Ancestors: A Novel

  XXXV

  Miss Montgomery called as Isabel and Gwynne were sitting down toluncheon at two o'clock. She was not in the best of tempers, for she hadrenewed her youth briefly the night before, her old admirers had shownher much gallant attention, and if she had gone home with a song in herheart and a flame in her eyes, she had been but the more conscious ofthe wooden spoon upon awakening. She had risen with no very keen regretfor her vanished claims upon men long since married and consoled, forshe had never been what is called a marrying girl, but with her mindinclined to gloomy meditation upon lost opportunities far more dear. Shehad never ceased to believe that, the fates conspiring, she might havebecome one of the great musicians of the world; for although she waswilling to admit the defect of will that had reduced her to the ranks,she had not grasped the historic fact that the born artist accomplisheshis fulfilment in spite of all obstacles, imagined or real. Herobstacles had been purely sentimental, for her family were commonplaceselfish people not worth considering, and, her endowment being justshort of distinguished, a misplaced sense of duty and the stultifyinginfluences of her home were responsible for her profession as caterer atthe age of thirty-six. Her people had belonged to the type that held inaristocratic disgust the "woman who did things," "showed herself to thepublic"; moreover, as Isabel had told Gwynne, they worshipped theflower-like artistic young creature, and would let neither the world norman have aught of her. She was twenty-eight when her family died, andknowing that as a music-teacher she could not hope to compete withfinished instructors, she had looked ever her other talents and foundthat the only one which promised immediate returns was a certain knackfor sauces and sweets. All her friends rushed to her assistance, andwhile broiling over a hot stove, stirring jam, wished that dear Annewere not so proud and would accept a check without any fuss. But MissMontgomery quickly graduated from this amateur stage. She set herselfdeliberately to work to become a _chef_, and, from offerings to theWomans' Exchange, she was soon supplying choice dishes for luncheons,and finally entire dinners. She had a warm friend in the then Leader ofSan Francisco Society, and her own cleverness and indomitableperseverance did the rest. She sometimes reflected that if she had foundthe iron in her nature sooner she might have been fiddling in Vienna;but perhaps her highest gift had really been culinary, perhaps sheneeded the enthusiastic encouragement which she found on all sides whenshe embraced that appealing art; at all events she succeeded, waseducating a promising orphan relative, and laying by for her old age.Another friend, no doubt, was the massive family silver which hadescaped the wreck. Many of the new people, Mrs. Hofer among others, didnot care for the responsibility of a luxury so tempting to thieves, andfor which they had no innate predilection; they were more than willingto pay a reasonable sum for ancestral decorations upon state occasions,and to dine from artistic plated ware meanwhiles. Not but that therewas a sufficiency of solid bullion to be seen on many a San Franciscotable, and there were several golden services in the city; but richpeople have all sorts of economical kinks, and Miss Montgomery foundthis one profitable. Another thing, no doubt, that had contributed toher success, was the business-like attitude she had assumed as soon asshe felt herself a professional. She accompanied her refections to thekitchen door, although the front was always open to her, andphilosophically pocketed the customary tip.

  And she had struggled valiantly against becoming an embittered old maid;in the main, had succeeded. To the world, at least, she rarely turned ascowl, and she had never lost a friend. But there were times when shehated her parents. Since Isabel's return she had had more than onerebellious hour, for Isabel had taken her life in both hands, snappedher fingers at restraints and small conventions, and, so far, at least,had made good. And the younger girl's development, to one that had knownher always, was extraordinary. On the other hand, she exulted in theprospect of a member of the old set coming prominently to the front oncemore. She had spent a week with Isabel at Old Inn, and received acertain measure of confidence. She hoped that Isabel would really make afortune, and urged her to follow Gwynne's example and put up a modernbuilding on her San Francisco property. Money was easy to raise, forchange and improvement possessed San Franciscans like an epidemic, andfew but were not anxious to convert "South of Market Street" into agreat business district. Although she was grateful to the new people,particularly Ada Hofer, who, to use the lady's own expression "madethings hum," in her heart she disliked the breed, and deeply resentedthe fact that the old set, even those by no means impoverished, to-dayformed little more than a background. They were to be seen everywhere,they were still a power in a way, but they were by no means prosilient.Therefore, as she sat in the old dark dining-room on Russian Hill andlistened to Isabel's praise of the interest that Hofer and his set tookin the political and artistic regeneration of the city, she was moved tobreak out tartly:

  "Are you giving them credit for altruism? They have their millionsinvested here, naturally they crave a reasonable prospect of retainingthem--also of increasing them by filling Fairmont, and other projectedcaravansaries for the rich, with winter tourists from the East; possiblyEurope. They not only fear the corporation cormorants--whom they cannever reach so long as the Board of Supervisors is controlled by theBoss--the Boss himself and all his devouring horde, but the greatestmenace of all: that San Francisco will in time, and before very long, beowned body and soul by the labor-unions. Then, even if they managed tosave their wealth, the city would be intolerable for the sociallyambitious or even the merely refined."

  "You are unfair," said Gwynne; "for these men all have enough to pullout and invest elsewhere. They could go to New York and buy a bigposition, as so many of their predecessors have done. Or to London. Ofcourse no man ever lived that was wholly disinterested, unless he was afanatic, but it is vastly to the credit of these men that they lovetheir own city, stand by it--determined to make it livable, not only forthemselves, but for future generations; instead of moving away andbecoming millionaires of leisure."

  "Oh yes, I don't deny that they have enthusiasm--the remnant, no doubt,of what in their European ancestors was temperament. Americans don'thave temperament. Or if we have we are far too self-conscious to showit. In the East it has been quite eradicated. Out here where gambling isstill in the blood--and that blood is mixed--where the air is full ofelectricity, and the very ground under your feet none too certain, weare a little more primitive; we have an excitability that makesstrangers find us more like the Latin races of Europe than our relativesbeyond the Rockies. And although the set you admire does not drink, norlive the all-night life, it has its own demands for spice and variety,and its own ways of gratifying them. Love of change, love of any sort ofa fight, is in the blood of your true Californian--particularly here inSan Francisco, where all the great gambling fevers, from the days of '49to the wild speculations in Virginia City stocks in '76, have raged upand out. Your friends are merely playing a big game. Successive defeats,and the formidable front of the enemy, make it the more stimulating.They have that fanatical love of San Francisco that every one out herehas who doesn't hate it, and they find it more exciting to stay here andgamble for big stakes than to watch their wives spend money in New York,and console them for snubs. Another point--they are far moreenterprising than the rich men's sons that preceded this generation--orset, rather. They keep on making money, you may have observed. Andfashions change. New York Society is no longer the Mecca of the worldlySan Franciscan, and it has also become the fashion to invest hugeamounts here; in many cases, entire fortunes. These men really could notpull out without great loss of income, and they all know how safe it isto leave one's interests in other people's hands. In this town, atleast, no one has ever done that without regretting it."

  "If the fashion has changed I dare say it is these men that have changedit. I always bow to feminine logic, but nothing you have said so far haschanged my attitude. Besides, I admire their taste. This is the onlypart of America that has made any appeal to me, and there is no questionthat if they force through th
e Burnham plans, this city, with itswonderful natural advantages, will be as beautiful as ancient Athens.Surely you must admit ideality in men that can conceive such an idealand cling to it, no matter how forlorn the hope."

  "That's just what I object to. The least imaginative of us realizes thatnature gave San Francisco a beautiful face and that man has done all hecould to scar it. But even did these men obtain control--which theycan't short of lynch law--it would take half a century to remove the oldcity piecemeal. Do you imagine property-owners are going to change theirnatures and sacrifice profitable office buildings and shops for the sakeof widening streets and making boulevards and parks? Do you realize whatit would mean in the way of individual sacrifice to build winding roadsabout these hills instead of the improved and perpendicular gullies wehave to-day? Not even your own would do it. They merely dream and talk,although, no doubt, they would make all the changes that promised largepersonal profits. I suspect that the secret of their zeal is the desireto deflect the tourist tide from south to north."

  Gwynne laughed. He was a stubborn idealist, and having found somethingat last to admire he purposed to hug it. "You belong to the pessimisticcamp. I discovered that when you honored Old Inn. And I have lived herelong enough to learn that it is full enough. But you are all differentfrom other Americans, and for that reason I find the most discontentedof you interesting."

