The outcome was that Mrs. Hardy insisted upon Irene embarking at once upon a finishing course. When this was completed, as the girl had shown a sense for form and colour, she encouraged her into a special art course. Afterwards they travelled together for a year in Europe.

Then, home again, Irene pursued her art, and her mother surrounded her with the social attractions which Dr. Hardy's comfortable income and professional standing made possible. Her purpose was obvious, and but thinly disguised. She hoped that her daughter would outlive her youthful infatuation, and would at length, in a more suitable match, give her heart to one of the numerous eligibles of her circle.

To promote this end Mrs. Hardy spared no pains. Young Carlton, son of a banker, and one of the leading men of his set, seemed a particularly appropriate match. Mrs. Hardy opened her home to him, and Carlton, whatever his motives, was not slow to grasp the situation. For years Irene had not spoken of Dave Elden, and the mother had grown to hope that the old attachment had died down and would presently be quite forgotten in a new and more becoming pa.s.sion. The fact is that Irene at that time would have been quite incapable of stating her relation toward Elden and its influence upon her att.i.tude to life. She was by no means sure that she loved that sun-burned boy of romantic memory; she was by no means sure that she should ever marry him, let his development in life be what it would. But she felt that her heart was locked, at least for the present, to all other suitors. She had given her promise, and that settled the matter. True, he had not come to claim fulfilment of that promise--and at times she scolded him soundly in the secrecy of her own mind for his negligence through all these years--but she was young, with no desire for a decisive step, and while she chafed under his apparent neglect she felt a sort of tingling dread of the day when he should neglect her no longer. One thing she knew; he had implanted in her soul a fine contempt for men of the set which Carlton typified. They would have thought Dave ignorant; but she knew that if Dave and Carlton were thrown into the wilderness on their own resources Dave would thrive and Carlton would starve. Perhaps Dave's education, although not recognized by any university save the university of hard knocks, was the more real and valuable of the two.

Notwithstanding her contempt for him, the girl found herself encouraging Carlton's advances, or at least not meeting them with the rebuffs which had been her habit toward all other suitors, and Mrs.

Hardy's hopes grew as the attachment apparently developed. But they were soon to be shattered.

Irene had gone with Carlton to the theatre; afterwards to supper. It was long past midnight when she reached home; she knocked at her mother's door and immediately entered. She was splendidly gowned, but her hair was dishevelled and her cheeks were flushed, and she walked unsteadily across the room.

"What's the matter, Irene? What's the matter, child? Are you sick?"

cried her mother, springing from her bed. "Oh, dear me, and the doctor is out!"

"No, I'm not sick," said the girl, brutally. "I'm drunk!"

"Oh, don't say that," said her mother, soothingly. "Proper people do not become drunk. You may have had too much champagne, and to-morrow you will have a headache--"

"Mother! I have had too much champagne, but not as much as that precious Carlton of yours had planned for. I just wanted to see how despicable he was, and I floated down stream with him as far as I dared. But just as the current got too swift I struck for sh.o.r.e. Oh, we made a scene, all right, but n.o.body knew me there, so the family name is safe and you can rest in peace. I called a taxi and when he tried to follow me in I slapped him and kicked him. Kicked him, mother. Dreadfully undignified, wasn't it? . . . And that's what you want me to marry, in place of a man!"

Mrs. Hardy was chattering with mortification and excitement. Her plans had miscarried. Irene had misbehaved. Irene was a difficult, headstrong child. It was useless to argue with her in her present mood. It was useless to argue with her in any mood. No doubt Carlton had been impetuous. Nevertheless, he stood high in his set, and his father was something of a power in the financial world. As the wife of such a man Irene might have a career before her--a career from which at least some of the glory would reflect upon the silvering head of the mother of Mrs. Carlton. And now Irene, by her folly and her ungovernable temper, had spoiled all the carefully laid plans. Mrs.

Hardy was a very badly used woman.

"Go to your room," she said, at length. "You are in no condition to talk to-night. I must say it is a shame that you can't go out for an evening without drinking too much and making a scene. . . . In a public place, too. . . . What will Mr. Carlton think of you?"

"If he remembers all I told him about himself he'll have enough to think of," the girl blazed back. "You know--what I have told you--and still _Mister_ Carlton stands as high in your sight as ever. _I_ am the one to blame. Very well. I've tried your choice, and I've tried my own. Now I am in a position to judge. There will be nothing to talk about in the morning. Mention Carlton's name to me again and I will give the whole incident to the papers. With photographs. And names. Fancy the feature heading, 'Society girl, intoxicated, kicks escort out of taxi.' Good night."

But other matters were to demand the attention of mother and daughter in the morning. While the scene was occurring in Mrs. Hardy's bed-room her husband, clad in white, toiled in the operating room to save the life of a fellow being. It was an emergency operation, performed by artificial light, and without adequate a.s.sistance. There was a slip of an instrument, but the surgeon toiled on; he could not, at that juncture, pause; the life of the patient was at stake. When the operation was finished he found his injury deeper than he supposed, and Irene was summoned from her heavy sleep that morning to attend his bedside. He talked to her as a philosopher; said his life's work was done, and he was just as glad to go in the harness; the estate should yield something, and there was his life insurance--a third would be for her. And when Mrs. Hardy was not at his side he found opportunity to whisper, "And if you really love that boy out west, _marry him_."

The sudden bereavement wrought a reconciliation between Mrs. Hardy and her daughter. Mrs. Hardy took her loss very much to heart. While Irene grieved for her father, Mrs. Hardy grieved for herself. It was awful to be left alone like this. There was something in her demeanour that suggested that Andrew had been rather unkind in departing as he did. And when the lawyers found that instead of a hundred thousand dollars the estate would yield a bare third of that sum she spoke openly of her husband's improvidence. He had enjoyed a handsome income, upon which his family had lived in luxury. That it was unequal to the strain of providing for them in that fashion and at the same time acc.u.mulating a reserve for such an eventuality as had occurred was a matter which his wife could scarcely overlook.

About this time it came to the notice of Mrs. Hardy that when the late Mr. Deware had departed this life Mrs. Deware, with her two daughters, had gone on a trip to England to dull the poignancy of their bereavement. The Dewares moved in the best circles, Mr. Deware having ama.s.sed a considerable fortune in the brewing business. It was obvious that whatever Mrs. Deware might do under such circ.u.mstances would be correct. Upon arrival at this conclusion Mrs. Hardy lost no time in buying two tickets for London.

Her health, however, had suffered a severe shock, for beneath her ostentation she felt as deep a regard for her late husband as was possible in one who measured everything in life by various social formulae. On the ocean voyage she contracted a cough, which the fogs of London did little to dispel, and February found her again on the Atlantic, with her mind occupied by more personal affairs than a seat at the captain's table. The voyage was a particularly unhappy one, and the widow's first concern upon reaching home was to consult a specialist who had enjoyed a close professional acquaintanceship with Dr. Hardy. The specialist gave her a careful, meditative, and solemn examination.

"Your condition is serious," he told her, "but not alarming. You must have a drier climate, and, preferably, a higher alt.i.tude. Fortunately, your heart is good, or I should have to keep you at sea level; that is, I should have had to sacrifice your lungs for your heart." The doctor spoke as though the sacrifice would have been all his, after the manner of a specialist. "As it is, I am convinced that the conditions your health demands are to be found in. . ." He named the former cow-town from which Irene's fateful automobile journey had had its start, and the young woman, who was present with her mother, felt herself go suddenly pale with the thought of a great prospect.

"Oh, I could never live there," Mrs. Hardy protested. "It is so crude.

Cow _punchers_, you know, and all that sort of thing."

The specialist smiled. "You will probably not find it so crude, although I daresay some of its customs may jar on you," he remarked, dryly. "Still, I would recommend you to take your best gowns along.

