The Price She Paid Part 8

"Oh, so--so," replied the general. "But I get awful lonesome. I'm naturally a domestic man. I don't care for friends. They're expensive and dangerous. A man in my position is like a king. He can't have friends. So, if he hasn't got a family, he hasn't got noth--anything."

"Nothing like home life," said Presbury.

"Yes, indeed," cried Mrs. Presbury.

The little general smiled upon Mildred, sitting pale and silent, with eyes downcast. "Well, I don't intend to be alone much longer, if I can help it," said he. "And I may say that I can make a woman happy if she's the right sort--if she has sense enough to appreciate a good husband." This last he said sternly, with more than a hint of his past matrimonial misfortunes in his frown and in his voice. "The trouble with a great many women is that they're fools--flighty, ungrateful fools. If I married a woman like that, I'd make short work of her."

"And she'd deserve it, General," said Mildred's mother earnestly. "But you'll have no trouble if you select a lady--a girl who's been well brought up and has respect for herself."

"That's my opinion, ma'am," said the general. "I'm convinced that while a man can become a gentleman, a woman's got to be born a lady or she never is one."

"Very true, General," cried Mrs. Presbury. "I never thought of it before, but it's the truest thing I ever heard."

Presbury grinned at his plate. He stole a glance at Mildred. Their eyes met. She flushed faintly.

"I've had a great deal of experience of women," pursued the general.

"In my boyhood days I was a ladies' man. And of course since I've had money they've swarmed round me like bees in a clover-patch."

"Oh, General, you're far too modest," cried Mrs. Presbury. "A man like you wouldn't need to be afraid, if he hadn't a cent."

"But not the kind of women I want," replied he, firmly if complacently.

"A lady needs money to keep up her position. She has to have it. On the other hand, a man of wealth and station needs a lady to a.s.sist him in the proper kind of life for men of his sort. So they need each other. They've got to have each other. That's the practical, sensible way to look at it."

"Exactly," said Presbury.

"And I've made up my mind to marry, and marry right away. But we'll come back to this later on. Presbury, you're neglecting that wine."

"I'm drinking it slowly to enjoy it better," said Presbury.

The dinner was the same unending and expensive function that had wearied them and upset their digestions on Thanksgiving Day. There was too much of everything, and it was all just wrong. The general was not quite so voluble as he had been before; his gaze was fixed most of the time on Mildred--roving from her lovely face to her smooth, slender shoulders and back again. As he drank and ate his gesture of slightly smacking his thin lips seemed to include an enjoyment of the girl's charms. And a sensitive observer might have suspected that she was not unconscious of this and was suffering some such pain as if abhorrent and cruel lips and teeth were actually mouthing and mumbling her. She said not a word from sitting down at table until they rose to go into the library for coffee.

"Do tell me about your early life, General," Mrs. Presbury said. "Only the other day Millie was saying she wished she could read a biography of your romantic career."

"Yes, it has been rather--unusual," conceded the general with swelling chest and gently waving dollar-and-a-half-apiece cigar.

"I do so ADMIRE a man who carves out his own fortune," Mrs. Presbury went on--she had not obeyed her husband's injunction as to the champagne. "It seems so wonderful to me that a man could with his own hands just dig a fortune out of the ground."

"He couldn't, ma'am," said the general, with gracious tolerance. "It wasn't till I stopped the fool digging and hunting around for gold that I began to get ahead. I threw away the pick and shovel and opened a hotel." (There were two or three sleeping-rooms of a kind in that "hotel," but it was rather a saloon of the species known as "doggery.") "Yes, it was in the hotel that I got my start. The fellows that make the money in mining countries ain't the prospectors and diggers, ma'am."

"Really!" cried Mrs. Presbury breathlessly. "How interesting!"

"They're fools, they are," proceeded the general. "No, the money's made by the fellows that grub-stake the fools--give 'em supplies and send 'em out to nose around in the mountains. Then them that find anything have to give half to the fellow that did the grub-staking. And he looks into the claim, and if there's anything in it, why, he buys the fool out. In mines, like everywhere else, ma'am, it ain't work, it's brains that makes the money. No miner ever made a mining fortune--not one. It's the brainy, foxy fellows that stay back in the camps. I used to send out fifty and a hundred men a year. Maybe only two or three'd turn up anything worth while. No, ma'am, I never got a dollar ahead on my digging. All the gold I ever dug went right off for grub--or a good time."

