"Where _is_ Rosewater? What a jolly name!"

"It is in northern California, not far from Lady Victoria's ranch and what is left of ours. I have spent most of my life in or near it--my father was a lawyer."

"Do tell me about yourself!" Like most amiable spinsters, she was as interested in the suggestive stranger as in a new novel. She sank with a sigh of comfort into the depths of the chair. "May I smoke? Are you shocked?"

Then she colored apprehensively, fearing that her doubt might be construed as an insult to Rosewater.

But Miss Otis met it with her first smile. "Oh no," she replied. "Will you give me one? Mine are in my trunk and they haven't brought it up."

She took a cigarette from the gayly tendered case and smoked for a few moments in silence.

"I don't know why you should be interested in my history," she said at last in her slow cold voice, so strikingly devoid of the national animation. "It has been far too uneventful. I have an adopted sister, six years older than myself, who married twelve years ago. Her husband is an artist in San Francisco, rather a genius, so they are always poor.

My mother died when I was little. After my sister married I took care of my father until I was twenty-one, when he died--four years ago. There are very good schools in Rosewater, particularly the High School. My father also taught me languages. He had a very fine library. But I do not believe this interests you. Doubtless you want to know something of the life with which Lady Victoria is so remotely connected."

"I am far more interested in you. Tell me whichever you like first. How _are_ you related, by-the-way?"

"Father used to draw our family tree whenever he had bronchitis in winter. One of the most famous of the Spanish Californians was Don Jose Arguello. We are descended from one of his sons, who had a ranch of a hundred thousand acres in the south. When the Americans came, long after, they robbed the Californians shamefully, but fortunately the son of the Arguello that owned the ranch at the time married an American girl whose father bought up the mortgages. He left the property to his only grandchild, a girl, who married my great-grandfather, James Otis--a northern rancher, born in Boston, and descended from old Sam Adams. He had two children, a boy and a girl, who inherited the northern and southern ranches in equal shares. The girl came over to England to visit an aunt who lived here, was presented at court, and straightway married a lord."

"Then you are second cousin to Vicky and third to Jack. I had no idea the relationship was so close."

"It has seemed very remote to me ever since I laid eyes on Lady Victoria down-stairs. Father made me promise, just before he died, that if ever I visited Europe I would look her up. Somehow I hadn't thought of her except as Elton Gwynne's mother, so I wrote to her without a qualm. But I see that she is an individual."

"Rather! How self-contained our great London is, after all! Vicky has been a beauty for over thirty years--to be sure her fame was at its height before you were old enough to be interested in such things. But I should have thought your father--"

"He must have known all about her. It comes back to me that he was very proud of the connection for more than family reasons, but it made no impression on me at the time."

"Proud?"

"Yes, he was rather a sn.o.b. He was very clever, but he fell out of things, and being able to dwell on his English and Spanish connections meant a good deal to him. I can recite the family history backwards."

"But if he was clever, why on earth did he live in Rosewater? Surely he could have practised in San Francisco?"

"He drank. When a man drinks he doesn't care much where he lives. My father had fads but no ambition."

"Great heaven!" exclaimed Miss Thangue, aghast at this toneless frankness. "You must have been glad to be rid of him!"

"I was fond of him, but his death was a great relief. He was a hard steady secret drinker. I nursed him through several attacks of delirium tremens, and was always in fear that he would get out and disgrace us.

Sometimes he did, although when I saw the worst coming I generally managed to get him over to the ranch. Of course it tied me down. I rarely even visited my sister. My father hated San Francisco. He had practised there in his youth, promised great things, had plenty of money. The time came--" She shrugged her shoulders, although without the slightest change of expression. "I never lived my own life until he died, but I have lived it ever since."

"And the first thing you did with your liberty was to come to Europe,"

said Miss Thangue, with a sympathetic smile.

