Ancestors: A Novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

  VII

  Gwynne found few letters awaiting him; he had not encouragedcorrespondence, and only his mother, Flora Thangue, and his solicitorsknew his address. It had been announced and reiterated in London that hewas making a tour of the world. During the first month of his absenceLady Victoria had sent him a large bundle of clippings from newspapers,some acid in comment upon his obvious intention of neglecting his dutiesas a peer of the realm, his fruitless exposure of a chagrin at anelevation in which he would find more and more consolation as time wenton. A few were sympathetic. Others went so far as to indicate a programin which he might serve his country with modesty, if not with thescintillations of the free-lance; and reminded him that peers had risento the post of prime-minister ere this, of viceroy, lord-lieutenant,governor-general, and ambassador. Then, apparently, they dismissed him.The fiscal question was acute. Dissolution threatened. There were brightparticular stars still in both parties, and the press and public hadenough to do with sitting in judgment upon their respective rays.

  In the two letters from his mother, written at Homburg, there was nonews beyond the letting of the properties and a bulletin of her health,which promised an imminent fitness for travel. His solicitors wrote thatthe income from the two estates was ample to keep the numerous women ofthe family in comfort, and leave a surplus which should be paid to hismother, according to his directions. This, with the southern ranch andthe San Francisco property, should yield her an income of two thousandfive hundred pounds a year. The confidential member of the firm hintedthat if his lordship found means of increasing her ladyship's income inthat land of gold and plenty it would be wise to do so, as her ladyshipknew less than nothing of economy and was even more deeply in debt thanusual.

  He missed Flora's gay letter of gossip, and looked with narrowing lidsat the pile of newspapers. None had been sent him before, and he hadleft not a subscription behind him; but it was evident that his motherand Flora were under the mistaken impression that he would welcome thisgreeting in his new home. They had accumulated for a month. Herecognized the type of the leading dailies, and could guess the names ofthe numerous illustrated weeklies. Suddenly he took them in his arms andwalked quickly over to the stove, his eye roving in search of amatch-box. But even as he stooped he rose again, and, blushing for hisweakness, carried them back to the table, tore them open with nervoushaste. He skimmed the great pages of the dailies from start to finish,telling himself that he must have a breath from home, news fromauthoritative sources, stated in excellent English; sickened with theknowledge that he was but searching eagerly for a word of himself;sickening more when he found none. Then he fell upon the weeklies, hiseye glancing indifferently from the paragraphs and presentments of theroyal and the engaged, but scanning every personality. He had had onerival and there was much of him.

  Before he had finished the third his struggling pride conquered. Hegathered the heap and flung it into a corner, then caught up his hat andstruck out for the loneliest part of the ranch. He writhed in the throesof disappointment, jealousy, disgust of self. He attempted consolationby picturing all the other ambitious men he knew exhibiting a similarweakness and vanity when there was no eye to see. His imagination didnot rise to marvellous feats--and what if it did not? He had neveraspired to be in the same class with other men.

  The bitter tide receded only to give place to apprehension. Histemperament was mercurial, balanced by a certain languor in the earlierstages of emotion, and there had been little to depress his spiritduring those thirty years when all the fairies had danced attendance onhim; even defeat had but intoxicated his fighting instinct and givenanother excuse for flattery and encouragement. During the eleven monthssince he had left England he had experienced neither encouragement norflattery. He could not recall having made a profound impression upon anyof his casual acquaintances; he certainly had created no sensation. Itwas true that his role had been that of the listener, the student, buthe had so long accepted himself as a personality, as the most remarkableof England's younger productions, that he had been deeply mortified morethan once at the cavalier treatment of middle-aged business men with notime to waste upon a young Britisher of no possible use to them.

  To-day he boldly faced the haunting doubt if he were really a great man;if his success in England, as well as his phenomenal self-confidence,had not been merely the result of an inordinate ambition fed byfortuitous circumstances. He recalled that from childhood hisgrandfather and his mother had practically decreed that the bright,lovable, mischievous boy was to be a great man; that as he grew olderthe entire family connection joined the conspiracy. It is easy enough tobelieve in yourself when the world believes in you, and easy enough tomake the world take you at your own valuation when you have a powerfulbacking, a reasonable amount of cleverness, a sublime audacity, thepower of speech, and a happy series of accidents. Were all great mentwo-thirds accidental or manufactured? He felt inclined to believe it,but while it soothed his torn and throbbing pride, it by no meanslessened his apprehension.

