Ancestors Part 4

"Oh, it is not nearly so bad as some. But it is there all the same. Not a tw.a.n.g nor a drawl, but--well--every country has its unmistakable stamp."

"Well, I have no desire to be taken for anything but an American," she said, defiantly. "A Californian, that is. After all, we are quite different. But we do have an appalling variety of accents in the United States. I have lived abroad long enough to discover that. When I am an old maid I am going to mount the platform and preach the training of the voice in childhood. I have taken a violent dislike to more than one clever American man merely because he trailed his voice through his nose. I don't mind our vices being criticised as much as our crudities."

"I never before heard an American girl make a remark that indicated the least interest in her country--even when--pardon me--they brag. They generally give the impression that they don't even know who happens to be the President of the moment. Somehow, you look as if you might."

"I was brought up by a man, and my uncle was a great politician in a small way. That is to say he was identified with country politics only, but he and my father were everlastingly discussing the national issues.

Of course you have only met girls from the great cities, where the men are too busy making money to take any interest in public affairs. The women rarely hear them mentioned, practically forget there are such affairs--except on the Fourth of July, which they resent as a personal grievance. I have met scores of them in Europe. To know anything of politics they regard as the height of bad form."

"Sometimes I wish that our women would let them alone for a while. That is my sister over there," indicating the lady with the Burne-Jones face.

"She has worn herself to a shadow working for her husband, who is in the House, and she is heart and soul in politics--which she regards as a sort of divine mission. She is on several committees, is far more useful to her husband than his secretary, for she has the gift of style--and no one would accuse Rex of that--and during an election she never rests.

Besides which, of course she has her little family, the usual number of establishments to look after, and great social pressure. I always maintain that our women are of immense service to us, but many of them are physically unfit. I expect to see my sister go to pieces any day, and as she is little short of an angel it worries me."

"She does look angelic," said Isabel, sympathetically. "Is that what is the matter with the rest of them?--the thin ones, I mean?"

"Generally speaking. The thinnest is my cousin. I went in for a cup of tea a week or two before the end of last session. There were several of us about the tea-table when a footman entered and muttered something to her, and with a vague word of apology she left the room and did not return for half an hour. I thought the baby must be dying, and was about to ring, when she reappeared and remarked that she had been sitting at the telephone listening to a paper her husband had just finished on one of the questions before the House. Some of them stand it better." He indicated a fair beautiful creature with a determined profile and deep womanly figure. "There is Mrs. Sefton, for instance. She presides at committee meetings--she is great on colonial politics--for three or four hours at a time, and always sails out as fresh as a rose; but she has buried her husband and entertains when and whom she chooses. Lady Cecilia opposite understands politics as well as any woman in England, but does not go in for them--Spence isn't in the House; that may account for it!"

"Your fas.h.i.+onable women do not in the least resemble ours," said Isabel, meditatively. "They are far more like the women of our small towns."

"What!"

"It sounds paradoxical, but it is more than half true. Say two-thirds; the other third is all in favor of your women, for obvious reasons. But those I speak of, the best women of every small town, are constantly active in civic affairs. Most of the sanitary improvements and the educational, all schemes for parks and better streets, come from them.

There is no village too small to have its 'Woman's Improvement Club.'

And it is the women that have saved all the historical buildings in the country from destruction."

"I thought they went in for Browning Societies."

"Doubtless you would scorn really to know anything of American humor.

Perhaps our comic papers have never heard of the Improvement Clubs, or find nothing in them that is humorous. Not that I would decry the Browning Clubs, nor any literary clubs, however crude. It is all in the line of progress. 'Culture' is a tempting morsel for the jokemaker, but as an alternative for dull domesticity and the vulgar inanities of gossip it is not to be despised."

"By Jove, you are right," said Hexam, not without warmth.

"Is my fair cousin converting you to something?" asked the host. His voice had been little heard, and he looked sulky.

"Cousin?"

"Yes, he is my cousin," said Isabel, with the accent of resignation.

