McCormick Tractor MC95 MC105

MC115 Parts Catalog

To download the complete and correct content, please visit:

https://manualpost.com/download/mccormick-tractor-mc95-mc105-mc115-parts-ca
talog

McCormick Tractor MC95 MC105 MC115 Parts CatalogSize: 29.2 MBFormat :

PDFLanguage : EnglishBrand: McCormickType of machine: TractorType of
document: Parts CatalogModel:McCormick MC Series MC95 TractorMcCormick
MC Series MC105 TractorMcCormick MC Series MC115 TractorContents:Attachm
entsBrakesElectrical_systemEngineFuel_systemHydraulic_systemPower_trainSte
ering_system
Download all on: manualpost.com.
 [Unrelated content]
Another random document on
Internet:
State whose energy is not demoralized by the climate. But that must
make the fight more interesting. And hardly a degree less menacing
is this gigantic octapus of labor unionism—of inexcusable socialism.
Well, we shall see! It makes one tingle."
"And do you never, in your inmost, contemplate returning to
England?" asked Isabel, curiously.
Gwynne swung about and planted his elbows on the railing, clasping
his hands about his head. For some moments he seemed absorbed
in the mass of lights at the foot of the black hill-side. "I don't know,"
he said, finally. "It is possible that only my will keeps me from
thinking about it. It may be that, having made up my mind before
leaving England, I accomplished a final wrench and adjustment. I
abstain from too much self-analysis; but it is certain that down deep
I often feel a tug at familiar strings. I don't pretend to know myself,
for after all what is each one of us but the composite of the race,
always at war with a spark of individuality. Some fine morning I may
wake up, order my trunk to be packed, and take the first train out of
California."
"Oh, might you?"
"Well, of course, I should stop and say good-bye to you. That is if I
did not fall into a panic at the thought of a final encounter with that
terrible will of yours." He turned and met a pair of eyes that were
shining like a cat's in the dark. "You know that you have been
manipulating the strings of my destiny!" he said, abruptly, and
surprised at himself. "I grew fearful of self-analysis and buried
myself in the law—jolly good antidote—but I am always conscious of
a subtle pressure on my will—was. I have thrown it off. It was either
that or leave."
"Perhaps you have felt freer since Saturday morning," said Isabel,
cruelly.
His own eyes glittered, but if he blushed the darkness screened him.
"Quite true," he said, dryly, "The man-brute turned. And in the final
battle, when the feminine principle is pitted against the masculine, I
fancy we shall know how to win the day. If we resort to primitive
methods it will be your own fault."
"I was invited for dinner to-morrow night, and had to decline
because my arms are black-and-blue."
"I don't repent," said Gwynne, doggedly.
There was another silence, and then he asked: "Haven't you been
trying to manage me?"
"I have only been trying to steer you in a new country—to make
things a little easier—"
"You are not always frank. And that is not altogether what I mean. I
hardly know myself what I do mean. Before I arrived I thought it
likely I should ma—want to marry you. In many respects you were
designed to be the wife of an ambitious public man. With your
beauty, and brains, your grand manner, and your subtlety—but it is
the last that has put me off. I have seen too many men managed by
their wives. I never could stand it. Doubtless my Celtic blood gives
me the tiniest feminine drop. It is only the big uncomplicated oafs
that don't mind being managed by their women. I should want the
freest and most open companionship, but with my will always in the
ascendant—although no man would be more indulgent to his wife."
"You will find thousands to answer all your requirements and
limitations."
"Much you know about it. True, this place is full of handsome and
attractive women—topping! And they have a free wild grace, a
stride, a swing—it is wonderful to watch them go up these hills. And
I was vastly entertained at luncheon, and at one or two of the
houses where I was afterward taken to call. But I doubt if I shall
ever find anyone again that possesses so many remarkable qualities
in combination as your own puzzling unsatisfactory self."
"I am not in the least like Mrs. Kaye, and you thought she combined
every quality under the sun."
