Steve, who would have lain down and let her walk 18 over him roughshod, said simply: “But I’m poor. I’m not in a position to meet your friends.”
“Then be rich––and I’ll ask you again,” she challenged.
“If I were a rich man––would you let me try?”
“See if I wouldn’t.” And she disappeared before he realized she had practically said yes.
Characteristically Steve lost no time. He went to her father the day after she had sailed, having sent her a veritable washtub of flowers for bon voyage––and said briefly: “I have loved your daughter ever since I first saw her. I’m as poor as you were once, but if I see my way to making a fortune and can give her everything she ought to have will you oppose my efforts to make her marry me?”
The daring of the thing pleased Constantine to the point of saying: “Do you want a loan, O’Valley? I think you’ll make good. Then it’s up to my daughter; she knows whom she wants to marry better than I do. You’re a decent sort––her mother would have liked you.”
“I don’t want a loan just yet. I want to make her marry me because I have made my own money and can take care of my own wife. I’m just asking you not to interfere if I do win out. I’ve saved a little––I’m going to take a plunge in stocks and draw out before it’s too late. Then I’m going into business if I can; but I’ll have to try my luck gambling before I do. When I hang out my shingle I may ask you to help––a little. Self-made men of to-day are made on paper––not by splitting logs or teaching school in the backwoods in order to buy a dictionary and law books––we haven’t the time for that. So I’ll take my chances and you’ll hear from me later.”
While Beatrice was skimming through school and taking walking trips through Norway punctuated by fleeting visits home, remaining as childish and unconcerned as to vital things as her mother had been at fourteen, Steve left the Constantine factory and took the plunge.
Good luck favoured him, and for five golden years he continued to rise in the financial world, causing his rivals to say: “A fool’s luck first then the war made him––the government contracts, you know. He’s only succeeded because of luck and the fact of it’s being the psychological moment. Worked in the ordnance game––didn’t see active service––money just kept rolling in. Well, who wants a war fortune? Some folks in 1860 bought government mules for limousine prices and sold them for the same. Besides, it’s only so he can marry the Gorgeous Girl. I guess he’ll find out it was cheap at half the price!”