"Wonderful!" exclaimed Mrs. Presbury. "I never heard of such a thing."

"But we're not here to talk about mines," said the general, his eyes upon Mildred. "I've been looking into matters--to get down to business--and I've asked you here to let you know that I'm willing to go ahead."

Profound silence. Mildred suddenly drew in her breath with a sound so sharp that the three others started and glanced hastily at her. But she made no further sign. She sat still and cold and pale.

The general, perfectly at ease, broke the silence. "I think Miss Gower and I would get on faster alone."

Presbury at once stood up; his wife hesitated, her eyes uneasily upon her daughter. Presbury said: "Come on, Alice." She rose and preceded him into the adjoining conservatory. The little general posed himself before the huge open fire, one hand behind him, the other at the level of his waistcoat, the big cigar between his first and second fingers.

"Well, my dear?" said he.

Mildred somewhat hesitatingly lifted her eyes; but, once she had them up, their gaze held steadily enough upon his--too steadily for his comfort. He addressed himself to his cigar:

"I'm not quite ready to say I'm willing to go the limit," said he. "We don't exactly know each other sufficiently well as yet, do we?"

"No," said Mildred.

"I've been making inquiries," he went on; "that is, I had my chief secretary make them--and he's a very thorough man, thanks to my training. He reports everything entirely all right. I admire dignity and reserve in a woman, and you have been very particular. Were you engaged to Stanley Baird?"

Mildred flushed, veiled her eyes to hide their resentful flash at this impertinence. She debated with herself, decided that any rebuke short of one that would anger him would be wasted upon him. "No," said she.

"That agrees with Harding's report," said the general. "It was a mere girlish flirtation--very dignified and proper," he hastened to add. "I don't mean to suggest that you were at all flighty."

"Thank you," said Mildred sweetly.

"Are there any questions you would like to ask about me?" inquired he.

"No," said Mildred.

"As I understand it--from my talk with Presbury--you are willing to go on?"

"Yes," said Mildred.

The general smiled genially. "I think I may say without conceit that you will like me as you know me better. I have no bad habits--I've too much regard for my health to over-indulge or run loose. In my boyhood days I may have put in rather a heavy sowing of wild oats"--the general laughed; Mildred conjured up the wintriest and faintest of echoing smiles--"but that's all past," he went on, "and there's nothing that could rise up to interfere with our happiness. You are fond of children?"

A pause, then Mildred said quite evenly, "Yes."

"Excellent," said the general. "I'll expect you and your mother and father to dinner Sunday night. Is that satisfactory?"

"Yes," said Mildred.

A longish pause. Then the general: "You seem to be a little--afraid of me. I don't know why it is that people are always that way with me." A halt, to give her the opportunity to say the obvious flattering thing. Mildred said nothing, gave no sign. He went on: "It will wear away as we know each other better. I am a simple, plain man--kind and generous in my instincts. Of course I am dignified, and I do not like familiarity. But I do not mean to inspire fear and awe."

A still longer pause. "Well, everything is settled," said the general.

"We understand each other clearly?--not an engagement, nothing binding on either side--simply a--a--an option without forfeit." And he laughed--his laugh was a ghoulish sound, not loud but explosive and an instant check upon demonstration of mirth from anyone else.

"I understand," said Mildred with a glance toward the door through which Presbury and his wife had disappeared.

"Now, we'll join the others, and I'll show you the house"--again the laugh--"what may be your future home--one of them."

The four were soon started upon what was for three of them a weariful journey despite the elevator that spared them the ascents of the stairways. The house was an exaggerated reproduction of all the establishments of the rich who confuse expenditure with luxury and comfort. Bill Siddall had bought "the best of everything"; that is, the things into which the purveyors of costly furnis.h.i.+ngs have put the most excuses for charging. Of taste, of comfort, of discrimination, there were few traces and these obviously accidental. "I picked out the men acknowledged to be the best in their different lines," said the general, "and I gave them carte blanche."

"I see that at a glance," said Presbury. "You've done the grand thing on the grandest possible scale."

"I've looked into the finest of the famous places on the other side,"