"Of course. My father and uncle had got rid of most of their property long before they died; there isn't an acre left of our share in the southern estate. But my uncle died six years ago and willed me all that remained of the northern, as well as some land in the poorer quarter of San Francisco. I could not touch the princ.i.p.al during the lifetime of my father, but we lived on the ranch and I managed it and was ent.i.tled, by the terms of the will, to what I could make it yield. When I was finally mistress of my fortunes I left it in charge of an old servant, sold enough to pay off the mortgage on a property in San Francisco I inherited from my mother, and came to Europe with a personally conducted tour."

Miss Thangue shuddered. The phrase unrolled a vista of commonness and attrition. Miss Otis continued, calmly: "That is the way I should feel now. But it was my only chance then; or rather I had seen enough of business to avoid making mistakes when I could. In that way I learned the ropes. After we had been rushed about for six weeks and I could not have told you whether the Pitti Palace was in Italy or France, and the celebrated frescos were one vast pink smudge, the party returned and I wandered on by myself. I spent a winter in Paris, and months in Brittany, Austria, Italy, Spain--Munich." It was here that her even tones left their register for a second. "I studied the languages, the literatures, the peoples, music, pictures. In Munich"--this time Flora's alert ear detected no vibration--"and also in Rome, I saw something of society. It was a life full of freedom, and I shall never cease to be grateful for it, but I must go home soon and look after my affairs. I left England to the last, like the best things of the banquet. I hope Lady Victoria--I shall never be able to call her Cousin Victoria, as I remember father did--will be nice to me. I have seen a good deal of life, but have never had a real _girl's_ time, and I should love it.

Besides, I have a lot of new frocks."

"I am sure Vicky will be nice to you. If she isn't, I'll find some one that will be. You might marry Jack if you had money enough. We are dying to get him married--and a California cousin--it would be too romantic.

And you would hold your own anywhere!"

But Miss Otis expanded a fine nostril. "I have no desire to marry. I feel as if I had had enough of men to last until I am forty--what with those I have buried, and others I have known at home and in Europe--to say nothing of the executors of my uncle's will, who did not approve of my coming abroad alone and delayed the settlement of the estate as long as possible. And now I have had too much liberty! Besides, I have seen 'Jack's' picture--two years ago, in a magazine. I will confess I had some romantic notions about him: imagined him very dashing, bold, handsome; insolent, if you like--the traditional young aristocrat, glorified by genius. He looks like Uncle Hiram."

"Is that who Jack looks like? We never could make out. No, Jack is not much to look at, except when he wakes up--I have seen him quite transfigured on the platform. But he is as insolent as you could wish, and has a superb confidence in himself that his enemies call by the most offensive names. But he is a dear, in spite of all, and I quite adore him."

"Perhaps; but life, myself, so many mysteries and problems, upon which I have barely turned a dark lantern as yet, interest me far more than any man could, unless he were superlative. I have had my disillusions."

She lit another cigarette, and for a few moments looked silently out of the window at the darkening woods beyond the lawn. Flora Thangue regarded her with a swelling interest. It was a type of which she had no knowledge, evidently not a common type even in the hypothetical land of the free; she had visited New York and Newport and known many Americans.

True, she had never met the provincial type before, but she doubted if Rosewater had produced a crop of Isabel Otises. What was at the source of that cold-blooded frankness, so different from the English fashion of alternately speaking out and knowing nothing? Was she merely an egoist--it ran in the family--or did it conceal much that she had no intention of revealing? Her very beauty was of a type rarely seen in the America of to-day, prevalent as it may have been a hundred years ago: she looked like a feminine edition of the first group of American statesmen--although black Spanish hair was pulled carelessly over the high forehead, a heavy coil encircling the head in a long upward sweep, and the half-dreaming, half-penetrating regard of the light-blue eyes was softened by a heavy growth of lash. The eyebrows were low and thick, the upper lip was sensitive, quivering sometimes as she talked, but the lower was firm and full. It was the brow, the profile, the strength of character expressed, the general seriousness of the fine face and head, that made her look like a reversion to the type that gave birth to a nation. But Miss Thangue had seen too much of the world to judge any one by his inherited sh.e.l.l. She had observed many Americans with fine heads and bulging brows concealing practically nothing, insignificant German heads whose intellects had terrified her, the romantic Spanish eyes of the most unromantic people in Europe, English pride and an icy mask of breeding guarding from the casual eye the most lawless and ribald instincts. Therefore had she no intention of taking this new specimen on trust, much as she liked her, and she speculated upon her possibilities in the friendly silence that had fallen between them. Life is composed of individuals and their choruses, and Flora, humorously admitting the fact, was far more interested in others than in herself.

