A week later Boyd and George were watching the lights of Port Townsend blink out in the gloom astern. A quick change of boats at Juneau had raised their spirits, enabling them to complete the second stage of their journey in less than the expected time, and the southward run, out from the breath of the Arctics into a balmier climate, had removed nearly the last trace of their suffering from the frost.
A sort of meditative silence which had fallen upon the two men was broken at last by George, who for some time had been showing signs of uneasiness.
"How long are we going to stay in Seattle?" he inquired.
"Only long enough," Boyd replied, "for me to arrange a connection with some bank. That will require a day, perhaps."
"I suppose a feller has got to dress pretty swell back there inChicago," George ventured.
"Some people do."
"Full-dress suits of clothes, eh?"
"Yes."
"Did you ever wear one?"
"Certainly."
"Well, I'll be—" The fisherman checked himself and gazed at his companion as if he saw him suddenly in a new light; in fact, he had discovered many strange phases of this young man's character during the past fortnight. "Right along?" he questioned, incredulously.
"Why, yes. Pretty steadily."
"All day, at a time?"
Boyd laughed. "I haven't worn one in the daytime since I left college.They are used only at night."
George pondered this for some time, while Emerson stared out into the velvet darkness, to be roused again a moment later.
"A feller told me a funny thing once. He said them rich men back East had women come around and clean their finger-nails, and shine 'em up. Is that right?"
"Quite right!"
Another pause, then Balt cleared his throat and said, with an assumption of carelessness:
"Well, I don't suppose—you ever had 'em—shine your finger-nails, did you?"
"Yes."
The big man opened his mouth to speak; then, evidently changing his mind, observed, "Seems to me I'd better stay here on the coast and wait for you."
"No, indeed!" the other answered, quickly. "I will need you in raising that money. You know the practical side of the fishing business, and I don't."
"All right, I'll go. If you can stand for me, I'll stand for the full-dress suits of clothes and the finger-nail women. Anyhow, it won't last long."
"When were you outside last?"
"Four years ago."
"Ever been East?"
"Sure! I've got a sister in Spokane Falls. But I don't like it back there."
"You will have a good time in Chicago." Boyd smiled.
"Fingerless" Fraser came to them from the lighted regions amidship, greeting them cheerfully.
"Well, we're pretty near there, ain't we? I'm glad of it; I've about cleaned up this ship."
The adventurer had left his companions alone much of the time during the trip—greatly to Boyd's relief, for the fellow was an unconscionable bore—and had thus allowed them time to perfect their plans and thresh out numberless details.
"I grabbed another farmer's son at supper—just got through with him.He was good for three-fifty."
"Three hundred and fiftydollars?" questioned Balt.
"Yep! I opened a little stud game for him. Beats all how these suckers fall for the old stuff."
"Where did you get money to gamble with?" inquired Boyd.
"Oh! I won a pinch of change last night in a bridge game with thatDawson Bunch."
"But it must have required a bank-roll to sit in a game with them. They seem to be heavy spenders. How did you manage that?"
"I sold some mining property the day before. I got the captain of the ship." Fraser chuckled.
"Did you swindle that old fellow?" Emerson cried, angrily. "See here! I won't allow—"
"Swindle! Who said I 'swindled' anybody? I wouldn't trim my worst enemy."
"You have no mining claims."
"What makes you think I haven't? Alaska is a big country."
"You told me so."
"Well, I didn't have any claims at that time, but since we came aboard of this wagon at Juneau I have improved each shining hour. While you and George was building canneries I was rustling. And I did pretty well, if I do say it as shouldn't."
Emerson shrugged his broad shoulders. "You will get into trouble! If you do, I won't come to your rescue. I have helped you all I can."
"Not me!" denied the self-satisfied Fraser. "There ain't a chance. Why? Because I'm on the level, I am. That's why. But say, getting money from these Reubs is a joke. It's like kicking a lamb in the face." He clinked some gold coins in his pocket and began to whistle noiselessly. "When do we pull out for Chi?" he next inquired.
"We?" said Emerson. "I told you I would take you as far as Seattle. I can't stand for your 'work.' I think you had better stop here, don't you?"
