XIV
A fortnight later Isabel announced to Gwynne that she intended to give a party and introduce him to the young people of Rosewater.
"All the girls want to know you, Anabel tells me, and as it is a relief to hear that they are interested in something besides cards, and as nobody else seems disposed to take the initiative, I have concluded to play the grande dame for a night. In a way it is my duty to introduce you formally, although it would be more so if they had done anything for me since my return. However—I will ask them for next Saturday evening if you have nothing better to do."
"One day is quite the same as another to me," said Gwynne, dryly. "What do you fancy are my evening engagements? I have not even begun to read law with Mr. Leslie; he has gone off to southern California to see his son. He says he is always restless in the autumn, as young people are in the spring, but has promised me his attention before the middle of this month."
They were rowing down the channel of the wider portion of the creek towards Isabel's landing, their boat filled with spoil. The little steamboat was winding proudly through the marsh, there were a dozen sails in sight; from the south came an incessant sound of firing. The distant mountains looked as hard as metal and there was a new crispness in the air. Little rain had fallen, but it was no longer summer. Gwynne had exchanged his khaki riding-clothes for corduroy; and Isabel's habit, although still dust-colored, was made of cloth instead of pongee. To-day they wore light covert coats over their canvas and rubber.
With the passing of the heat and the advent of the daily electric breezes sweeping up the valleys from the sea, Gwynne felt a slow lifting of the dead weight on his spirits, although he was only happy when he had his gun in his hand. California seemed less like a voluptuous leviathan blowing poppy-dust that blunted the memory of all things beyond her borders. At first he had been vaguely uneasy at the insidious suggestion that he had transferred himself to another planet, but he was beginning to suspect that California, true to her sex, might have surprises in store that would quicken his blood at least. He still disliked her at night: the high unfriendly arch of her sky, the sinister atmosphere that brooded over her spaces, suggesting illimitable reaches where no man dwelt, or would long be tolerated. But her days seemed full of promise, and they certainly were full of beauty.
He still fought with a longing to confide in Isabel: his apprehensions and doubts, his haunting interrogation of inherent greatness. But he turned from the temptation in a panic of spirit, sure that he would fail unless he fought his battle alone. He had pondered more and more upon his possible debt to his mother; and the doubt that she might have been the foundation of his courage and self-confidence was as bitter as that he might have owed the extraordinary rapidity of his career to the influence of his family and name. And Isabel's very strength alarmed him, the more so as he felt her subtle fingers among the leaves of his new destiny. So he merely smiled into her eyes and made a gallant remark, a purely masculine method of emphasizing that woman is charming in her proper place.
"I shall be delighted to dance again; particularly—it seems odd—as I have never danced with you. And it is a year since I have seen you in an evening gown. I have a vivid remembrance of how you looked that night at Arcot, when you turned so many heads."
Isabel colored, and whether with pleasure or resentment, she had not the least idea. But she answered, hastily: