The Silver Horde Part 18

"Don't use that term!" she cried. "There is no word so hateful to me as 'failure'--I suppose, because father has never failed in anything. Let us say that your success has been delayed."

"Very well. That suits me better, also, but you see I've forgotten how to choose nice words."

They were seated in the library, where for two hours they had remained undisturbed, Emerson talking rapidly, almost incoherently, as if this were a sort of confessional, the girl hanging eagerly upon his every word, following his narrative with breathless interest. The story had been substantially the same as that which, once before, he had related to Cherry Malotte; but now the facts were deeply, intimately colored with all the young man's natural enthusiasm and inmost personal feeling. To his listener it was like some wonderful, far-off romance, having to do with strange people whose motives she could scarcely grasp and pitched amid wild scenes that she could not fully picture.

"And you did all that for me," she mused, after a time.

"It was the only way."

"I wonder if any other man I know would take those risks just for--me."

"Of course. Why, the risk, I mean the physical peril and hards.h.i.+p and discomfort, don't amount to--that." He snapped his fingers. "It was only the unending desolation that hurt; it was the separation from you that punished me--the thought that some luckier fellow might--"

"Nonsense!" Mildred was really indignant. "I told you to fix your own time and I promised to wait. Even if I had not--cared for you, I would have kept my word. That is a Wayland principle. As it is, it was--comparatively easy."

"Then you do love me, my Lady?" He leaned eagerly toward her.

"Do you need to ask?" she whispered from the shelter of his arms. "It is the same old fascination of our girl and boy days. Do you remember how completely I lost my head about you?" She laughed softly. "I used to think you wore a football suit better than anybody in the world! Sometimes I suspect that it is merely that same girlish hero-wors.h.i.+p and can't last.

But it _has_ lasted--so far. Three years is a long time for a girl like me to wait, isn't it?"

"I know! I know!" he returned, jealously. "But I have lived that time with nothing but a memory, while you have had other things to occupy you. You are flattered and courted by men, scores of men--"

"Oh!"

"Legions of men! Oh, I know. Haven't I devoured society columns by the yard? The papers were six months old, to be sure, when I got them, but every mention of you was like a knife stab to me. Jealousy drove me to memorize the name of every man with whom you were seen in public, and I called down all sorts of curses upon their heads. I used to torture my lonely soul with hideous pictures of you--"

"Hideous pictures of me?" The girl perked her head to one side and glanced at him bewitchingly, "You're very flattering!"

"Yes, pictures of you with a caravan of suitors at your heels."

"You foolish boy! Suitors don't come in caravans they come in cabs."

"Well, my simile isn't far wrong in other respects," he replied, with a flash of her spirit. "But anyhow I pictured you surrounded by all the beautiful things of your life here, forever in the scent of flowers, in the lights of drawing-rooms, in the soft music of hidden instruments. G.o.d!

how I tortured myself! You were never out of mind for an hour. My days were given to you, and I used to pray that my dreams might hold nothing but you. You have been my fetish from the first day I met you, and my wors.h.i.+p has grown blinder every hour, Mildred. You were always out of my reach, but I have kept my eyes raised toward you just the same, and I have never looked aside, never faltered." He paused to feast his eyes upon her, and then in a half-whisper finished, "Oh, my Lady, how beautiful you are!"

And indeed she was; for her face, ordinarily so imperious, was now softly alight; her eyes, which other men found cold, were kindled with a rare warmth of understanding; her smile was almost wistfully sweet. To her lover she seemed to bend beneath the burden of her brown hair, yet her slim figure had the strength and poise which come of fine physical inheritance and high spirit. Every gesture, every unstudied att.i.tude, revealed the grace of the well born woman.

It was this "air" of hers, in fact, which had originally attracted him. He recalled how excited he had been in that far-away time when he had first learned her ident.i.ty--for the name of Wayland was spoken soundingly in the middle West. In the early stages of their acquaintance he had looked upon her aloofness as an affectation, but a close intimacy had compelled a recognition of it as something wholly natural; he found her as truly a patrician as Wayne Wayland, her father, could wish. The old man's domain was greater than that of many princes, and his power more absolute. His only daughter he spoiled as thoroughly as he ruled his part of the financial world, and wilful Mildred, once she had taken an interest in the young college man so evidently ready to be numbered among her lovers, did not pause half way, but made her preference patent to all, and opened to him a realm of dazzling possibilities. He well remembered the perplexities of those first delirious days when her regard was beginning to make itself apparent. She was so different, so wonderfully far removed from all he knew, that he doubted his own senses.

His friends, indeed, lost no opportunity of informing him that he was a tremendously favored young man, but this phase of the affair had caused him little thought, simply because the girl herself had come so swiftly to overshadow, in his regard, every other consideration--even her own wealth and position. At the same time he could not but be aware that his standing in his little world was subtly altered as soon as he became known as the favored suitor of Wayne Wayland's daughter. He began to receive favors from comparative strangers; unexpected social privileges were granted him; his way was made easier in a hundred particulars. From every quarter delicately gratifying distinctions came to him. Without his volition he found that he had risen to an entirely different position from that which he had formerly occupied; the mere coupling of his name with Mildred Wayland's had lifted him into a calcium glare. It affected him not at all, he only knew that he was truly enslaved to the girl, that he idolized her, that he regarded her as something priceless, sacred. She, in turn, frankly capitulated to him, in proud disregard of what her world might say, as complete in her surrender to this new lover as she had been inaccessible in her reserve toward all the rest.