Only in the dense silky ma.s.ses of her black hair and the almost stolid absence of gesture did the American betray her Spanish ancestry; but how much of the Spaniard, subtle, patient, vengeful, treacherous, mighty in pa.s.sive resistance and cunning, lay behind those deep fearless blue eyes of her New England ancestors? Or was she not Spanish at all, but merely a higher type of American--or wholly herself? Would Jack, susceptible and pa.s.sionate, a worshipper of beauty down among the roots of his abnormal cleverness and egoism, fall in love with her? And what then?

The girl, with her strong stern profile against the shadows, her low brooding brows, might wield a power far more dangerous than that of the average fascinating woman, if her will marshalled the rest of her faculties and drove them in a straight line; although the luminous skin as polished as ivory, the low full curves and slow graceful movements of her figure added a potency that Flora, always an amused observer of men, would have been the last to ignore. Victoria, high-bred, fastidious, mocking, yet unmistakably pa.s.sionate and possibly insurgent, was of that mint of woman about whom men had gone mad since the world began.

But this girl, who might be as cold as the moon, or not, looked, in any case, capable of clasping a man's throat with her strong little hand, and gently turning his head from east to west. At this point Miss Thangue rose impatiently and rang a bell. Jack's career was almost at the flood. No woman could submerge his intellect and stupendous interests for more than a moment.

"Order lights and have your trunks brought up," she said. "I will send one of the housemaids to help you dress. My room is over on the other side of the house--go through that door opposite, and down a corridor until you come to another long hall and staircase like the one on this side. You will find my name on the door. Knock at about a quarter-past eight and I will go down with you. Vicky may be in an angelic humor and she may not. It depends mainly upon whether Jack condescends to turn up.

I suppose you know all about him; it would hardly do for you to face him and his mother if you didn't. He has travelled quite exhaustively in the colonies and given us some of the most informing literature on that subject that we have. He was out in Africa when the Boer War broke out, and once before in India, when there was fighting, volunteered both times and did brilliant service. He has no end of medals with clasps.

Then he suddenly went in for politics and announced himself an uncompromising Liberal. It nearly killed his grandfather--Lord Strathland--for Jack is the one person on earth that he loves as much as himself; and it has alienated many of his relatives on both sides--which gave him one more chance to win against terrific odds; he enjoys that sort of thing. He had been in but two years when there was a general election, and he has only just got back--he contested three divisions before he won his seat this time, and he had almost as hard a fight before. Vicky, who hates the Gwynnes, with the exception of Lord Zeal, the heir, besides believing in Jack as you would in Solomon, has steadily upheld him; and she is a powerful ally--not only one of the most distinguished of the political women, but still turns heads when she chooses, and her game is generally in the cabinet preserves, when it is not in the diplomatic. I must run. Put on your most fetching gown.

Julia Kaye, a detestable little parvenu, is here. Jack is in love with her and she has chosen another. It will be a cousinly duty to console him. Then you can turn him over to some one else. Ta, ta!" Her last words floated back from the depths of the corridor; a clock was striking and she had pattered off hastily.

III

The "Jack," whose more distinguished patronymic was so gayly caracolling down the road to posterity, had arrived, and after dressing hastily, sought his mother. Her hair was done, her gown laced; she dismissed her maid at once, and while her eyes melted, in the fashion of mothers, she embraced her son with something more than maternal warmth: a curious suggestion of relief, of stepping out of her own personality and leaving it like a heap of clothes on the floor. This att.i.tude had occasionally puzzled her idol, but he was too masculine to a.n.a.lyze. She was his best friend and a delightful person to have for a mother; her soul might be her own possession undisturbed. He admired her almost as much as he did himself, and to-night he kissed her fondly and told her gallantly that she was looking even more beautiful than usual.