"I expended the last of my calf love on Mrs. Kaye. I was blinded by
passion; but that my emotional depths were not even stirred was
manifested by the rapidity of my convalescence. We were utterly
unsuited. In many respects I should have been ashamed of her.
Blood must always tell in England—although in America—if Mrs.
Hofer is a type—well, this is the land of reversed theories. Mrs. Kaye
and I would have been at swords' points in less than a year. The
next time I choose a wife it will be with my judgment."
"And are you no longer capable of love?"
"Oh, love!" Once more Gwynne gazed down upon the sleepless city,
where the lights seemed to powder the upper air with gold dust.
"Perhaps. It seemed to me that day in Park Lane that all the heat
died out of my veins. I am only just beginning to feel alive once
more. But I have no wish as yet to experience the passion of love
again—not even with you; although if you would cry off in some
respects I don't know but that I should still like to marry you."
"At least you could beat me if I did not behave."
He laughed. "I don't doubt I should want to. No, I'll never let myself
go like that again; but I should be sure first that my will was the
stronger of the two."
"You carefully abstain from proposing so that I cannot make the
retort I should like to."
"You may. I know you won't have me. But that does not alter the
fact that the same ancestral lines have given us an inconceivable
number of molecules that are subtly responsive. The great cleavage
has accomplished as many points of divergence and contrast.
Therefore is there, in me, at least, an insistent whisper for ancestral
and long denied rights. You will feel it in time—"
"How much you have thought about it!"
"My mind is pretty well oiled: it does not take me years to work out
any proposition. To tell you the truth, I have never put that
undercurrent of consciousness into words until to-night. All the
same, even if I loved you, if I finally believed you to be the stronger
of the two, I should take the next boat for England. California
wouldn't hold me. And I should not say good-bye."
"That would be a confession of weakness."
"It is one I'd be the better for making."
"Well, anyhow, as I am hostess I can order you to bed. It must be
one o'clock. I don't doubt you will find more than one affinity if you
are awakening; that is merely the mating instinct. Good-night."
Far too hospitable and high-handed to incommode a guest, she did
not tell him that Paula had gone, and that Stone had sauntered out
in search of a "bracer," and had not returned. Gwynne slept the
sleep of the unburdened conscience, and returned to Rosewater by
the first train—Isabel was remaining in town for another day—
ignorant not only of having violated the proprieties, but of the fact
that a former inhabitant of Rosewater lived not far from the foot of
the bluff.
 XXV
Two weeks later Lady Victoria was established in the house on
Russian Hill. She had given no intimation of her coming until the day
her train was due in Oakland, when she telegraphed, suddenly
reflecting, no doubt, that she was descending into the wilderness
and that precautions were wise. Gwynne barely had time to catch
the train from Rosewater, and when the connecting boat arrived at
the ferry building in San Francisco, he was obliged to run like a thief
pursued by a policeman down to the Oakland ferry building, in order
to catch the boat just starting to meet the Overland train. All this
was by no means to his taste. Nor was his mother's cavalier arrival.
It savored too much of royalty. And he had a masculine disapproval
of being taken by surprise; moreover was far less ardent at the
prospect of seeing his mother again than he would have expected.
In England he had needed her; she seemed superfluous in this
country, which she never would understand; and he wanted all his
time for his studies—and as little reminder of England as possible.
His mother, for all her individualities, was the concentrated essence
of the England he knew best. Besides, she was accustomed to a
great deal of attention. He had no taste for dancing attendance upon
any one, and from whom else could she expect it—unless, to be sure
—he recalled that his mother was a beautiful woman, always
surrounded by a court of admirers. Why should Americans be
impervious to the accomplished fascination and the beauty of a
woman that had reigned in London for thirty years? He determined
to press Isabel into service. She could try her hand on his mother's
American destinies, and provide her with amusement and a host of
friends.
