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she saw him slipping back into the indifference of his old life soon after the inspiration of her presence had been withdrawn; perhaps still living with his bibulous father on the ranch in the foothills, or perhaps following the profession of cow puncher, held in such contempt by her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 lustre 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 principal corner of a principal 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 anticipation of the impending crash. His difficulty was that he had no key to the financial resources of his visitors. They had lived in good circumstances; 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."