  But Miss Montgomery suspected that he was quizzing her and would not bedrawn further. Instead, she proposed a walk, and Gwynne in his turnsuggested that they go over and look at his property, which he hadvisited once only. Miss Montgomery knew the history of every house oldand new, and told them many anecdotes as they walked down the steephills or along the cross streets to Kearney, at the base. The new houseshad fine gardens, the old ones were gloomy with eucalypti, or raggedwith palms, but everywhere were flowers, even at this season, giving animmediate relief to the eye from the long dull perspective. On six daysout of the seven the streets were torn with wind when they were notdrenched with rain, and in the dry season the dust was intolerable;although San Franciscans vowed it was a part of the picture and missedit when abroad. But gay as certain sections of San Francisco was atnight, its residence districts always had a deserted air, and on Sundaynothing could exceed the brown desolation of the shopping streets. Froma variety of causes San Franciscans were averse from too muchpedestrianism, and one could walk for blocks and pass nothing but anoccasional carriage, or the trolley-cars shrieking up and down thehills, or emptying themselves into Kearney and Montgomery streets withthe racket of a besieging army.

  But this Christmas Day it was clear and warm, and the wind drifted aboutas if its wings were tired. All the world was on the cable and trolleycars, but bound for park and sea, and in the opposite direction from thethree on their way to the valley south of Market Street. Kearney Streetwould have looked like a necropolis had it not been for several patienthorses standing with their feet on the pavement, their ears cockedtowards a saloon, or establishment for "rifle practice"; and even MarketStreet, on week-days barely passable with its trucks, four lines ofcars, and a mass of humanity, was almost deserted. They walked past thePalace Hotel, down Second Street, and by many dingy peeling low-browedand entirely hideous shops and flats, with glimpses into unsavory crossstreets, until they came to the block owned by the Otises since theearly Fifties. Even in its present condition the rents wereconsiderable, and as it was but a stone's-throw from several other newoffice buildings, there was no question that in the course of a fewyears the land value would be doubled, and Gwynne regretted being forcedto sell a portion of his share in order to be able to erect a buildinglarge enough to pay. What was left of Hiram Otis's portion, inherited byIsabel, stood on the opposite corner, and now yielded only ground rent,the old buildings having crumbled on the stock-market. But the landcould be sold conditionally, and once more Miss Montgomery suggestedbuilding. Gwynne turned to Isabel with interest.

  "Do!" he exclaimed. "Come in with us, and we'll put up a largerbuilding. Sell your land and I'll borrow money on one of the ranches,and sell out my Consols. Then I can hold on to all this, and we'll noneof us have so long to wait for large returns."

  "I am afraid of fires," said Isabel, dubiously. "The most vivid memoriesof my childhood are standing at my window on the Hill in my night-gownand watching whole blocks down here in flames. The wonder is that yourshave never gone. Now I get my ground rent, no matter what happens." Butbefore she had finished speaking she had made a sudden movement towardsGwynne. "I will do it," she said. "It will be better--all round."

  "Good! And I intend to put on outside shutters of asbestos, so, withwalls of concrete and steel, and as little wood inside as possible, weshould weather anything short of subterranean fires."

  Then Miss Montgomery took them through South Park, the oval enclosure,surrounded by high brown sad-looking houses looking down upon a bit ofdusty green, and pointed out the long-deserted mansions of theRandolphs, the Hathaways, the Hunt McLanes, and of others who haddispensed the simple lavish hospitality of the Fifties and Sixties. Shewas intensely proud of the fact that her mother had been born in SouthPark, and pointed with a sigh, not all unconscious affectation, to thestiff three-storied house that had come, with so many others, "round theHorn" in the Fifties. Beside it, looking like an old man with his armshanging and his jaw fallen, its windows vacant and broken, its paintlong unrenewed, and cobwebs on the very doorstep, stood the RandolphHouse, the theatre of the most poignant of all an Francisco's initialtragedies. Isabel had told Gwynne the story of Nina Randolph, and asAnne repeated it he recalled the name of Dudley Thorpe, and rememberedthat he had left the reputation of a good parliamentarian and M. F. H.