"Perhaps itisfor the best," Fraser observed, carelessly. "Time alone can tell." He bade them good-night and disappeared to snatch a few hours' sleep, but upon their arrival at the dock on the following morning, without waiting for an invitation he bundled himself into their carriage and rode to the hotel, registering immediately beneath them. They soon lost sight of him, however, for their next move was in the direction of a clothier's, where they were outfitted from sole to crown. The garments they stood up in showed whence they had come; yet the strangeness of their apparel excited little comment, for Seattle is the gateway to the great North Country, and hither the Northmen foregather, going and coming. But to them the city was very strange and exciting. The noises deafened them, the odors of civilization now tantalized, now offended their nostrils; the crowding streams of humanity confused them, fresh from their long sojourn in the silences and solitudes. Every clatter and crash, every brazen clang of gong, caused George to start; he watched his chance and took street-crossings as if pursued.
"If one of them bells rings behind me," he declared, "I'll jump through a plate-glass window." When his roving eyes first lighted upon a fruit stand he bolted for it and filled his pockets with tomatoes.
"I've dreamed about these things for four years," he declared, "and I can't stand it any longer." He bit into one voraciously, and thereafter followed his companion about munching tomatoes at every step, refilling his pockets as his supply diminished. To show his willingness for any sacrifice, he volunteered to wear a dress suit if Emerson would buy it for him, and it required considerable argument to convince him that the garb was unnecessary.
"You better train me up before we get East," he warned, "or I'll make your swell friends sore and spoil the deal. I could wear it on the cars and get easy in it."
"My dear fellow, it takes more than a week to 'get easy' in a dress suit." Boyd smiled, amused at his earnestness, for the big fellow was merely a boy out on a wonderful vacation.
"Well, if there is a Down-East manicure woman in Seattle, show her to me and I'll practice on her," he insisted. "She can halter-break me, at least."
"Yes, it might not hurt to get that off your hands," Emerson acknowledged, at which the clothier's clerk, who had noted the condition of the fisherman's huge paws, snickered audibly.
It was a labor of several hours to fit Big George's bulky frame, and when the two returned to the hotel Emerson found the representative of an afternoon newspaper anxiously awaiting him at the desk.
"We noticed your arrival from the North," began the reporter, "and Mr.Athens sent me down to get a story."
"Athens! Billy Athens?"
"Yes! He is the editor. I believe you two were college mates. He wanted to know if you are the Boyd Emerson of the Michigan football team."
"Well, well!" Boyd mused. "Billy Athens was a good tackle."
"He thought you might have something interesting to tell about Alaska," the newspaper man went on. "However, I won't need to take much of your time, for your partner has been telling me all about you and your trip and your great success."
"My partner?"
"Yes. Mr. Frobisher. He heard me inquire about you and volunteered to give me an interview in your name."
"Frobisher!" said Emerson, now thoroughly mystified.
"Sure, that's him, over yonder." The reporter indicated "Fingerless" Fraser, who, having watched the interview from a distance, now solemnly closed one eye and stuck his tongue into his cheek.
"Oh, yes, yes!Frobisher!" Boyd stammered. "Certainly!"
"He is a character, isn't he? He told me how you rescued that girl when she broke through the ice at Kalvik."
"He did?"
"Quite a romance, wasn't it? It is a good newspaper story and I'll play it up. He is going to let me in on that hydraulic proposition of yours, too. Of course I haven't much money, but it sounds great, and—"
"How far along did you get with your negotiations about this hydraulic proposition?" Boyd asked, curiously.
"Just far enough so I'm all on edge for it. I'll make up a little pool among the boys at the office and have the money down here before you leave to-night."
"I am sorry, but Mr. Frobisher and I will have to talk it over first," said Emerson, grimly. "I think we will keep that 'hydraulic proposition' in the family, so to speak."
"Then you won't let me in?"
"Not just at present."
"I'm sorry! I should like to take a chance with somebody who is really successful at mining. When a fellow drones along on a salary month after month it makes him envious to see you Klondikers hit town with satchels full of coin. Perhaps you will give me a chance later on?"