And it is not a case of not being able to live there. It is a case of not being able to live here. If you take my advice you should die of old age, so far, at least, as your present ailment is concerned. If you don't"--and he dropped his voice to just the correct note of gravity, which pleased Mrs. Hardy very much--"if you don't, I can't promise you a year."

Confronted with such an alternative, the good lady had no option but to suppress her repugnance toward cow punchers. Irene had expected opposition born of a more subtle reason, but it soon became evident that so deeply was her mother concerned with her own affairs that she had quite failed to a.s.sociate the proposed change with any possibility of a re-opening of Irene's affair with the young rancher. It was years since they had discussed him, and the probability was that, although the incident remained in the back of Mrs. Hardy's memory, even his name had been forgotten.

Arrangements for the journey were made with the despatch which characterized Mrs. Hardy. She was a stickler for precedent; any departure from the beaten paths was in her decalogue the unpardonable sin, but when she had arrived at a decision she was no trifler. She accepted the situation with the resignation which she deemed to be correct under such circ.u.mstances, but the boundless prairies were to her so much desolation and ugliness. It was apparent that dwellers in the little four-cornered houses of the plains must be sadly lacking in any sense of the artistic, and as Mrs. Hardy gazed from the car window she acquired a habit of making with her tongue a sound which, owing to the limitations of the alphabet, cannot be represented to the reader, but which Irene understood to be an expression of mingled surprise, pity, and contempt. Irene gathered that her mother did not approve of prairies. They were something new to her life, and it was greatly to be suspected that they were improper.

With very different emotions did the girl find herself speeding again toward the scene of the first great event of her conscious life. For her the boundlessness, the vastness, the immeasurable sweep of the eye, suggested an environment out of which should grow a manhood and womanhood that should weigh mightily in the scales of destiny of a great nation; a manhood and womanhood defiant of the things that are, eager for the adventure of life untrammeled by traditions. She had a mental vision of the type which such a land must produce; her mind ran to riots of daring as it fashioned a picture which should fairly symbolize this people. . . . The day was drawing to a close, and a prairie sunset glowed upon them in a flush of colouring that stirred her artist soul. A cloudless sky, transparent as an ocean of gla.s.s; fathomless, infinite, save when in the west inverted islands of gold and bra.s.s and ruddy copper floated in a sea that gently deepened from saffron to opal; and under that sky the yellow prairies; ever, forever, and ever. . . . Up from the East came the night, and large, bright stars stood out, and the click-clack of the car wheels came louder and louder, and mimic car lamps raced along against the darkness outside.

And then the settlers' lights began to blink across the prairie, and Irene's eyes were wet with an emotion she could not define; but she knew her painting had missed something; it had been all outline and no soul, and the prairies in the night are all soul and no outline; all softness and vagueness and yearning unutterable. . . .

"How tiresome it is," said her mother. "Ask the porter to make up the berths."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mrs. Hardy accepted the surroundings she found in the city that was to be her home with not a little incredulity. For some days she treated the city as a deep rascal which had disguised its true nature in order to deceive her. She smiled at the ease with which she saw through all disguises. One of these days the cloak of respectability would be thrown off, and the shouting and shooting of the cow punchers would proclaim the West as it really was.

Very slowly it dawned upon Mrs. Hardy that this respectable, thriving city, with its well dressed, properly mannered people, its public spirit, its aggressiveness, its churches and theatres and schools, its law and order--and its afternoon teas ("My dear, who would have thought it possible?" She half expected a cowboy to ride in and overthrow the china)--very slowly it dawned upon her that this, after all, was the real West; sincere, earnest; crude, perhaps; bare, certainly; the scars of its recent battle with the wilderness still fresh upon its person; lacking the finish that only time can give to a landscape or a civilization; but lacking also the mouldiness, the mustiness, the insufferable artificiality of older communities. And the atmosphere!