  Was he not a great man, even so? He felt anything but a great man at themoment. He recalled that he had indulged in few lapses into complacencysince his departure incognito from England, and that he had deliberatelyheld self-analysis at bay by incessant travel and a compulsory interestin subjects that did not appeal to him in the least. It was this absenceof interest after close upon a year in the country that appalled him asmuch as his inner visioning. He hated the country. He hated itspolitics, both parties impartially. He hated all the questions thatabsorbed the American mind, from graft to negroes. He had sat in theCongressional galleries in Washington, attended political meetingswherever he could obtain admittance, studied the press in even thesmaller towns, travelled through the South and relieved himself ofwhatever abstract sympathy he may have cherished for the colored race,visited the sweat-shops of New York, the meat-packing establishments ofChicago, the factories of New England, every phase of the greatcivilization he knew of; and while he found much to admire and condemn,both left him evenly indifferent. With all his soul he longed forEngland. She might have her selfishness and her snobberies, lingeringtaints in her political system, but she stood at the apex ofcivilization, and her very faults were interesting; far removed from thebrazen crudities of the New World's struggle for wealth and power. Andalthough the blood of reformers was in his veins, and in his secret soulhe was an idealist to the point of knight-errantry, the desire forreform had ebbed out of him during his American exile. And he knew thefate of a good many American reformers. There were several in highplaces at present, cheerfully trimmed down from the statesman to thepolitical ideal. Julia Kaye--clever woman!--had put the matter into anepigram. The American statesman was the superior politician.

  And how was he, out of tune with every phase of the country, to find theghost of an opportunity to lead it? He was no actor. If he had a meritit was sincerity, a contempt for subterfuge as beneath both his powersand the lofty position to which he had been born. Moreover, he washonest; an equally aristocratic failing and drawback.

  He recalled a conversation he had held in the smoking-compartment of aPullman with a sharp young politician, who had become voluble afterGwynne had "stood him" two high-balls.

  "It's graft or quit," he had announced. "All this cleaning up ininsurance and what not, all this talk of curbing the trusts and the restof it don't fool yours truly one little bit. It's just the ins trying toget ahead of the outs. It's not the honestest or the best man that getsthere in God's own country, but the smartest--every time. Those that arecrying the loudest against the grafters are just waiting for a chance tograft good and hard themselves. I am, and I don't care who knows it.Only I don't waste any strength kicking. The labor party works itself upover trusts and capitalists, and most of the capitalists come out ofthat factory, and are the first to grind those left behind them, underboth heels. They know what I know, and what you'll know before you getthrough, that the only fun in life is to be got out of power and money."

  The face a
s sharp as a razor but by no means dishonest rose beforeGwynne. He had been a very decent little chap, and in the two days theyhad travelled together he had displayed a photograph of his wife and"kids," to whom he seemed even sentimentally devoted. Although Gwynnehad parted from the man with satisfaction it was impossible to despisehim utterly. Since then he had met many of his kind, more or lesshonest, able, pettily ambitious, fairly educated, unlearned on everysubject except politics and the general business of the country; and allequally unsympathetic. He made no pretence to judge the country on itssocial or intellectual side, for he had been forced to avoid all groupsthat might have enlightened him--although he found no difficulty inassuming that well-bred and intellectual people were much the same theworld over, and was willing to give the United States the benefit ofevery doubt. But its obvious side was the one that concerned him and hiscareer. In order to succeed--and without success life would mean lessthan nothing to him--must he in a measure conform to conditions thatwere the result of a century of complexities? He recurred to the drybiographical sketches he had received, from certain of his travellingcompanions, of the most distinguished--and successful!--men in Americanpolitics to-day. Their ideals and their zeal for reform had playedbetween horizon and zenith like a flaming sword, so compelling theattention of all that would pause to look that the diminishingeffulgence had been even more conspicuous; and now, although the swordwas occasionally brandished for form's sake, and was even sharper thanbefore, having learned to cut both ways, it had the rust of tin not ofblood on it, and deceived no one. But it had served its purpose--if tobe sure it had been needed at all--and its owners were past-masters ofsuccess. Had he in him the makings of the mere trimmer and politician,in addition to the miserable vanity that had riven him to-day? And wouldsome measure of great success won on those lines stir the dormantgreatness in him?--if there were any greatness to stir. This was thefearful doubt, after all, that beset him. He almost saw with his outervision his ideals lying in a tumbled heap, as he felt himself on thepoint of crying aloud that to feel once more that sense of power whichhad exalted him above mere mortals, and given him an ecstasy of spiritthat no other passion could ever excite, he would sacrifice everything,everything!

  He paused abruptly and looked about him. He was half-way up themountain. The great valley, that looked as if it might embrace the Stateitself, lay before him. North and south the scenery was magnificent,ethereal in the distance, melting everywhere into one of those lovelymists that seem to have extracted the spiritual essence of all thecolors. But the very beauty of his new domain added to the sense ofunreality, of uneasiness, that had so often possessed him since he hadcrossed the borders of the State. And it was all on such a colossalscale. There could never be anything friendly, anything possessing, in aland destined for a race of primeval giants. He felt so passionate alonging for the sweet embracing historied landscapes of England that thevery violence of the nostalgia drove him homeward with the half-formedintention of taking the first train for New York and the first steamerout of it. Moreover, he was suddenly obsessed with the belief that if hehad greatness in him England alone held its magnet.

  But it was a long walk to his house, and he reached it late in theafternoon, very tired and very hungry. When he entered his comfortableliving-room, redolent of flowers, he received something like a shock ofpeace, and after he had taken a cold bath, he cursed himself roundly forpermitting the mixed blood in his veins to contrive at times thetemperament of an artist or of some women. As he sat down to a more thanpalatable supper, he felt thankful that he had had it out with himselfso early in the engagement, and thought it odd if the Anglo-Saxon in himcould not drive rough-shod over his weaker outcroppings.