"Perhaps," acceded Boyd; but when the young man had gone he strode quickly over to Fraser, who was lolling back comfortably, smoking a ridiculously long cigar with an elaborate gold band.
"Look here, Mr. 'Frobisher,'" he said, in a low tone, "what do you mean by mixing me up in your petty-larceny frauds?"
Fraser grinned. "'Frobisher' is hot monaker, ain't it? It sounds like the money. I believe I'll stick to 'Frobisher.'"
"I spiked your miserable little scheme, and if you try anything more like that, I'll have to cut you out altogether."
"Pshaw!" said the adventurer, mildly. "Did you say that hydraulic mine was no good? Too bad! That reporter agreed to take some stock right away, and promised to get his editor in on it, too."
"His editor!" Emerson cried, aghast. "Why, his editor happens to be a friend of mine, whose assistance I may need very badly when I get back from Chicago."
"Oh, well! That's different, of course."
"Now see here, Fraser, I want you to leave me out of your machinations, absolutely. You've been very decent to me in many ways, but if I hear of anything more like this I shall hand you over to the police."
"Don't be a sucker all your life," admonished the rogue. "You stick to me, and I'll make you a lot of money. I like you—"
Emerson, now seriously angry, wheeled and left him, realizing that the fellow was morally atrophied. He could not forget, however, that except for this impossible creature he himself would be lying at Petellin's store at Katmai with no faintest hope of completing his mission, wherefore he did his best to swallow his indignation.
"Hey! What time do we leave?" Fraser called after him, but the young man would not answer, proceeding instead to his room, there to renew his touch with the world through strange clean garments, the feel of which awakened memories and spurred him on to feverish haste. When he had dressed he hurried to a telegraph office and dispatched two messages to Chicago, one addressed to his own tailor, the other to a number on Lake Shore Drive. Over the latter he pondered long, tearing up several drafts which did not suit him, finally giving one to the operator with an odd mingling of timidity and defiance. This done, he hastened to one of the leading banks, and two hours later returned to the hotel, jubilant.
He found Big George in the lobby staring with fascinated eyes at his finger-nails, which were strangely purified and glossy.
"Look at 'em!" the fisherman broke out, admiringly. "They're as clean as a hound's tooth. They shine so I dassent take hold of anything."
"I have made my deal with the bank," Boyd exulted. "All I need to raise now is one hundred thousand dollars. The bank will advance the rest."
"That's great," said Balt, without interrupting the contemplation of his digits. "That's certainly immense. Say! Don't they glisten?"
"They look very nice—"
"Stylish! I think."
"That one hundred thousand dollars makes all the difference in the world. The task is easy, now. We will make it go, sure. These bankers know what that salmon business is. Why, I had no trouble at all. They say we can't lose if we have a good site on the Kalvik River."
"They're wise, all right. I guess that girl took me for a Klondiker," George observed. "She charged me double. But she was a nice girl, though. I was kind of rattled when I walked in and sat down, and I couldn't think of nothing to talk about. I never opened my head all the time, but she didn't notice it. When I left she asked me to come back again and have another nice long visit. She's anawfulfine girl."
"Look out!" laughed his companion. "Every Alaskan falls in love with a manicurist at some time or other. It seems to be in the blood. We are going to have no matrimony, mind you."
"Lord! She wouldn't look at me," said the fisherman, suddenly, assuming a lobster pink.
That evening they dined as befits men just out from a long incarceration in the North, first having tried unsuccessfully to locate Fraser; for the rogue was bound to them by the intangible ties of hardship and trail life, and they could not bear to part from him without some expression of gratitude for the sacrifices he had made. But he was nowhere to be found, not even at train time.
"That seems hardly decent," Boyd remarked. "He might at least have said good-bye and wished us well."
"When he's around he makes me sore, and when he's away I miss him," said George. "He's probably out organizing something—or somebody."
At the station they waited until the last warning had sounded, vainly hoping that Fraser would put in an appearance, then sought their Pullman more piqued than they cared to admit. When the train pulled out, they went forward to the smoking compartment, still meditating upon this unexpected defection; but as they lighted their cigars, a familiar voice greeted them:
"Hello, you!"—and there was Fraser grinning at their astonishment.
"What are you doing here?" they cried, together.
"Me? Oh, I'm on my way East."
"Whereabouts East?"
"Chicago, ain't it? I thought that was what you said." He seated himself and lighted another long cigar.
"Are you going to Chicago?" George asked.
"Sure! We've got to put this cannery deal over." The crook sighed luxuriously and began to blow smoke rings. "Pretty nice train, ain't it?"
"Yes," ejaculated Emerson, undecided whether to be pleased or angered at the fellow's presence. "Which is your car?"
"This one—same as yours. I've got the drawing-room."
"What are you going to do in Chicago?"
"Oh, I ain't fully decided yet, but I might do a little promoting.Seattle is too full of Alaskan snares."
Emerson reflected for a moment before remarking: "I dare say you will tangle me up in some new enterprise that will land us both in jail, so for my own protection I'll tell you what I'll do. I have noticed that you are a good salesman, and if you will take up something legitimate—"
"Legitimate!" Fraser interrupted, with indignation. "Why, all my schemes are legitimate. Anybody can examine them. If he don't like them, he needn't go in. If he weakens on one proposition, I'll get something that suits him better. You've got me wrong."
"If you want to handle something honest, I'll let you place some of this cannery stock on a commission."
"I don't see nothing attractive in that when I can sell stock of my own and keepallthe money. Maybe I'll organize a cannery company of my own in Chicago—"
"If you do—" Boyd exploded.
"Very well! Don't get sore. I only just suggested the possibility. If that is your graft, I'll think up something better."
The younger man shook his head. "You are impossible," said he, "and yetI can't help liking you."
Late into the night they talked, Emerson oscillating between extreme volubility and deep abstraction. At one moment he was as gay as a prospective bridegroom, at the next he was more dejected than a man under sentence. And instead of growing calmer his spirits became more and more variable with the near approach of the journey's end.
In Chicago, as in Seattle, Fraser accompanied his fellow-travellers to their hotel, and would have registered himself under some high-sounding alias except for a whispered threat from Boyd. That young gentleman, after seeing his companions comfortably ensconced, left them to their own devices while he drove to the tailor to whom he had telegraphed, returning in a short time garbed in new clothes. He found Fraser sipping a solitary cocktail and visiting with the bartender on the closest terms of intimacy.
"George?" said that one, in answer to his inquiry. "Oh, George has gone on a still-hunt for a manicure parlor. Ain't that a rave? He's gone finger-mad. He'd ought to have them front feet shod. He don't need a manicurist; what he wants is a blacksmith."
"He is rather out of his latitude, so I wish you would keep an eye on him," Boyd said.
"All right! I'll take him out in the park on a leash, but if he tries to bite anybody I'll have to muzzle him. He ain't safe in the heart of a great city; he's a menace to the life and limb of every manicure woman who crosses his path. You gave him an awful push on the downward path when you laid him against this finger stuff."
Promptly at four o'clock Emerson called a cab and was driven toward the North Side. As the vehicle rolled up Lake Shore Drive the excitement under which he had been laboring for days increased until he tapped his feet nervously, clenched his gloved fingers, and patted the cushions as if to accelerate the horse's footfalls. Would he never arrive! The animal appeared to crawl more slowly every moment, the rubber-rimmed wheels to turn more sluggishly with each revolution. He called to the driver to hurry, then found himself of a sudden gripped by an overpowering hesitation, and grew frightened at his own haste. The close atmosphere of the cab seemed to stifle him: he jerked the window open, flung back the lapels of his great coat, and inhaled the sharp Lake air in deep breaths. Why did that driver lash a willing steed? They were nearly there, and he was not ready yet. He leaned out to check their speed, then closed his lips and settled back in his seat, staring at the houses slipping past. How well he remembered every one of them!
The dark stone frowned at him, the leaded windows stared at him through a blind film of unrecognition, the carven gargoyles grinned mockingly at him.
It all oppressed him heavily and crushed whatever hope had lain at his heart when he left the hotel. Never before had his goal seemed so unattainable; never before had he felt so bitterly the cruelty of riches, the hopelessness of poverty.