Day after day brought its cloudless sky, the weather, for once, having failed to observe the rule of contraries; evening after evening flooded valley and hilltop with its deluge of golden glory; night after night a crisp temperature sent her reaching for comforters. Sleep? She felt that she had never slept before. Eat? Her appet.i.te was insatiable; all day long she lived in a semi-intoxication born of an unaccustomed alt.i.tude. And, best of all, something had happened to her cough; she did not know just what or when, but presently she discovered it was gone. Even Mrs. Hardy, steeped for sixty years in a life of precedent and rule and caste, began to catch the enthusiasm of a new land where precedent and rule and caste are something of a handicap.

"We must buy a home," she said to Irene. "We cannot afford to continue living at an hotel, and we must have our own home. You must look up a responsible dealer whose advice we can trust in a matter of this kind."

And was it remarkable that Irene Hardy should think at once of the firm of Conward & Elden? It was not. She had, indeed, been thinking of a member of that firm ever since the decision to move to the West. She had felt a peculiar hesitation about enquiring openly for Dave Elden, but, upon meeting a newspaper woman in the person of Miss Morrison she had voiced the great question with an apparent unconcern which did not in the slightest mislead the acute Roberta. It is the business of newspaper people to know things and people, and it seemed to Irene that she could ask such a question of Miss Morrison in a sort of professional way. But she had not been prepared for the reply.

The fact is Irene had not been at all sure that she wanted to marry Dave Elden. She wanted very much to meet him again; she was curious to know how the years had fared with him, and her curiosity was not unmixed with a finer sentiment; but she was not at all sure that she should marry him. She had tried to picture him in the eye of her imagination; she was sure he had acquired a modest education; he had probably been reasonably successful in business, either as an employee, or, in a small way, on his own account. She was moderately sure of all this; but there were pessimistic moods in which she saw him slipping back into the indifference of his old life soon after the inspiration of her presence had been withdrawn; perhaps still living with his bibulous father on the ranch in the foothills, or perhaps following the profession of cow puncher, held in such contempt by her mother. And in such moods she was sorry, but she knew she could never, never marry him.

"What, Dave Elden, the millionaire?" Bert Morrison had said.

"Everybody knows him." And then the newspaper woman had gone on to tell what a figure Dave was in the business life of the city, and to declare that he might be equally prominent in the social life, did his fancies lead him in that direction. "One of our biggest young men,"

Bert Morrison had said. "Reserved, a little; likes his own company best; but absolutely white."

That gave a new turn to the situation. Irene had always wanted Dave to be a success; suddenly she doubted whether she had wanted him to be so big a success. And with that doubt came another and more disturbing one, which, if it had ever before crossed her mind, had found no harbourage there. She had doubted whether she should wish to marry Dave; she had never allowed herself to doubt that Dave would wish to marry her. Secretly, she had expected to rather dazzle him with her ten years' development--with the culture and knowledge which study and travel and life had added to the charm of her young girlhood; and suddenly she realized that her l.u.s.tre would shine but dimly in the greater glory of his own. . . . She became conscious of a very great desire to renew with Dave the intimacy of her girlhood.

It was easy to locate the office of Conward & Elden; it stood on a princ.i.p.al corner of a princ.i.p.al street, and the name was blazoned to the wayfarer in great gilt letters. Thence she led her mother, and found herself treading on the marble floors of the richly appointed waiting room in a secret excitement which she could with difficulty conceal. She was, indeed, very uncertain about the next development. . . . Her mother had to be reckoned with.

A young man asked courteously what could be done for them. "We want to see the head of the firm," said Mrs. Hardy. "We want to buy a house."

It occurred to Irene that in some respects her mother was extremely artless, but the issue was for the moment postponed.

They were shown into Conward's office. Time had been when they would have seen no further than a head salesman; but times were changing, and real estate dealers were losing the hauteur of the days of their great success. Conward gave them the welcome of a man who expects to make money out of his visitors. He placed a very comfortable chair for Mrs.

