and shops that cover the block belonging to my mother and myself, and that is to make us rich. Half is practically sold, and the proceeds, and the money raised on the other half, will erect a building that is to cost some two hundred thousand dollars. The insurance rates will be enormous, but even so the income should be really a great one. If all goes well, the foundations—of reinforced concrete, although they still laugh at earthquakes—but Mr. Colton is a monster of caution—will be laid in about six weeks, and then I shall watch the steel framework rise with a very considerable interest."
"That means the beginnings of a millionaire. Do you really care so much to be rich?"
"I know the value of money," said Gwynne, dryly. "I have no intention of buying men after the fashion of your friend Tom Colton, but it is a mighty good background for personality. Now you had better go in and get some beauty sleep."