Lester passed the month before his marriage in alternating uplifts and
depressions, and the worst of it lay in the fact that his moments of
exaltation were sensual--of the flesh, and born of the girl's
presence--while his depression came from his sane contemplation of the
fate to which he was hastening. He went one day to talk it all over with
Mrs. Baker, who now held a dark opinion of Fan Blondell. She frankly
advised him to break the engagement and to go back to England.
"I can't do that, my dear Mrs. Baker. I am too far committed to Fan to
do that. Besides, I know she would make a terrible scene. She would
follow me. And besides, I am fond of her, you know. She's very
beautiful, now--and she does love me, poor beggar! I wonder at it, but
she does." Then he brightened up. "You know she has the carriage of a
duchess. Really, if she were trained a little she would be quite
presentable anywhere."
Mrs. Baker shook her head. "She's at her best this minute. Look at the
mother; that's what she'll be like in a few years."
"Oh no--not really! She's an improvement--a vast improvement--on the old
people, don't you think?"
"You can't make a purse out of a sow's ear. Fan will sag right down
after marriage. Mark my words. She's a slattern in her blood, and before
the honeymoon is over she'll be slouching around in old slippers and her
nightgown. That is plain talk, Mr. Lester, but I can't let you go into
this trap with your eyes shut."
Lester went away with renewed determination to pack his belongings and
bolt, but the manly streak in his blood made it impossible for him to go
without some sort of explanation to her.
The other hands, who called him "George Adelbert" in mockery, were more
and more contemptuous of him, and one or two were sullen, for they loved
Fan and resented this "lily-fingered gent," who was to their minds
"after the old man's acres." Young Compton, the son of a neighboring
rancher, was most insulting, for he had himself once carried on a frank
courtship with Fan, and enjoyed a brief, half-expressed engagement. He
was a fine young fellow, not naturally vindictive, and he would not have
uttered a word of protest had his successful rival been a man of "the
States," but to give way to an English adventurer whose way was paid by
his brother was a different case altogether.
Of George Adelbert's real feeling the boys, of course, knew nothing. Had
they known of his hidden contempt for them they would probably have
taken him out of the country at the end of a rope, but of his position
with Fan they were in no doubt, for she was very frank with them. If
they accused her of being "sweet on the bloody Englishman" she laughed.
If they threatened his life in a jocular way she laughed again, but in a
different way, and said: "Don't make a mistake; George Adelbert is a
fighter from way back East." And once, in a burst of rage, she said: "I
won't have you saying such things, Lincoln Compton. I won't have it, I
tell you!" No one could accuse her of disloyalty or cowardice.
In his letters home Lester had put his fiancee's best foot forward.
"She's quite too good for me," he wrote to his brother. "She's young and
beautiful and sole heiress of an estate twice as big as our whole family
can muster. She's uncultivated, the diamond in the rough, and all that
sort of thing, you understand, but she'll polish easily." He put all
this down in the sardonic wish to procure some sort of settlement from
his brother. He got it by return mail.
Edward was suavely congratulatory, and in closing said: "I'm deucedly
glad you're off my hands just now, my boy, for I'm confoundedly hard up.
You're doing the sensible thing--only don't try to bring your family
home--not at present."
Lester was thrown into despairing fury by this letter, which not only
cut him off from his remittances, but politely shut the paternal door in
his own face as well as in the face of his bride. For the moment he had
some really heroic idea of setting to work to show them what he could
do. "The beggar! He squats down on the inheritance, shoves me out, and
then takes on a lot of 'side' as to his superiority over me! He always
was a self-sufficient ass. I'd like to punch his jaw!"
Then his rage faded out and a kind of sullen resignation came to him.
What was the use? Why not submit to fate? "Everything has been against
me from the start," he bitterly complained, and in this spirit he
approached his wedding-day.
The old man, acknowledging him as a son-in-law prospective, addressed
him now with gruff kindness, and had Lester shown the slightest gain in
managerial ability he would have been content--glad to share a little of
his responsibility with a younger man. In his uncouth, hairy, grimy
fashion Blondell was growing old, and feeling it. As he said to his
wife: "It's a pity that our only child couldn't have brought a real man,
like Compton, into the family. There ain't a hand on the place that
wouldn't 'a' been more welcome to me. What do you suppose would become
of this place if it was put into this dandy's hands?"
"I don't know, pa. Fan, for all her slack ways, is a purty fair manager.
She wouldn't waste it. She might let it run down, but she'd hang on to
it."
"But she's a fool about that jackass."
"She is now," answered the mother, with cynical emphasis, which she
softened by adding, "Dell ain't the kind that would try to work her."
He sighed with troubled gaze and grumbled an oath. "I don't know what to
think of him! He gits me." And in that rather mournful spirit he went
about his work, leaving the whole matter of the marriage festival in the
hands of the women. In a dim way he still felt that haste was necessary,
although Fan's face was as joyous, as careless, and as innocent as a
child's. As she galloped about the country with her George Adelbert she
sowed her "bids" broadcast, as if wishing all the world to share her
happiness. There was nothing exclusive, or shrinking, or parsimonious
in Frances Blondell.