I
On the same afternoon Lady Victoria developed appendicitis and went tobed for two months. She was only in danger for a short time, but thedoctor announced his intention of giving her a rest cure, and hispatient, who was profoundly indifferent, made no protest. And ifinvalidism is a career, an illness is an adventure; moreover, no doubt,it was a relief to Victoria Gwynne to have her thinking done by some oneelse for a time. Isabel had thoughtfully rung up the handsomest doctorin San Francisco the moment the disease declared itself, and it was tobe expected that he would find his patient interesting enough to spendan hour by her bedside daily. It was manifestly impossible to transfer awoman of Lady Victoria's heroic proportions down that rickety and almostperpendicular flight of steps to an ambulance, but the best of nurseswere engaged, Anne Montgomery agreed to come every morning and attend tothe housekeeping, Gwynne established a long-distance telephone besidethe bed, and Mrs. Trennahan, whom Lady Victoria liked--she could notstand Mrs. Hofer--promised a daily visit; and an automobile trip to thesouth as soon as the doctor would permit.
It was nearly a week before Isabel, who had sat up with Gwynne duringthe first two nights, and been on the rush ever since, was able toreturn to her ranch. She had offered to remain in town altogether, butLady Victoria replied with some show of irritation that if either she orher son sacrificed their time and interests on her account it wouldoppress her mind with a sense of guilt, and hinder her recovery. Shewould telephone to them at a certain hour every day, and if they camedown once a week as usual she should enjoy seeing them, instead of beingworried by a sense of obligation. In truth she was glad to be rid ofthem for more reasons than one.
It was late in the afternoon when Isabel arrived in Rosewater, andbusiness detained her there for several hours. She dined with the TomColtons, and the conversation was a quaint mixture of babies, politics,servants, and the Hofer ball. Colton drove her home, and talked thesteady monotonous stream with which he tricked the world into believingthat his own ideas were still in the germ. Upon this occasion he mightas well have betrayed his secrets or quoted the poets, for Isabel paidno attention whatever to his monologue. She was consumed with her desireto be alone once more. She was tired of the very sound of the humanvoice, and remembered with satisfaction the silence of her Chuma and thetaciturnity of her men.
When she finally reached her home she illuminated it from top to bottomand wandered about in a passion of delight. Her sensation of gratitudeand novelty in her solitude and freedom could not have been keener ifshe had been absent for six months. Although it was too cold to sitout-of-doors, she walked up and down the piazza for an hour, watchingthe crawling tide and the brown tumbled hills. The boat was late, andevery other light was out when it appeared, a mere string of magiclanterns with a red globe suspended aloft. Isabel struck a match andanswered the captain's familiar greeting from his high perch in thepilot-house; then went within, for the fog was rolling over Tamalpais,dropping down the mountains in great sea waves. But even then she wouldnot go to bed, and lose her knowledge of recovered treasure. After atime, however, she fell asleep in her chair before the fire. She awokesuddenly, but drowsily surprised and disappointed not to find Gwynne inthe chair opposite. Then she became aware of the cause of herinterrupted slumbers. There was the sound of fire-arms and of barkingdogs on the hills sacred to the Leghorn. In three minutes she had herskirts off, her high boots on, and was running, pistol in hand, to thecolony, announcing her coming by a preliminary discharge. Then for thenext hour she and her men fought one of those hordes of migratory ratsthat suddenly steal upon chicken-ranches and leave ruin behind them.Isabel had a genuine horror of rats. She would far rather have faced anarmy of snakes; but with her rubber boots, the well-trained dogs, andher accuracy of aim, she had nothing to fear. Those that were notslaughtered were finally driven off, and Isabel, content even in thisphase of her strictly personal life, went to bed and slept the sleep ofyouth and health and an easy conscience.
The next day began the torrential rains that lasted for three weeks,almost without an hour's intermission; that wiped out the marsh, andthreatened floods for all the valleys of the north. The boats no longerlooked as if cutting their way through the lands, but adrift on a greatlake. Tamalpais and the mountains below it had disappeared, as ifhibernating, and the winds raged up and down the long valley, shakingold houses like Isabel's to their foundations, and leaving not a leafon the trees. Nothing could be wilder or more desolate than the scenefrom Isabel's piazza, where, encased in rubber, she took her exercise,often battling every inch of one way against a driving wall of rain.Rosewater, or any sort of house except her own, she did not see for daysat a time, nothing but that gray foaming muttering expanse of water, itsflood and fall no longer distinguishable. At first she was more thancontent to be so isolated. Her practical life occupied little of hertime; only a daily, and always unexpected, dash up the slopes to seethat her men were not shirking their duties, and a weekly trip toRosewater with her produce: she used her own incubators in bad weather.A visit to San Francisco she did not attempt, and she was quite surethat the daily conversation over the telephone--when it had not blowndown--was as sufficing for Lady Victoria as for herself. She read andstudied and dreamed, became indifferent to what she chose to call herfailure as a society ornament, and planned a larger future; to berealized when she had come to care less for dreams and more forrealities. No doubt that state of mind would develop before long, andmeanwhile she might as well enjoy herself according to her present mood.Nothing could alter her belief that all unhappiness came from contacts,and certainly she had proved her theories so far, and took a pagan joyin mere living. She loved the wild battle of the elements, the wastebelow her garden, with as keen a sensuousness as the spring and theflowers, and often sat late in her red room by the fire to enjoy itscontrast with the desolation without.
But Gwynne was not a man to be dismissed from the thoughts of any onethat knew him as well as his cousin, He had taken his part in her lifeas a matter of course, and of late they had been very intimate. Duringthe first days and nights of his mother's illness, they had talked, orsat in companionable silence, by the hour. She had been assailed byregrets more than once that she was to have no part in his life, that hehad already won some of his hardest battles with no help of hers, anddeliberately had matched their spirits and driven her off the fieldwhere she had subtly sought to manage him. She liked him the better forthis, but while her vanity retired with philosophy, she regretted herinability to help him. That she had it in her to assist and encouragehim in many ways, she needed to be told neither by himself nor hismother, but she was unwilling to pay the price. That she felt his charm,took an even deeper interest in him since he had announced his intentionto marry her, she did not pretend to deny, and sometimes caught herselflooking out upon a future in which he had as inevitable a part as if ithad been decreed from the beginning of time. She also dreamed of thesatisfaction and pleasure it would give her to make him really love her,become quite mad about her. But again she was unwilling to pay theprice. She argued that this was merely due to the persistence of thesolitary ideal; and refused to face the cowardice that lurked in thebottom of her soul. Heroic in every other development of her highly bredcharacter, she had all the secret fear and antagonism of her sex for theother, a profound resentment of the male instinct for possession, andthe deeper terror that what Gwynne might find would eventually make herwholly his. Life had given her a deep surface; the depths below it sentup rare vibrations; and her mind was seldom unoccupied. She could addlayer upon layer of evasions and subtleties with no prospect of a rudedisturbance; and when the wind ceased for a time she tramped over thehills. But she missed Gwynne increasingly, wondered that he did notbrave the elements and come out to her; finally felt herself shamefullyneglected, and would not answer his occasional telephone queries as toher well-being.