Hexam laughed. Gwynne looked as if the grace of humor had been left out of him. Isabel, innocent and impa.s.sive, turned her eyelashes upon her partner. "I was quite wild to meet my cousin," she went on, in the toneless voice that contrasted so effectively with her occasional extravagance of speech; "and now I find him the precise image of my uncle Hiram, who never spoke to me except to say: 'Little girls should be seen and not heard,' or 'Run off to bed now, little one.'"

Without repitching her voice she yet infused it with a patronizing masculinity that once more startled Hexam into laughter, and caused a silent convulsion in the ma.s.sive frame of Lady Cecilia Spence.

"She knows that was a bit of vengeance," thought Isabel. "But of course, manlike, he'll never suspect it." She turned her deep thoughtful gaze full upon her cousin. His eyes were glittering under their heavy lids.

He replied, suavely:

"I hope you will find us more polite--if less picturesque. I cannot flatter myself that my likeness to your uncle Hiram extends that far.

'Precise image'--is not that perhaps a bit of national exaggeration?"

"Well, I take that back," said Isabel, sweetly. "But you really might be his son instead of his second cousin."

"Perhaps that accounts for a good many things," said Lady Cecilia. "You know, Jack, I have always said there was something exotic about you. You are much too energetic and progressive for this settled old country. If you had been born in America I suppose you would have been president at the earliest moment the const.i.tution permitted."

He hesitated a moment, then delivered himself of a bombsh.e.l.l. "I was born in America," he said.

His eyes moved slowly from one stupefied face to another. "As I left at the age of five weeks I can hardly claim that the incident left an indelible impress. But the fact remains that I should be eligible for the presidency if I chose to become an American citizen."

Isabel looked at her relative with an accession of interest; he had suddenly ceased to be an alien, become in a measure a personal possession. "Come over and try it," she said, impulsively. "_There_ is a career worth while! A young country as full of promise as of faults!

Think of the variousness of achievement! England's history is made. If you are all they claim, you might really make history in the United States. If I only had a brother--" Her eyes were flas.h.i.+ng for the first time. "However--they say you love the fight. It is far more difficult to become a president of the United States than a prime-minister of England, for with us family influence counts for nothing."

"I am afraid I have not the qualities that do count. To be as frank as yourself--I don't think I could stand your politics."

"But think of the excitement of really sounding your capacities!"

Impersonality was an achievement with Isabel and she could always command it. "You can never do that here, no matter how brilliant your success. There must always be the question of how far you would have gone without your family, and friends of equal power. The ugliest lesson of life is its sn.o.bbishness. Even when the herd can expect no return, a blind instinct--doubtless an inheritance from the days when there were but two cla.s.ses--drives it to beat the drums for the socially elect. We have enough of that in America, heaven knows, but the best thing that can be said of American politics is that they are free of it. Besides, if our politics are bad, so much the better for you. You might do for the United States what your English great-grandfather helped to do for this country in 1832. You might be another 'Great Revolutioner,' like your still more ill.u.s.trious ancestor, Sam Adams. You'll never, never have such an opportunity to become a great historical figure over here, for English dissatisfaction hardly counts, and in the United States there are increasing millions that demand reform, a closer approach to the ideal republic promised by their ancestors, and the man for the hour."

The angry glitter had left his eyes and he was looking at her with interest and curiosity. He respected her courage and obvious power to rise above the personal att.i.tude of her s.e.x.

"I dislike intensely many things in your country," he said, slowly; "but I will confess that it interests me greatly. If it has failed in some of its original ideals it has at least continued to be a republic for more than a century; and when one considers its enormous size and conflicting elements--for I suppose you will not claim that you are a h.o.m.ogeneous race--that is very inspiring! It makes one believe that fundamentally the country must be sound--that unswerving fidelity to an ideal. It is a great thing! a stupendous thing! I wish I knew that I should live to see England, all Europe, a republic. There is no other state fit for self-respecting men--that voice in the selection of their own rulers."

"By Jove, Jack!" cried Lord Hexam. "I never heard you go as far as that before."