The vehicle drew up at last before one of the most pretentious residences, a massive pile of stone and brick fronting the Lake with what seemed to him a singularly proud and chilling aspect. His hand shook as he paid the driver, and it was a very pale though very erect young man who mounted the stone steps to the bell. Despite the stiffness with which he held himself, he felt the muscles at his knees trembling weakly, while his lungs did not seem to fill, even when he inhaled deeply. During the moments that he waited he found his body pulsating to the slow, heavy thumping of his heart; then a familiar face greeted him.
"How do you do, Hawkins," he heard himself saying, as a liveried old man ushered him in and took his coat. "Don't you remember me?"
"Yes, sir! Mr. Emerson. You have been away for a long time, sir."
"Is Miss Wayland in?"
"Yes, sir; she is expecting you. This way, please."
Boyd followed, thankful for the subdued light which might conceal his agitation. He knew where they were going: she had always awaited him in the library, so it seemed. And how well he remembered that wonderful book walled room! It was like her to welcome him on the spot where she had bade him good-bye three years ago.
Hawkins held the portieres aside and Boyd heard their velvet swish at his back, yet for the briefest instant he did not see her, so motionless did she stand. Then he cried, softly:
"My Lady!" and strode forward.
"Boyd! Boyd!" she answered and came to meet him, yielding herself to his arms. She felt his heart pounding against hers like the heart of a runner who has spent himself at the tape, felt his arms quivering as if from great fatigue. For a long time neither spoke.
"And so all your privations and hardships went for nothing," said Mildred Wayland, when Boyd had recounted the history of his pilgrimage into the North.
"Yes," he replied; "as a miner, I am a very wretched failure."
She shrugged her shoulders in disapproval.
"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 hardship 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-worship and can't last. But ithaslasted—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. God! 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 worship 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 attitude, 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 identity—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 constituted. I happen to know that my girl isn't so constituted. She is utterly impossible as a poor man's wife. She can'tdoanything: 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 damned 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 assistance 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 tolive." 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.
"No," he replied, "I can't let you do that. Not yet, anyhow. Mr. Wayland is right, in a way. If he had not been so decent I would have married you anyhow, but I am indebted to him. He has shown me a lot more of your life than I knew before, and he has made his word good. I am going to ask you to wait, however; for quite a while, it may be. I am going to take a gambler's chance."
"What is it?"
"A gold strike has been made in Alaska—"
"Alaska!"
"Yes! The Klondike. You have read of it? I am told that the chances there are like those in the days of '49, and I am going."
So it was that he had made his choice, fixing his own time for returning, and so it was that Mildred Wayland had awaited him.
If to-day, after three years of deprivation, she seemed to him more beautiful than ever—the interval having served merely to enhance her charm and strengthen the yearning of his heart—she seemed in the same view still further removed from his sphere. More reserved, more dignified, in the reserve of developed womanhood, her cession was the more gracious and wonderful.
His story finished, Boyd went on to tell her vaguely of his future plans, and at the last he asked her, with something less than an accepted lover's confidence:
"Will you wait another year?"
She laughed lightly. "You dear boy, I am not up for auction. This is not the 'third and last call.' I am not sure I could induce anybody to take me, even if I desired."
"I read the rumor of your engagement in a back number of a SanFrancisco paper. Is your retinue as large as ever?"
She smiled indifferently. "It alters with the season, but I believe the general average is about the same. You know most of them." She mentioned a number of names, counting them off on her finger-tips. "Then, of course, there are the old standbys, Mr. Macklin, Tommy Turner, the Lawton boys—"
"And Alton Clyde!"
"To be sure; little Alton, like the brook, runs on forever. He still worships you, Boyd, by the way."
"And there are others?"
"A few."
"Who?"
"Nobody you know."
"Any one in particular?" Boyd demanded, with a lover's insistence.
Miss Wayland's hesitation was so brief as almost to escape his notice. "Nobody who counts. Of course, father has his predilections and insists upon engineering my affairs in the same way he would float a railroad enterprise, but you can imagine how romantic the result is."
"Who is the favored party?" the young man asked, darkly. But she arose to push back the heavy draperies and gaze for a moment out into the deepening twilight. When she answered, it was in a tone of ordinary indifference.
