Lo, Michael! Part 31

"I most earnestly hope that you will," answered Michael.

In spite of her hauteur she could not but be impressed by Michael's manner.

His grave tones and serious eyes told hear heart that here was something out of the ordinary, at least she gave Michael credit for thinking there was.

"I certainly shall not do anything of the kind without a good reason for it." Starr's tone was determined and cold.

"And I can give you no reason beyond telling you that he is not such a man as a friend of yours should be."

"What do you mean?"

"Please do not ask me. Please trust me and give me your promise. At least wait until I can write to your father."

Starr rose with a look of her father's stubbornness now in her pretty face.

"I wish to be told," she demanded angrily.

"You would not wish to be told if you knew," he answered.

She stood looking at him steadily for a full moment, then with a graceful toss of her lovely head, she said haughtily:

"I must decline to accede to your request, Mr. Endicott. You will excuse me, I have a luncheon engagement now."

She stood aside for him to go out the door, but as he rose with pleading still in his eyes, he said:

"You will write to your father and tell him what I have said? You will wait until you hear from him?"

"It is impossible, Mr. Endicott." Starr's tone was freezing now, and he could see that she was very angry. "Mr. Carter is my friend!" she flung at him as he pa.s.sed her and went out into the hall.

Another night of anguish brought Michael face to face with the necessity for an interview with Starr's mother.

Taking his cue from the hour Starr had set for his call, he went a little before eleven o'clock and sent up the card of the firm with his own name written below; for he had very serious doubts of obtaining an interview at all if the lady thought he might be there on his own business.

It is doubtful whether Mrs. Endicott recognized the former "Mikky"

under the t.i.tle written below his most respectable law firm's name. Any representative of Holt and Holt was to be recognized of course. She came down within a half hour, quite graciously with lorgnette in her hand, until she had reached the centre of the reception room where he had been put to await her. Then Michael arose, almost from the same spot where she had addressed him nearly four years before, the halo of the morning shining through the high window on his hair, and with a start and stiffening of her whole form she recognized him.

"Oh, it is _you_!" There was that in her tone that argued ill for Michael's mission, but with grave and gentle bearing he began:

"Madam, I beg your pardon for the intrusion. I would not have come if there had been any other way. I tried to find Mr. Endicott but was told he had sailed--"

"You needn't waste your time, and mine. I shall do nothing for you. As I told you before, if I remember, I think far too much already has been done for you and I never felt that you had the slightest claim upon our bounty.

I must refuse to hear any hard luck stories."

Michael's face was a study. Indignation, shame and pity struggled with a sudden sense of the ridiculousness of the situation.

What he did was to laugh, a rich, clear, musical laugh that stopped the lady's tirade better than he could have done it in any other way.

"Well! Really! Have you come to insult me?" she said angrily. "I will call a servant," and she stepped curtly toward the bell.

"Madam, I beg your pardon," said Michael quickly, grave at once. "I intended no insult and I have come to ask no favor of you. I came because of a serious matter, perhaps a grave danger to your home, which I thought you should be made acquainted with."

"Indeed! Well, make haste," said Mrs. Endicott, half mollified. "My time is valuable. Has some one been planning to rob the house?"

Michael looked straight in her face and told her briefly a few facts, delicately worded, forcefully put, which would have convinced the heart of any true mother that the man before her had none but pure motives.

Not so this mother. The more Michael talked the stiffer, haughtier, more hateful, grew her stare; and when he paused, thinking not to utterly overwhelm her with his facts, she remarked, superciliously:

"How could you possibly know all these things, unless you had been in the same places where you claim Mr. Carter has been? But, oh, of course I forgot! Your former home was there, and so of course you must have many friends among--ah--_those people_!" She drew her mental skirts away from contaminating contact as she spoke the last two words, and punctuated them with a contemptuous look through the lorgnette.

"But, my dear fellow," she went on adopting the most outrageously patronizing manner, "you should never trust those people. Of course you don't understand that, having been away from them so many years among respectable folks, but they really do not know what the truth is. I doubt very much whether there is a grain of foundation for all that you have been telling me."