"Possibly you never will again. I have no desire to rank with those brilliant failures that are born before their time, and no intention of wasting my energies on the unattainable. Moreover, radicals and socialists per se are merely a nuisance. The Liberal party is the only choice in England to-day, and when I get it at my back, I can, at least, after I have led it to a stronger position, fight for the soundest of the extremist dogmas, as well as for the reorganization of the House of Peers. Hereditary legislation in the twentieth century and the most civilized country in the world! Why not an hereditary army and navy?

Russia has few greater anachronisms. And when one thinks of the careers it has ruined! Look at Barnstaple."

The two men plunged into discussion, and Isabel, her eyes expressing a polite interest, studied the face of her cousin. She appreciated for the first time something of its power. A brief illumination of his eyes had betrayed the soul of the idealist; a pa.s.sion that in a less sound mind might result in fanaticism. He was talking with none of the fiery enthusiasm that made him so irresistible a public speaker, but his negative suggestion of vitality, of mature thought, his very lack of every-day magnetism, fascinated her; not the woman, but the acute, receptive, and antagonistic intelligence. As he sat there talking, with hardly a change of expression in his voice or on his cold face, faintly sneering, he seemed to be holding his powers in solution; to have resolved them for the time being into their elements, that they might rest and recuperate. While no doubt in first-rate physical condition, he looked as if he had not a red corpuscle in his body, and this very contrast to the warm full-blooded people surrounding him gave him a distinction of his own, the distinction of pure brain independent of those auxiliaries that few public men have been able to dispense with.

It was obvious that he was too self-centred, too haughtily indifferent, or too spoilt, to make any effort in private life to charm or bewilder; when he vanquished from the platform it was by the awakened rush of the forces within him; and this very indifference, this contemptuous knowledge of his mighty reserves, this serene faith in his star, invested his personal unattractiveness with a formidable significance.

Isabel's imagination dilated him into a disembodied intellect surrounded by mere statues of human flesh. As she left the dining-room the illusion vanished. She liked him less than ever, nevertheless wished that he were her brother and the rising star in American politics.

V

As the women entered a large room on the opposite side of the central hall, where coffee was to be served, Flora Thangue laid her hand deprecatingly on Isabel's arm. "I was so sorry not to be able to wait for you," she said. "But I had a distracted note from Vicky at eight asking me to dress as quickly as I could and see if the cards on the table were all right: the new butler is rather a m.u.f.f, and such a martinet the footmen dare not interfere. I was delighted to see that Jack had taken charge of you. What do you think of our infant prodigy?"

"I have had little chance to think anything," said Isabel, evasively.

"Is he the typical Englishman--I mean apart from his peculiar gifts?"

"Only in certain qualities. You see he has Celtic blood in him: of course the Gwynnes had their origin in Wales; and then he is one-fourth American, isn't he? I can't say how far that inheritance has influenced his character, but there is no doubt about the Celtic. Outwardly he is even more impa.s.sive than the usual Oxford product, and if he had been born a generation earlier he would have had all sorts of affectations.

But affectation, thank heaven, is out of date. We wouldn't tolerate a Grandcourt five minutes. Whom should you like to talk to? You will have enough of me."

"I am sure there is no one I shall like half so well," said Isabel, truthfully; and Flora loved her for not being gracious. "I think I should like to know Mrs. Kaye."

"If you ever do, please give me the benefit of your investigations.

There are as many opinions of her as there are of cats. Vicky believes in her and I don't. Jack is in love with her--with certain of his Celtic instincts gone wrong."

She led Isabel over to Mrs. Kaye, who sat alone on a small sofa, sipping her coffee and absently puffing at a cigarette. She was exquisitely dressed and jewelled, and her little figure was round and symmetrical; but nothing could obscure the ign.o.ble modelling of her face. She might have been misunderstood for a housemaid masquerading had it not been for an air of a.s.sured power, a repose as monumental as that of a Chinese joss.

She had cultivated a still radiance of expression which, when she thought it worth her while, broke into a tender or brilliant smile; although even then her large, ripe mouth retained a hint of the austerity her strong will had imposed upon it--to the more complete undoing of the masculine host. She smiled graciously as Miss Thangue murmured the introduction and moved away, but did not offer the other half of the sofa, and Isabel fetched a chair.

"You are the American cousin, of course," she said, with a slight lisp.