Hardy; he adjusted the blinds to a nicety; he discarded his cigarette and beamed upon them with as great a show of cordiality as his somewhat beefy appearance would permit. The years had not been over kind to Conward's person. His natural tendency to corpulence had been abetted by excessive eating; his face was red and flabby, his lips had no more colour than his face; and nature, in deciding to deprive him of a portion of his hair, had very unkindly elected to take it in patches, giving his head a sort of pinto effect. These imperfections were quickly appraised by Irene, but his manner appealed to Mrs. Hardy, who outlined her life history with considerable detail, dwelling more than once upon the perfections of the late Dr. Hardy--which perfections she now showed a disposition to magnify, as implying a certain distinction unto herself--and ended with the confession that the West was not as bad as she had feared, and anyway it was a case of living here or dying elsewhere, so she would have to make the best of it. And here they were. And might they see a house?

Conward appeared to be reflecting. As a matter of fact, he saw in this inexperienced buyer an opportunity to reduce his holdings in antic.i.p.ation of the impending crash. His difficulty was that he had no key to the financial resources of his visitors. They had lived in good circ.u.mstances; they were the family of a successful professional man, but, as Conward well knew, many successful professional men had a manner of living that galloped hard on the heels of their income. The only thing was to throw out a feeler.

"You are wanting a nice home, I take it, that can be bought at a favourable price for cash. You would consider an investment of say----."

He paused, and Mrs. Hardy supplied the information for which he was waiting. "About twenty-five thousand dollars," she said.

"We can hardly invest that much," Irene interrupted, in a whisper. "We must have something to live on."

"People here live on the profits of their investments, do they not, Mr.

Conward?" Mrs. Hardy inquired. "I have been told that that is the way they live, and they seem to live very well indeed."

"Oh, certainly," Conward agreed, and he plunged into a ma.s.s of incidents to show how profitable investments had been to other clients of the firm. He emphasized particularly the desirability of buying improved property--preferably residential property--and suddenly recalled that he had something very choice in which they might be interested. At this juncture Conward's mood of deliberation gave way to one of briskness; he summoned a car, and in a few minutes his clients were looking over the property which he had recommended. Mrs.

Hardy, who, during her husband's lifetime had never found it necessary to bear financial responsibilities or make business decisions, was an amateurish buyer, her tendency being alternately to excess of caution on one side and recklessness on the other. Conward's manner pleased her; the house he showed pleased her, and she was eager to have it over with. But he was too shrewd to appear to encourage a hasty decision.

He realized at once that he had sold Mrs. Hardy, but Irene was a customer calling for more tactful handling. Conward's eye had not failed to appraise the charm of the young woman's appearance. He would gladly have ingratiated himself with her, but he was conscious of a force in her personality that held him aloof. And that consciousness made him desire the more to gain her confidence. . . . However, this was a business transaction. He did not seize upon Mrs. Hardy's remark that the house seemed perfectly satisfactory; on the contrary, he insisted on showing other houses, which he quoted at such impossible figures that presently the old lady was in a feverish haste to make a deposit lest some other buyer should forestall her.

Back in Conward's office, while the agreement was being drawn, Irene was possessed of a consuming desire to consult with Dave Elden. She was uneasy about this transaction in which her mother proposed so precipitately to invest the greater part of their little fortune. But the more she thought over the situation the more its difficulties became apparent. She had no personal knowledge or experience which could be summoned for such an occasion. She would like to have asked Dave's advice; instinctively she distrusted Conward. Yet, . . . .

Conward was Dave's partner. It was impossible to attribute honest motives to one half of the firm and deny them to the other. And it was unreasonable to expect that Dave's advice would conflict with Conward's. And, in the event that an issue did arise between the two partners, it was quite certain that her mother would side with Conward.

Meanwhile the agreement neared completion, and Mrs. Hardy had produced her cheque book.