He stopped at Chicago and sent word to Windrift that he was ill—not seriously ill, but in such a state that he thought it best to take care of himself, with the wedding so near. Theresa was just as well pleased to have him away, as it gave her absolute freedom to plan and to superintend her triumph. For the wedding was to be her individual and exclusive triumph, with even Ross as part of the background—the most conspicuous part, but still simply background for her personal splendor.
Old Howland—called Bill until his early career as a pedlar and keeper of a Cheap Jack bazaar was forgotten and who, after the great fire, which wiped out so many pasts and purified and pedigreed Chicago's present aristocracy, called himself William G. Howland, merchant prince, had, in his ideal character for a wealth-chaser, one weakness—a doting fondness for his daughter. When she came into the world, the doctors told him his wife would have no more children; thereafter his manner was always insulting, and usually his tone and words, whenever and of whatever he spoke to her. Women were made by the Almighty solely to bear children to men; his woman had been made to bear him a son. Now that she would never have a son, she was of no use, and it galled him that he could find no plausibly respectable excuse for casting her off, as he cast off worn-out servants in his business. But as the years passed and he saw the various varieties of thorns into which the sons of so many of his fellow-princes developed, he became reconciled to Theresa—not to his wife. That unfortunate woman, the daughter of a drunkard and partially deranged by illness and by grief over her husband's brutality toward her, became—or rather, was made by her insistent doctor—what would have been called a drunkard, had she not been the wife of a prince. Her "dipsomania" took an unaggressive form, as she was by nature gentle and sweet; she simply used to shut herself in and drink until she would cry herself into a timid, suppressed hysteria. So secret was she that Theresa never knew the truth about these "spells."
Howland did not like Ross; but when Theresa told him she was going to marry him she had only to cry a little and sit in the old man's lap and tease. "Very well, then," said her father, "you can have him. But he's a gambler, like his father. They call it finance, but changing the name of a thing only changes the smell of it, not the thing itself. I'm going to tie my money up so that he can't get at it."
"I want you to, papa," replied Theresa, giving him a kiss and a great hug for emphasis. "I don't want anybody to be able to touch my property."
For the wedding, Howland gave Theresa a free hand. "I'll pay the bills, no matter what they are," said he. "Give yourself a good time." And Theresa, who had been brought up to be selfish, and was prudent about her impulses only where she suspected them of being generous, proceeded to arrange for herself the wedding that is still talked about in Chicago "society" and throughout the Middle West. A dressmaker from the Rue de la Paix came over with models and samples, and carried back a huge order and a plaster reproduction of Theresa's figure, and elaborate notes on the color of her skin, hair, eyes, and her preferences in shapes of hats. A jeweler, also of the Rue de la Paix, came with jewels—nearly a million dollars' worth—for her to make selections. Her boots and shoes and slippers she got from Rowney, in Fifth Avenue, who, as everybody knows, makes nothing for less than thirty-five dollars, and can put a hundred dollars worth of price, if not of value, into a pair of evening slippers. Theresa was proud of her feet; they were short and plump, and had those abrupt, towering insteps that are regarded by the people who have them as unfailing indications of haughty lineage, just as the people who have flat feet dwell fondly upon the flat feet of the Wittlesbachs, kings in Bavaria. She was not easy to please in the matter of casements for those feet; also, as she was very short in stature, she had to get three and a half extra inches of height out of her heels; and to make that sort of heel so that it can even be hobbled upon is not easy or cheap. Once Theresa, fretting about her red-ended nose and muddy skin, had gone to a specialist. "Let me see your foot," said he; and when he saw the heel, he exclaimed: "Cut that tight, high-heeled thing out or you'll never get a decent skin, and your eyes will trouble you by the time you are thirty." But Theresa, before adopting such drastic measures, went to a beauty doctor. He assured her that she could be cured without the sacrifice of the heel, and that the weakness of her eyes would disappear a year or so after marriage. And he was soon going into ecstasies over her improvement, over the radiance of her beauty. She saw with his eyes and ceased to bother about nose or skin—they were the least beautiful of her beauties, but—"One can't expect to be absolutely perfect. Besides, the absolutely perfect kind of beauty might be monotonous."
The two weeks before the wedding were the happiest of her life. All day long, each day, vans were thundering up to the rear doors of Windrift, each van loaded to bursting with new and magnificent, if not beautiful costliness. The house was full of the employees of florists, dressmakers, decorators, each one striving to outdo the other in servility. Theresa was like an autocratic sovereign, queening it over these menials and fancying herself adored. They showed so plainly that they were awed by her and were in ecstasies of admiration over her taste. And, as the grounds and the house were transformed, Theresa's exaltation grew until she went about fairly dizzy with delight in herself.
The bridesmaids and ushers came. They were wealth-worshipers all, and their homage lifted Theresa still higher. They marched and swept about in her train, lording it over the menials and feeling that they were not a whit behind the grand ladies and gentlemen of the French courts of the eighteenth century. They had read the memoirs of that idyllic period diligently, had read with minds only for the flimsy glitter which hid the vulgarity and silliness and shame as a gorgeous robe hastily donned by a dirty chambermaid might conceal from a casual glance the sardonic and repulsive contrast. The wedding day approached all too swiftly for Theresa and her court. True, that would be the magnificent climax; but they knew it would also dissipate the spell—after the wedding, life in twentieth century America again.
"If only it don't rain!" said Harry Legendre.
"It won't," replied Theresa with conviction—and her look of command toward the heavens made the courtiers exchange winks and smiles behind her back. They were courtiers to wealth, not to Theresa, just as their European prototypes are awed before a "king's most excellent Majesty," not before his swollen body and shrunken brain.
And it did not rain. Ross arrived in the red sunset of the wedding eve, Tom Glenning, his best man, coming with him. They were put, with the ushers, in rooms at the pavilion where were the squash courts and winter tennis courts and the swimming baths. Theresa and Ross stood on the front porch alone in the moonlight, looking out over the enchantment-like scene into which the florists and decorators had transformed the terraces and gardens. She was a little alarmed by his white face and sunken eyes; but she accepted his reassurances without question—she would have disbelieved anything which did not fit in with her plans. And now, as they gazed out upon that beauty under the soft shimmer of the moonlight, her heart suddenly expanded in tenderness. "I am so happy," she murmured, slipping an arm through his.