He felt all the promptings of natural affection when he was actually
face to face with his mother once more, and forgot all his doubts in
his intense amusement at her naïve surprise before the comfortable
immensity of the San Francisco hotels, and the crowds and
automobiles in the streets.
The next day he took her up to the ranch. For a week she stalked
about the country, eight hours out of the twenty-four, expressing
interest in nothing, although her eyes always softened at her son's
approach; and if she manifested no enthusiasm for his adopted
country, at least she barely mentioned the one of his heart. At the
end of a week she promptly accepted Isabel's suggestion to transfer
herself and her grim disgusted maid to the house on Russian Hill.
Isabel lost no time in piloting her thither. Anne Montgomery
undertook to provide her with a small staff of servants, and to call
daily and order the household until all wheels were on their tracks.
Mrs. Hofer delightedly agreed to be the social sponsor of Lady
Victoria Gwynne, and issued invitations at once for a tea and a
dinner; and Gwynne, who had been half indifferent to rebuilding on
the San Francisco property, immediately began holding long
interviews with bankers, lawyers, architects, and contractors. The
law required him to give but thirty days' notice to his tenants, well-
to-do workmen; and if all went well the building might be finished in
seven months. Lady Victoria evinced something like a renewed
interest in life when told that by the following winter her income
would be increased; and trebled as soon as the large revenue from
the building had paid off the mortgage. Her son offered to place his
own share at her disposal until her debts were paid, but to this she
would not listen. He found her maternal affection undimmed, but
other changes in her which he was far too masculine to understand,
and after she was fairly settled and apparently content, he dismissed
feminine idiosyncrasies from his overburdened mind. He had
neglected his studies long enough, and it was time to begin his
amateur practice in Judge Leslie's office, to say nothing of the bi-
weekly lecture at the State University at Berkeley, which, with the
journeys, consumed the day.
Isabel's feminine soul took a far more abiding interest in the subtle
changes of that complicated modern evolution whose special
arrangement of particles was labelled Victoria Gwynne. She bore
little external traces of her illness, and when Isabel congratulated
her upon so complete a recovery, she looked as blank as if memory
had failed her. Isabel had encountered this truly British attitude
before, and experienced none of the irritation of several of the
Englishwoman's new acquaintances when insisting upon the
beneficence of the San Francisco climate. But it was not long before
Isabel discerned that under that sphinx-like exterior the older
woman was intensely nervous, that once or twice even her splendid
breeding could not control an outburst of irritability. Her eyes, too,
had a curious hard opaque look, as if the old voluptuous fires had
burned out; and she seemed ever on her guard. What her future
plans were no man could guess. She might have settled down for life
on Russian Hill, so completely did she make the new environment fit
her imperious person. She even remarked casually to Isabel that "of
course" she should entertain in the course of the winter, but at one
of the hotels; she would never ask people to climb those stairs on a
possibly rainy night. But it was evident that her entertaining would
be merely on the principle of noblesse oblige; her lack of interest in
the doings of a civilization so different from her own was patent, and
it was doubtful if she would have even accepted the attentions
showered upon her had she not feared the alternative of an
unbroken ennui. Isabel felt vaguely sorry for her, and puzzled deeply,
but she could do no more than provide her with entertainment and
the abundant comforts and luxuries of the city; to express any
deeper and more womanly sympathy to that proud nature would
have been a liberty Isabel would have been the last to take. But she
retained her own rooms and went down with Gwynne once a week,
when they both devoted themselves to Lady Victoria's amusement.
It was at least gratifying that the French restaurants and many of
the unique Bohemian resorts entertained her more than society; and
she found the Stones amusing, and frankly made use of Paula, who
did all her shopping, receiving many a careless present.
Meanwhile Gwynne, when not reading, or practising, or attending
lectures, or endeavoring to hurry forward his new enterprise in the
city, took long buggy rides with Tom Colton about the country, and
made acquaintance with many farmers, as well as with the guileful
depths of the ambitious young politician. Colton, although for the
present dependent upon only the voters of his district, by no means
confined his attentions even to those of his county. The time would
come when he would need a wide popularity, and with his cool far-
sighted tactics he was already sowing its seeds. There was an
immense and varied material to work on. Not only were his own
county and the two adjoining as large as a State more modest than
California, but, with the exception of the Asti vineyards, and one or
two ranches like Lumalitas, were cut up into an infinite number of
farms owned by Irish, Scotch, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes,
Hungarians, Swiss, Germans, Italians, and a few native Americans.
Asti alone, a great district devoted to the vine, and boasting the
largest tank in the world, was entirely in the hands of Italians. The
Swiss, for the most part, were cheese makers. The rest devoted
themselves to chickens, grain, hay, wheat, and fruit. There were
several orange orchards and one violet farm. Many of these
foreigners were so numerous that churches had been built for their
separate use, and service was held in their native tongue. All were
willing to drop work for a few moments and talk politics with Colton,
particularly if it was to abuse lawmakers and monopolists—above all,
the railroads, whose prices were exorbitant, and whose service was
inadequate. In this department of monopoly at least they had a real
grievance, and Colton never let them forget it. He made no secret of
the fact that the United States Senate was his goal, and reiterated
that there alone could he accomplish the legislation that would free
the farmer from the costly tyranny of the corporations and give the
laboring man his rightful share of profit. Some were skeptical that
any mortal could accomplish all he promised, but the foreigners for
the most part were gullible, and they all liked the rich man's son,
with his simple ways and his blatant democracy.
Of Gwynne they took little notice, but he studied them, one and all,
and it was not long before he understood the materials with which
he must deal in the future. The State was Republican, although San
Francisco presented the remarkable spectacle of a Democratic mayor
with a Republican boss controlling the labor element, which was
presumably democratic in essence, and devoted to the figurehead.
But country politics were far less complicated, and it was possible
that a strong Democrat with a sufficiency of inherent power could
weld together the conflicting and half indifferent elements, and
change the political current. Californians had gone thunderously
Republican at the last Presidential election, because for the moment
they were dazzled by the Roosevelt star and all it seemed to
portend. There could be no better augury for a really great and
sincere leader; for whether or not Roosevelt was all they imagined,
the point to consider was that they had been carried away by their
higher enthusiasms, not by those a mere trickster like Colton was
trying to stimulate. They had rushed to the polls with all that was
best in their natures in the ascendant, eager not only for a great
servant that would reform many abuses, but for one that stood at
the moment before the country as the embodiment of all that was
high-minded, uncompromisingly honest, and nobly patriotic in
American life. It was one of the greatest personal triumphs ever
accomplished—for the leaders wished nothing more ardently than
his downfall—and whether or not it was to be justified by history, it
must ever remain to his credit that he had hypnotized his
countrymen through the higher channels of their nature. The
reaction might be bitter, but memory is short, and at least he had
served to demonstrate that the American mind was not materialized
by the lust of gain, was quite as susceptible to the loftier patriotic
promptings as in the days of its revolutionary and simpler ancestors.
A man like Colton might delude for a time, for the Democratic party
was deplorably weak in leaders, and the Republican bosses, in
California, as elsewhere, had made the State a byword for
shameless corruption; and their iron heel ground hard even in that
land of climate and plenty. Colton might be useful to rouse
Californians to a sense of their wrongs and opportunities, but
Gwynne doubted if he could hold them. He promised too much. The
time would come when they would turn to a strong man who talked
less and did more, who gradually imbued them with the conviction
of absolute honesty, distinguished ability, and as much
disinterestedness as it is reasonable to expect of any mortal striving
for the great prizes of life.
One day there was a mass-meeting suddenly called to express
sympathy with the orange growers of the South, who had dumped
twelve carloads of early oranges into the San Francisco Bay rather
than submit to the increased rates of the transcontinental railroads.
Gwynne saw his opportunity and summoned his powers. There was
a moment of doubt, of hesitancy, of reflection that he was rusty, and
that the subject was of no special interest to him; then, at the eager
insistence of Colton, he walked rapidly to the front of the platform
with all the actor's exalted nervous delight in a new rôle. In a few
moments there was no subject on earth so interesting to him as the
iniquities of the railroads and the wrongs of the orange growers; he
awoke from his torpor so triumphantly that his amazed audience, as
of old, felt the deep flattery of its power over him, and he made a
speech which was like the rushing of risen waters through a broken
dam. Not that he permitted himself to be carried away wholly; he
deliberately refrained from indiscriminate phillipics, from rousing
their ire too far, grasped the opportunity to see what could be done
by appealing to their reason through their higher emotions, and
begged them to meet constantly and consider the question of
electing men that were not mere politicians, that would deliver the
State from the medieval tyranny that oppressed it; advised his
hearers to employ the best legal counsel they could get, and to give
their leisure moments to the study of practical politics, instead of
indolently submitting all great questions to the hands of men as
unscrupulous as the State bosses and corporations. With his peculiar
gift he made each breathless man in the auditorium feel not only
that he was being personally addressed, but that his mental
equipment had mysteriously been raised to the plane of the
speaker's. When Gwynne finished amid applause as great as any he
had evoked in England after the expounding of great issues dear to
his heart, he turned to find Colton regarding him with sharp eyes
and lowering brow. He immediately took his arm and led him
without.
"I am glad a climax has come so soon," he said. "Otherwise I should
have begun to feel like a hypocrite. Not only are your principles and
mine utterly antagonistic, but you must consider me as your rival. I
can do nothing definite, of course, for nearly four years, and
meanwhile you may reach the United States Senate. If you do I shall
do my utmost to oust you. Nevertheless, if I can be of any service in
sending you there I am perfectly willing to place myself at your
disposal, for the experience and insight I shall acquire in exchange.
And as you are no worse than the others, and some one must go, it
might as well be you as another. But, I repeat, I shall use all my
powers to oust you and take your place."
Colton stood for a few moments, his hands in his pockets, regarding
the ground. Then he lifted his eyes and smiled ingenuously.
"You are dead straight, for a fact. And I think I have got just as good
an opinion of myself as you have of yourself. You put me in the
United States Senate with that tongue of yours—God, you can talk!
—and I'll take the chances of even you getting me out. It will take
more than eloquence to upset a great State machine, and before I
get through I'll have the Democratic machine stronger than the
Republican is to-day. You can't get anywhere in this country without
the machine, and the man in control stays in control unless he falls
down, and this I don't propose to do. I'll swap frankness and tell you
right here that when I'm boss I may let you come to Congress as my
colleague, but that you've got to do as I say when you get there.
What do you say to that?"
"I'll take all the chances. At least we understand each other. I work
for you now, and I break the power of both you and your infernal
machine when I am a citizen of the United States."
"Shake," said Colton.
And they shook.
 XXVI
Isabel sat idly on the veranda of her old hotel as was her habit in the
evening hour. There had been no heavy rains as yet to freshen the
hills and swell the tides until the salt waters scalded the juices from
the marsh grass, turning it from green to bronze and red; and the
barometer was stationary. A cool wind came in from the sea with the
flood, and Isabel enjoyed the beauty that was hers all the more
luxuriously in her thick shawl of white wool. A great part of the
valley north and south was within the range of her vision, and it was
suffused with gold under a sky that looked like an inverted crucible
pouring down its treasures in the prodigal fashion of the land. Facing
her house and on the opposite side of the marsh, at its widest here,
was a high wall of rock, from which the valley curved backward on
either side, tapering to the great level in the north, but on the south
halting abruptly before the mass of mountains following the coast
line and topped by the angular shoulder of Tamalpais; coal black to-
night against the intense gold of the West.
