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."