  They went up to Rincon Hill, once the haughty elder sister of SouthPark, now looking like a lonely island in a dirty sea covered withwreckage. There still remained several handsome old ivy-coveredmansions, and many beautiful as well as picturesquely dilapidatedgardens. Rincon Hill had contributed two peeresses to England, LeeTarlton and Tiny Montgomery, and Gwynne not only knew them both, but wasthe more interested, as Cecil Maundrell's sudden elevation to theearldom of Barnstaple during his active youth had served as anobject-lesson to himself. Mrs. Montgomery's old home was in good repair,but she was in Europe as usual, and Randolph Montgomery, now in thediplomatic service--too independent for the machine, he had been drivenout of politics some years since--preferred the more central comforts ofa hotel when he visited San Francisco. Two old family servants weresunning themselves in the garden. The window-curtains were presumablypacked in camphor, and the dim panes suggested a cobwebbed and desolateinterior. Gwynne glanced across the ugly shabby but teeming valley tothe symbols of stupendous energies concentrated on its edge, and thevariegated magnificence of the hills, piling like roughly terracedcliffs above it; then west to the mountains by the sea, green, unclaimedby man as yet, although the dead were thick on the hills just below. Itwas a city struggling out of chaos, but perhaps more interesting than itwould be a century hence, when it had fulfilled its destiny and become agreat metropolis of white marble and stone. A century? Nowhere had erasucceeded era with such startling rapidity, nowhere in one shorthalf-century had the genus American passed through so many phases. Theevidences were all before him. Once again he had the impression ofstanding in the presence of hoary age--ugly premature age--was that thesecret of the vague suggestion of an unthinkable antiquity that so oftenrose like a ghost in his mind?

  The girls announced that they should ride back, and they walked over andtook a Third Street car. It was almost empty when they entered, but wasinvaded at the next corner by a belated pleasure party bound for thePark, a noisy disreputable crowd of flashy men, and girls with boldtired eyes, a thick coat of the white paint which has made the fortuneof the San Francisco chemist, and gaudy cheap attire. Known in thevernacular as "chippies," they bore a crude Western resemblance to theParisian grisette, and what they lacked in style they made up in sound.They were the class that monopolized boats and trains on Sundays,screami
ng steadily through the tunnels, and returned late, no longerhappy because no longer able to make a noise. One of the young womenpointed a finger at Gwynne, screaming, "I choose you!" and plumpedherself on his lap, to the suppressed delight of Isabel and MissMontgomery. But Gwynne looked blankly at her ill-buttoned back and theimmense buckle of her belt, while the rest of the party, those that satand those that swung to and fro at the straps, mocked her for choosingso unresponsive a knight. The car stopped to accommodate another relay,and Gwynne by a deft movement transferred the lady to his own seat, andengineered the girls out of the car, before two hoodlums, who wereworking their way up from the lower door, could reach them.

  They found a garage and a good automobile, and spent an hour or two outon the ocean boulevard. When they returned to town, Miss Montgomeryalighted at one of the hotels where she was to dine; and, the chauffeurannouncing that he could not "make another hill," Gwynne and Isabelstarted for home on foot.

  The city rose in a succession of hills from the level, and they climbedslowly, talking little. Suddenly Gwynne laid his hand on Isabel's armand stopped, directing her gaze upward. They were at the foot of one ofthe narrow almost perpendicular blocks that rose between Pine andCalifornia streets. On either side were brown old-fashioned houses,several of them set back from the street, and surrounded by trees andhigh close fences. It was almost dark, but a moon was due, so the streetlamps were not lit. Crawling down from the street above, on one sideonly, and clinging to the upper houses, was the advance guard of thefog. It had come in stealthily and halted for a moment, taking strangeshapes. It looked like the ghost of an ancient fog, and the very houses,in which not a light had appeared, might have been deserted for acentury. In a moment it began to crawl down the side of the street,seeming to fill the whole city with silence. It was a sceneindescribably gloomy, haunting, forbidding, and to Gwynne, who hadstudied the city in many lonely rambles, to whisper of the unrelievedgloom of lives behind that stage where the most famous of AmericanFollies danced for ever in her cap and bells. The spirit of sympathy wasin the fog and the brief darkness for the thousands of broken dogged menand women that rarely caught sight of the cap and bells. For them theashes, the embittered memories, the blasted hopes, a quiet sullen hatredfor the city that had devoured their hearts and left them automatons.This was a phase of the city's life of which the enthusiastic shallowtourist had never a hint. It took a man of genius like Gwynne to feelthe genius of the city in all its sinister variety. He had hardly piecedhis impressions together as yet, but he told Isabel a little of what hissubconscious ego had formulated, and she had never liked him so well aswhen she took his arm and they ascended into the sudden downrush of thefog.