She had not seen Gwynne for several days, and half expected that
he would come to-night. These were busy days, and she saw less of
him than formerly, although he snatched an hour for shooting
whenever he could, and occasionally rode over for supper; and they
saw much of each other during the weekly visit to the city. Their
relations were easy and sexless. He refused to talk of chickens, but
they had many other interests in common. She had by no means
forgotten his outbreak in the launch, and had scowled at her arms
for quite a week as she brushed her hair for bed, but that episode
was now several weeks old, and she had ceased to harbor
resentment. But she was subtly out of conceit with herself and life,
resentful that she missed any one, after her long triumph in freedom
from human ties; also resentful of the respect and interest with
which Gwynne had inspired her, particularly since his summary
expulsion of her will from the battle ground where it was becoming
accustomed to easy triumphs. She had no love for him, and she was
as satisfied with the life she had chosen as ever, but she was
beginning to feel a sense of approaching confusion, where
readjustment would once more be necessary. The future looked
longer, and she was losing her pleasant sense of finality. She had
guessed long ago that the only chance of escaping the terrible
restlessness that pursues so many women, like enemies in the
unseen world converted into furies, was to caress and hug the
present, fool the ego into the belief that it wanted nothing beyond
an imminent future, certain of realization, which should be as all-
possessing as the present. But she had been wise enough to do little
analysis, either of her depths or of life, and her time was full
enough.
"Are you asleep?" asked a polite voice. Gwynne swung himself over
the low railing of the veranda.
"I did not hear your horse." It would be long before he could
surprise her into any sort of emotion again.
"Good reason. I walked. I read Cooley until I had an alarming vision
of the Constitution of the United States writ black upon the sunset,
so I thought it was high time to walk it off. Naturally my footsteps
led me here."
"That was nice of them. Mac will drive you home, or you can have
my horse."
"It is like you to plan my departure before I have fairly arrived. May I
sit down?"
Isabel shivered. The glow had gone, there was only the intense dark
fiery blue behind the stars—silver and crystal and green; one rarely
sees a golden star in California. There were scattered lights in
Rosewater and on the hillsides; and the night boat winding through
the marsh was a mere chain of colored lights; here and there a lamp
on a head mast looked like a fallen star.
"That is the way I generally feel after the glow has disappeared,"
said Gwynne, abruptly. "Let us go in."
There were blazing logs on the hearth, and a comfortable chair on
either side. The room looked very red and warm and seductive. As
they passed the table Isabel half lifted one of the English Reviews
for which she subscribed. "There is an allusion to you here," she
said. "I meant to send it to you. I fancy they want you back. It is
very complimentary."
But Gwynne concealed the promptings of vanity and took one of the
chairs at the fireside, asking permission to light his pipe. She noted,
as she settled herself opposite, that there was less of repose in his
long figure than formerly, something of repressed activity, and his
rather heavy eyes were colder and more alert.
"It all seems a thousand years ago," he said. "I am John Gwynne. I
doubt if I shall ever love your California, but I am interested—this
mass of typical Europeans not yet Americanized—no common brain
to work on, no one set of racial peculiarities. And the law has me
fast. I have become frightfully ambitious. Talk about your Hamilton. I
too walk the floor till the small hours, repeating pages aloud. My Jap
thinks me mad, and no doubt is only induced to remain at his post
by the excellence of my tobacco, and the fact that his education is
unhindered by much service. While I am packing my own brain cells
I infer that he is attending a night school in St. Peter, for I hear him
returning at all hours; and he certainly shows no trace of other
dissipation. We have never exchanged ten sentences, but perhaps
we act as a mutual stimulus."
"Don't you love California the least little bit?" asked Isabel, wistfully.
"Or San Francisco?"
"I have liked San Francisco too well upon several occasions—when I
have run down to spend the night at the Hofers—or have fallen in
with Stone on my way back from Berkeley, and been induced to stay
over. Hofer and that set seem to be content with living well; they are
too serious for dissipation. But Stone! Of course such men die
young, but they are useful in exciting the mind to wonder and awe. I
don't think I am in any danger of becoming San Franciscan to the
point of feeding her insatiable furnaces with all the fires of my being,
but there is no denying her fascination, and it has given me a very
considerable pleasure to yield to it. Whether I shall practise law
there—change my base—I have not yet had time to think it out."