"Really it isn't worth discussing. I shall not marry until I am ready, and the subject bores me." An instant later she turned to regard him with direct eyes.
"Do you remember when I offered to give it all up and go with you,Boyd?"
"I have never forgotten for an instant,"
"You refused to allow it."
"Certainly! I had seen too much of your life, and my pride figured a bit, also."
"Do you still feel the same way?" Her eyes searched his face rather anxiously.
"I do! It is even more impossible now than then. I am utterly out of touch with this environment. My work will take me back where you could not go—into a land you would dislike, among a people you could not understand. No; we did quite the sensible thing."
She sighed gratefully and settled upon the window-seat, her back to the light. "I am glad you feel that way. I—I—think I am growing more sensible too. I have begun to understand how practical father was, and how ridiculous I was. Perhaps I am not so impulsive—you see, I am years older now—perhaps I am more selfish. I don't know which it is and—I can't express my feelings, but I have had sufficient time since you went away to think and to look into my own soul. Really I have become quite introspective. Of course, my feeling for you is just the same as it was, dear, but I—I can't—" She waved a graceful hand to indicate her surroundings. "Well, this is my world, and I am a part of it. You understand, don't you? The thought of giving it up makes me really afraid. I don't like rough things." She shook herself and gave voice to a delicious, bubbling little laugh. "I am frightfully spoiled." Emerson drew her to him tenderly.
"My darling, I understand perfectly, and I love you too well to take you away from it all; but you will wait for me, won't you?"
"Of course," she replied, quickly. "As long as you wish."
"But I am going to have you!" he cried, insistently. "You are going to be my wife," He repeated the words softly, reverently: "My wife."
She gazed up at him with a puzzled little frown. "What bothers me is that you understand me and my life so well, while I scarcely understand you or yours at all. That seems to tell me that I am unsuited to you in some way. Why, when you told me that story of your hardships and all that, I listened as if it were a play or a book, but really it didn'tmeananything to me or stir me as it should. I can't understand my own failure to understand. That awful country, those barbarous people, the suffering, the cold, the snow, the angry sea; I don't grasp what they mean. I was never cold, or hungry, or exhausted. I—well, it is fascinating to hear about, because you went through it, butwhyyou did it, how youfelt"—she made a gesture as if at a loss for words. "Do you see what I am trying to convey?"
"Perfectly," he answered, releasing her with a little unadmitted sense of disappointment at his heart. "I suppose it is only natural."
"I do hope you succeed this time," she continued. "I am growing deadly tired of things. Not tired of waiting for you, but I am getting to be old; I am, indeed. Why, at times I actually have an inclination to do fancy-work—the unfailing symptom. Do you realize that I amtwenty-five years old!"
"Age of decrepitude! And more glorious than any woman in the world!" he cried.
There was a click outside the library door, and the room, which unnoticed by them had become nearly dark, was suddenly flooded with light. The portieres parted, and Wayne Wayland stood in the opening.
"Ah, here you are, my boy! Hawkins told me you had returned."
He advanced to shake the young man's hand, his demeanor gracious and hearty. "Welcome home. You have been having quite a vacation, haven't you? Let's see, it's two years, isn't it?"
"Three years!" Emerson replied.
"Impossible! Dear, dear, how time flies when one is busy."
"Boyd has been telling me of his adventures," said Mildred. "He is going to dine with us."
"Indeed." Mr. Wayland displayed no great degree of enthusiasm. "Andhave you returned, like Pizarro, laden with all the gold of the Incas?Or did Pizarro return? It seems to me that he settled somewhere on theCoast." The old man laughed at his own conceit.
"I judge Pizarro was a better miner than I," Boyd smiled. "There were plenty of Esquimau princes whom I might have held for ransom, but if I had done so, all the rest of the tribe would have come to board with them."
"Have you come home to stay?"
"No, sir; I shall return in a few weeks."
Mr. Wayland's cordiality seemed to increase in some subtle manner.
"Well, I am sorry you didn't make a fortune, my boy. But, rich or poor, your friends are delighted to see you, and we shall certainly keep you for dinner. I am interested in that Northwestern country myself, and I want to ask some questions about it."