And when he had graduated, how proud of her he had been! How little he had realized the gulf that separated them, and how quick had been his awakening!

It was Wayne Wayland who had shown him his folly. He had talked to the young engineer kindly, if firmly, being too shrewd an old diplomat to fan the flame of a headstrong love with vigorous opposition.

"Mildred is a rich girl," the old financier had told Boyd, "a very rich girl; one of the richest girls in this part of the world; while you, my boy--what have you to offer?"

"Nothing! But you were not always what you are now," Emerson had replied.

"Every man has to make a start. When you married, you were as poor as I am."

"Granted! But I married a poor girl, from my own station in life.

Fortunately she had the latent power to develop with me as I grew; so that we kept even and I never outdistanced her. But Mildred is spoiled to begin with. I spoiled her purposely, to prevent just this sort of thing. She is bred to luxury, her friends are rich, and she doesn't know any other kind of life. Her tastes and habits and inclinations are extravagant, to put it plainly--yes, worse than extravagant; they are positively scandalous. She is about the richest girl in the country, and by virtue of wealth as well as breeding she is one of the American aristocracy. Oh! people may say what they please, but we have an aristocracy all the same which is just as well marked and just as exclusive as if it rested upon birth instead of bank accounts."

"You wouldn't object to our marriage if I were rich and Mildred were poor," Emerson had said, rather cynically.

"Perhaps not. A poor girl can marry a rich man and get along all right if she has brains; but a very rich girl can't marry a very poor man and be happy unless she is peculiarly const.i.tuted. I happen to know that my girl isn't so const.i.tuted. She is utterly impossible as a poor man's wife. She can't _do_ anything: she can't economize, she can't amuse herself, she can't be happy without the things she is accustomed to; it is in her blood and training and disposition. She would try, bless you! she would try all right--for a while--but I know her better than she knows herself.

You see, I have the advantage of knowing myself and of having known her mother before her. She is a hothouse flower, and adversity would wither her. Mind you, I don't say that her husband must be a millionaire, but he will need a running start on the road to make her happy, and--well, the fellow who gets my girl will make her happy or I'll make him d.a.m.ned miserable!" The old fellow had squared his jaws belligerently at this statement.

"You have nothing against me--personally, I mean?"

"Nothing."

"She loves me."

"She seems to. But both of you are young and may get over it before you reach the last hurdle."

"Then you forbid it?" Boyd had queried, his own glance challenging that of her father.

"By no means. I neither forbid nor consent. I merely ask you to stand still and use your eyes for a little while. You have intelligence. Don't be hasty. I am going to tell her just what I have told you, and I think she is sensible enough to realize the truth of my remarks. No! instead of forbidding you Mildred's society, I am going to give you all you want of it. I am going to make you free at our house. I am going to see that you meet her friends and go where she goes. I want you to do the things that she does and see how she lives. The more you see of us, the better it will suit me. I have been studying you for some time, Mr. Emerson, and I think I have read you correctly. After you have spent a few months with us, come to me again and we will talk it over. I may say yes by that time, or you may not wish me to. Perhaps Mildred will decide for both of us."

"That is satisfactory to me."

"Very well! We dine at seven to-night; and we shall expect you."

That Mr. Wayland had made no mistake in his judgment, Emerson had soon been forced to admit; for the more he saw of Mildred's life, the more plainly he perceived the barriers that lay between them. Those months had been an education to him. He had become an integral part of Chicago's richer social world. The younger set had accepted him readily enough on the score of his natural good parts, while the name of Wayne Wayland had acted like magic upon the elders. Yet it had been a cruel time of probation for the young lover, who continually felt the searching eyes of the old man reading him; and despite the fact that Mildred took no pains to conceal her preference for him, there had been no lack of other suitors, all of whom Boyd hated with a perfect hate.

They had never discussed the matter, yet both the lovers had been conscious that the old man's words were pregnant with truth, and after a few months, during which Emerson had made little progress in his profession, Mildred had gone to her father and frankly begged his aid. But he had remained like adamant.

"I have been pretty lenient so far. He will have to make his own way without my help. You know he isn't my candidate."

Recognizing the despair which was possessing her lover, and jealous for her own happiness, Mildred had arranged that both of them, together, should have a talk with her father. The result had been the same. Mr.

Wayland listened grimly, then said:

"This request for a.s.sistance shows that both of you are beginning to realize the wisdom of my remarks of a year ago."

"I'm not asking aid from you," Emerson had blazed forth. "I can take care of myself and of Mildred."

"Permit me to show you that you can't. Your life and training have not fitted you for the position of Mildred's husband. Have you any idea how many millions she is going to own?"

No, and I don't care to know."

"I don't care to tell you either, but the Wayland fortune will carry such a tremendous responsibility with it that my successor will have to be a stronger man than I am to hold it together. I merely gathered it; he must keep it. You haven't qualified in either respect yet."

Mildred had interrupted petulantly. "Oh, this endless chatter of money! It is disgusting. I only wish we were poor. Instead of a blessing, our wealth is an unmitigated curse--a terrible, exhausting burden. I hear of nothing else from morning till night. It gives us no pleasure, nothing but care and worry and--wrinkles. I can do without horses and motors and maids, and all that. I want to live, really to _live_." She had arisen and gone over to Boyd, laying her hand upon his shoulder. "I will give it all up.

Let us try to be happy without it."

It had been a tense moment for both men. Their eyes had met defiantly, but, reading in the father's face the contempt that waited upon an unmanly decision, Boyd's pride stood up stiffly.