"A country lawyer's is certainly no career."
"This is a good place to begin politically. San Francisco is too hard a
nut to crack at present. If I could become powerful in the State, the
Independent leader they need, then I might transfer my attentions
to that unhappy town. Even Hofer and all the rest of the devoted
band seem to be practically helpless since the re-election of the
mayor. What could I do—at present?"
"With a big legal reputation made in San Francisco you could travel
very fast and far. And you would be learning every thread of every
rope, become what is technically known as 'on'; and then when the
time came—"
"I hate so much waiting! The shortest cut is here in the country. I
shall manage these men far better than Colton, who is the crudest
type of American politician. Nothing could be simpler than his
program: abuse, promise. Nothing simpler than his ambition: all for
himself, and the devil take the hindmost. I have yet to hear him
utter a sentiment that betrays any love of his country or desire to
serve her, any real public spirit. Those are the sentiments I am trying
to cultivate for this accidental land of my birth, for without them
ambition is inexcusable and endeavor a hollow sham."
"And can't you?" Isabel left her chair and stood by the mantel-piece.
It was the first time he had spoken of himself with any approach to
confidence since the day of his arrival. "Sometimes I repent the
share I had in your coming to America—not that I flatter myself I
had much to do with it—" she added, hastily. "But my being there
may have turned the scale. You might have gone off to rule a South
American Republic—"
"I should have done nothing so asinine, and you had everything to
do with my coming here. Not that I hold you responsible. You gave a
hint, and I took it."
"And you don't regret it?"
"Why waste time in regret? I can go back any moment. Not that I
have the least intention of doing anything of the sort."
He was pleasantly tired in mind and body, and the warm homelike
room caressed his senses. He settled himself more deeply in Hiram
Otis's old chair and looked up at Isabel. She had laid aside the white
shawl, but wore a red Indian scarf over her black gown. The gown
was cut out in a square at the neck; she always dressed for her
lonely supper, and she had put a red rose in her hair, in the fashion
of her California grandmothers. With her face turned from the light,
her eyes with their large pupils looked black.
"I shall stay in California, like or no like," continued Gwynne. "But I
did not walk five miles to talk politics with a woman after a day of
law and the citizens of Rosewater. Where did you get that curious
old-fashioned scarf?"
"I found it in a trunk of my mother's. Doubtless it belonged to her
mother. I also found this." She indicated a fine gold chain and heart
of garnets that lay on her white neck. The humor in his eyes had
quickened into admiration; he reflected that the various streams in
her composition might not be so completely blended as would
appear upon that normally placid surface. The feeling of uneasiness
which he had peremptorily dismissed stole over him once more. She
looked wholly Spanish, and put out the light of every brunette he
knew. Dolly Boutts, whom he still admired at a distance, although he
fled at her approach, was a bouncing peasant by contrast; and
several well-bred and entertaining young women of the same warm
hues that he had met during the past few weeks in San Francisco
suddenly seemed to be the merest climatic accidents beside this girl
who unrolled the pages of California's older past and afforded him a
fleeting vision of those lovely doñas and fiery caballeros for whom
life was an eternal playground. That they were his progenitors as
well as hers he found it difficult to realize, he seemed to have
inherited so little of them; but they had flown generously to Isabel's
making, and to-night she gave him that same impression of historic
background as when she turned the severity of her profile up on him
and suggested a doughtier race.
"It was about the same time," he said, abruptly.
"What?"
"While our Spanish ancestors were playing at this end of the
continent, our 'American' forefathers were bracing themselves
against England. It was in 1776 that the Presidio and Mission of San
Francisco were founded, was it not? Curious coincidence. Perhaps
that is what gives you your sense of destiny."
"I have no sense of destiny."
"Oh, but you have. Now I know that you are quite Spanish to-night.