"Madam, I have taken pains to look into the matter and I know that every word which I have been telling you is true. Two of the meet noted detectives of the city have been making an investigation. I would not have ventured to come if I had not had indisputable facts to give you."

Mrs. Endicott arose still holding the lorgnette to her eyes, though she showed that the interview was drawing to a close:

"Then young man," she said, "it will be necessary for me to tell you that the things you have been saying are not considered proper to speak of before ladies in respectable society. I remember of course your low origin and lack of breeding and forgive what otherwise I should consider an insult. Furthermore, let me tell you, that it is not considered honorable to investigate a gentleman's private life too closely. All young men sow their wild oats of course, and are probably none the worse for it. In fact, if a man has not seen life he really is not worth much. It is his own affair, and no business of yours. I must ask you to refrain from saying anything of this matter to anyone. Understand? Not a word of it! My husband would be deeply outraged to know that a young friend of his daughter's, a man of refinement and position, had been the object of scandal by one who should honor anyone whom he honors. I really cannot spare any more time this morning."

"But madam! You certainly do not mean that you will not investigate this matter for yourself? You would not let your daughter accept such a man as her friend--?"

The lorgnette came into play again but its stare was quite ineffectual upon Michael's white earnest face. His deep eyes lit with horror at this monstrous woman who seemed devoid of mother-love.

"The time has come for you to stop. It is none of your business what I mean. You have done what you thought was your duty by telling me, now put the matter entirely out of your mind. Desist at once!"

With a final stare she swept out of the room and up the broad staircase and Michael, watching her until she was out of sight, went out of the house with bowed head and burdened heart. Went out to write a letter to Starr's father, a letter which would certainly have performed its mission as his other efforts had failed; but which because of a sudden and unexpected change of address just missed him at every stopping place, as it travelled its silent unfruitful way about the world after him, never getting anywhere until too late.

CHAPTER XX

Starr was very angry with Michael when he left her. There was perhaps more hurt pride and pique in her anger than she would have cared to own. He had failed to succ.u.mb to her charms, he had not seemed to notice her as other men did; he had even lost the look of admiration he used to wear when they were boy and girl. He had refused utterly to tell her what she had a great curiosity to know.

She had been sure, was sure yet, that if Michael would tell her what he had against Stuyvesant Carter she could explain it satisfactorily. Her flattered little head was almost turned at this time with the adoration she had received. She thought she knew almost everything that Stuyvesant Carter had ever done. He was a fluent talker and had spent many hours detailing to her incidents and anecdotes of his eventful career. He had raced a good deal and still had several expensive racing cars. There wasn't anything very dreadful about that except, of course, it was dangerous. He used to gamble a great deal but he had promised her he would never do it any more because she thought it unrefined. Of course it wasn't as though he hadn't plenty of money; and her mother had told her that all young men did those things. No, not her father of course, for he had been unusual, but times were different nowadays. Young men were expected to be a little wild. It was the influence of college life and a progressive age she supposed. It didn't do any harm. They always settled down and made good husbands after they were married. Michael of course did not understand these things. He had spent a great many years in Florida with a dear old professor and a lot of good little boys. Michael was unacquainted with the ways of the world.

Thus she reasoned, yet nevertheless Michael's warning troubled her and finally she decided to go to the best source of information and ask the young man himself.

Accordingly three days after Michael's visit when he dropped in to ask if she would go to the opera that evening with him instead of something else they had planned to do together, she laughingly questioned him.

"What in the world can you ever have done, Mr. Carter, that should make you unfit company for me?"

She asked the question lightly yet her eyes watched his face most closely as she waited for the answer.

The blood rolled in dark waves over his handsome face and his brows grew dark with anger which half hid the start of almost fear with which he regarded her.

"What do you mean, Starr?" He looked at her keenly and could not tell if she were in earnest or not.

"Just that," she mocked half gravely. "Tell me what you have been doing that should make you unfit company for me? Some one has been trying to make me promise to have nothing to do with you, and I want to know what it means."