"It is all this white after the dead black," said Lady Victoria, smiling appreciatively. "I am thankful that prolonged mourning is out of date; it made a fright of me and was getting on my nerves." She wore no jewels save a high diamond dog-collar and a few sparkling combs in her hair, but she made a superb appearance with the long white sweep of shoulders and bust, her brilliant eyes and smart tailed gown of black chiffon and Irish lace. Her arms, no longer rounded as when artists had fought to paint her, were but half-revealed under floating sleeves, and her fair tapering hands were even younger than her face.

She opened a large black fan and moved it slowly while looking intently at her son's bent profile. "Something has gone wrong," she said. "Have you seen Julia Kaye again?"

"No, I was invited to Maundrell Abbey last week, but couldn't manage it, of course. And I knew she was to be here. Nothing has gone wrong--but I had rather a shock this morning. I met Zeal at the club. He looks like a death's head. He vowed he was taking even better care of himself than usual, but his chest is bad again. He talked about going to Davos--the very word makes me sick! In the next breath he said he might go out to Africa. Can't you hurry on his marriage?--persuade Carry that it is her duty to go with him?"

"I should have no difficulty persuading Carry. The rub is with him.

Compulsory asceticism has bred misogyny, and misogyny scruples. He says that he has sins enough to his account without laying up a reckoning with posterity. If it were not for you I should agree with him. I feel like a conspirator--"

"There is no reason why his children should be consumptive. Carry's physique is Wagnerian, and she is just the woman to look after her children herself. Zeal's health was thrown to the dogs by a weak indulgent frivolous mother, and what she left him he disposed of later when he made as great an a.s.s of himself as might have been expected. He is a hypochondriac now and would keep a close watch on his heir's health and habits; you may be sure of that. He ought not to be in London now--it is stifling--went up for some business meeting or other--seemed to wish to avoid details. I hope to heaven he has not been relieving the monotony of his life by some rotten speculation. I begged him to come down here, but he wouldn't--says that his hand is no longer steady enough to hold a gun--it's awful!--worse because I'm not merely fond of him and regretting the possible loss of a good friend--I have felt like a beast all day. But I can't help it. For G.o.d's sake write and persuade him to go to Davos at once--and picture the delights of a pretty and devoted nurse. I feel as if I had ashes in my mouth--and yesterday I was so happy!" he burst out, with the petulance of a child.

"I will write to-night," she said, soothingly. "He has a very slow form of consumption; I have the a.s.surance of his doctors. And at least he has committed himself with Carry, and announced his intention to marry as soon as a sojourn somewhere has made him feel fit again. You know how much better he always is when he comes back. Put it out of your mind to-night. I want you to be as happy as I am. Everybody is talking of the brilliance of your campaign--"

"Much good brilliance will do me if I am to rot in the Upper House!"

"Put it out of your mind; don't let apprehension control you for a moment. Believe me, will-power counts in life for more than everything else combined, and if it isn't watched it weakens."

"All right, mummy. You are never so original as when you preach. So Julia Kaye came down this afternoon? Talk about will. Mine should be of pure steel; I have ordered her out of my consciousness these last weeks at the point of the bayonet. She has written me exactly three times.

However--those letters were charming," he added, with the sudden smile that transfigured his face, routing the overbearing and contemptuous expression that had won him so many enemies; friends and flatterers and the happy circ.u.mstances of his life had combined thoroughly to spoil him. "Do you maintain that will can win a woman?" he added, sharply.

She was the woman to laugh outright at such a suggestion. "No, nor that it can uproot love, although it can give it a good shaking and lock it in the dark room. I doubt if you love Julia Kaye, but you will find that out for yourself. You might bring her to terms by flirting a little with your American cousin--"

"My what?" He opened his eyes as widely as he had ever done when a school-boy.