Ancestors: A Novel

  XVI

  Judge Leslie returned on the following day, and, sending for Gwynne atonce, announced that he was ready to settle down for the winter. Apartner attended to the business of the office, and the judge shuthimself up with Gwynne in the large light room containing his fine lawlibrary, and examined his promising pupil. Gwynne was well read in theEnglish Common Law, and in Comparative Jurisprudence, particularly inthe history of treaties and the comity of nations. So much he hadregarded as necessary to the education of a future cabinet minister.

  Judge Leslie sketched out a course of study which embraced Cooley andKent on Constitutional Law, compilations of Leading Cases, Story onContracts, the California Codes, Civil, Penal, and Political, andCorporation Law. "The money is in the last," he remarked, dryly, "buteven if you never succumb to these monstrous corporations, more aptlynamed cormorants, the more you know about their methods and needs thebetter, should you ever be called upon to fight them; and I have an ideathat that is just where you will show your strength. All the greatstatesmen of this country have been great lawyers, and the greatstatesman of the future is going to be the lawyer that checks the powerof unscrupulous capital, without at the same time delivering the countryover to the mercies of that equally unscrupulous tyranny thelabor-union. There is a solution somewhere and some man is going to findit. I don't see why you should not be the man. I have followed yourcareer very carefully--you have always interested me. You come here witha magnificent political training, a mind uncorrupted by a lifetime ofcontact with the contemptible methods of machine politics, and a reallygreat ambition. Your eyes are wide open. I don't see why you should makeany mistakes, particularly as you have four good years in which toponder the great question before committing yourself. Four years are along span. No man can tell what may happen in that time, what new partymay evolve. All you can do is to watch events and be ready for theforelock when time shakes it at you. If it so happens that you caninsidiously mould a new party meanwhile, so much the better. The wisestand most suggestive writer on our national life is a Briton. I see noreason why England should not send us a statesman--in the old sense. Godknows, all that we have now are a bitter disappointment to those of uswith any of the old ideals left. Should the Presidency be your ambition,the fact of your having actually been born on American soil may be thecause of a legal battle in the Supreme Court of the United States thatwill pass into history. Meanwhile, as all apprenticeships must behumble, you will be a sort of unofficial junior of this firm, sharingthe office business for the first year with Cresswell, and the secondyear helping me with court practice in St. Peter. You can read in theintervals and at home, and once or twice a week I should advise you toattend lectures at the State University. I can see that your memory andpowers of assimilation are very vigorous, and the more quickly youimbibe, and the more varied the quality, the better. All the odd typesof human nature you meet in this office won't do you any harm, either.Study the American character above all things. Get in sympathy with it.It is as opposite from the English as pole from pole, but you won't findit a bad sort--the country's politics are the worst part of it, becausecircumstances have forced them into the hands of a class of men thatmake their living out of them, and whose natural destiny waspocket-picking and the Rogues' Gallery--and if the best of us combineone day to do you honor, we can carry you to places as distinguished asany in your own country. Great and disinterested men have succeededagainst tremendous odds in times as parlous as these, and others havethe same opportunity here and now."

  The judge wound up his homily with a little peroration on AbrahamLincoln and then left Gwynne to the California codes. The large newstone office building of which Judge Leslie was the chief tenant stoodat the corner of a street a block above Main; Gwynne glancing over thetop of his tome could see a procession of teams, men lounging in thedoorway of a grocery store, and the spars of fishing-boats waiting forthe tide. His mind played him a curious trick. Piccadilly was before himwith its great hotels, its splendid old stone houses upon which the fogsand the grime of London had demonstrated their poetical mission, theclassic entrance to the Park, the crowds of smart men and women;Piccadilly at eight on a summer's evening choked with broughams andhansoms, in which the light mantles barely concealed the shoulders andjewels of the women. He had loved the outside life of London, returningto it from afar with an ever fresh and boyish pleasure, the keenerperhaps because he knew that all doors were open to him and that he wasone of the great lions, not of those for whom the stranger must search"Who's Who" upon his return from a function where half the guests hadmade their little mark. He saw the lofty towers with their delicatetracery, cutting the smoke on the banks of the Thames, the little roombelow where he had made men, old and bored and suspicious, listen tohim; the more confident in his power to command their attention becausehe knew that they had read and discussed, agreed with and denounced, hissound contributions to colonial literature. The scene dissolved into awave of homesickness that made him choke and spring to his feet. Then heswore at himself and returned to his codes.

  When Judge Leslie learned that Hiram Otis's law library had been movedout to Lumalitas he suggested that Gwynne should read at home until hehad mastered the laws governing the State of California, and the studentwas far better satisfied out there in the quiet and the fresh air of hisveranda. When a point needed expounding, a horseback ride into Rosewaterwas not an unwelcome diversion. His will had triumphed in its first boutwith memory, so subtly liberated by the written word, and before threedays of close study had passed he had the sensation of having found anew and individual patch upon which squarely to plant his feet. Thefuture seemed more definite, more assured; moreover, his avid brain, itsenergies too long in abeyance, settled upon the new and absorbingstudy--it was eight years since he had opened a law-book, although hehad forgotten little he had read at that plastic time--like a swarm oflocusts. He recalled that a clever woman had once said in his hearingthat whenever she felt blasee she took up a new language, and at oncefelt young and eager again. The remark had passed him by at the time,but he recalled it as he devoured and stored away the statutes that inmany ways differentiated California from the other States of the Union.The mere fact that his was not the order of brain that took kindly tomonotonous application, but inspired him with the more ardent desire toconquer; the sense of being on any sort of a battle-field again gave acolor to life. He realized that in six months more of inaction he shouldhave fallen into a constant and morbid habit of self-analysis, andalthough his soul-sickness could not be healed in a moment, the sense ofdanger gave an added zest to the impersonal nature of his studies. Hesubscribed for all the San Francisco newspapers and for those of his ownand the adjoining counties. He was not conscious of any mounting lovefor California, but here his lines were cast, and California was as gooda stepping-stone as another. If her politics were hideous he had notmade them, and his reviving faith in his star suggested that he may havebeen born to redeem them. With the polishing up of the rustier parts ofhis mind even his eyes grew brighter, he moved more quickly, he began tofeel all intellect once more, propelled by a body that was daily gainingin red and vigorous blood. Judge Leslie was so delighted with his rapidprogress and his exceptionally retentive and classifying memory that heassured everybody he met in Rosewater and St. Peter that he was traininga second Alexander Hamilton for the bar of the United States.