It is your more ordinary mood of calm unvarnished—not to say
brutal—directness that gives you your greatest charm as a comrade
—even while you repel as a woman."
"Do I repel as a woman?" Isabel had placed one foot on the fender,
one hand on the mantel-piece, and as she leaned slightly towards
him, the red glow of the lamps and the mellow old scarf softening
her features, the small square of neck dazzlingly white, and the
position revealing the lines of her figure against the high flames of
the logs, she looked more lovely than he had ever seen her. Like all
racial beauties, bred by selection, she needed the arts of dress and
furnishings to frame her. It is only your accidental or peasant beauty
that can defy "clothes"; and Isabel's looks in ordinary ranch and
riding costumes made no impression on Gwynne whatever. But to-
night her appeal was very direct, although he had not the least idea
whether she was posing or was entirely natural in an unusual mood.
He had no intention of being made a fool of, however, and answered
with the responsive glow in his eyes due a pretty and charming
woman:
"Sometimes. Not to-night. If you would remain Spanish with no
Revolutionary lapses, I make no doubt I should fall in love with you,
and then perhaps you would fall in love with me merely because of
my own lack of picturesqueness, and we should live happily ever
after."
"What a bore." Isabel sniffed, and moved her gaze to the fire. But
she did not alter her attitude.
"Are you really happy?" asked Gwynne, curiously.
"Of course. So much so that it begins to worry me a little. My
puritanical instincts dictate that I have no right to be quite happy.
What slaves we are to the old poisons in our blood! I live by the light
of my reason, and all is well until one of those mouldy instincts, like
a buried disease germ, raps all round its tomb. Then I feel nothing
but a graveyard of all my ancestors. I don't let them out, and my
reason continues its rule, but they keep me from being—well—
entirely happy, and I resent that."
"I should say it was not the Puritans but your common womanly
instincts that were thumping round their cells. You have no right to
be happy except as Nature intended when she deliberately equipped
you, and that is in making some man happy."
"That is one of those superstitions I am trying to live down while I
am still young. Your mother is unhappy, under all her pride, because
she has outlived youth and beauty and all they meant to her—she
made them her gods, and now they have gone, and she doesn't
know which way to turn. Ennui devours her, and she is too old to
turn her brains to account, too cynical for the average resource of
religion, and too steeped, dyed, solidified, in one kind of womanism
to turn at this late date to any other. But there are so many
resources for the woman of to-day. The poor despised pioneers have
done that for us. Of course it has not killed our natural instincts, and
if I had not fallen in love when I did, no doubt I should still be
looking about for an opportunity. It is my good-fortune that I was
delivered so soon. I wish all women born to enjoy life in its variety
could be freed of that terrible burden of sex as early as I was."
"I suppose you would like to rid men of it too."
"I do not waste any thought on men; so far as I have observed they
are able to take care of themselves."
"A woman incapable of passion is neither more nor less than a
failure."
"I have seen so many commonplace women capable of it! Look at
Mrs. Haight and Paula."
"I never look at Mrs. Haight, but as for Mrs. Stone I can quite
conceive that if she had better taste she would be almost charming.
She embodies youth properly equipped."
"For reproduction, you mean. That is the reason that the silliest, the
meanest, the most poisonous girl can always find a husband if she is
healthy. It is no wonder that some of us want a new standard."
Gwynne laughed. "Schopenhauer suits you better when you are out
on the marsh in rubber boots and a shooting-jacket. Do you realize
that if you persist in this determination to camp permanently in the
outer—and frigid—zone, you will never be the centre of a life drama?
That, I take it, is what every woman desires most. You had a sort of
curtain-raiser—to my mind, hardly that. First love is merely the more
picturesque successor of measles and whooping-cough. In marriage
it may develop into something worth while, but in itself amounts to
nothing—except as material for poets. But the real drama—that is in
the permanent relation. This relation is the motive power of the
great known dramas of the world. Life is packed with little unheard
of dramas of precisely the same sort—the eternal duet of sex;