The Lion and The Mouse Part 20

"Paris! Rome!" echoed Shirley. "How I envy you! Yes, you are right. Get away from this country where the only topic, the only thought is money, where the only incentive to work is dollars. Go where there are still some ideals, where you can breathe the atmosphere of culture and art."

Forgetting momentarily her own troubles, Shirley chatted on about life in the art centres of Europe, advised Jefferson where to go, with whom to study. She knew people in Paris, Rome and Munich and she would give him letters to them. Only, if he wanted to perfect himself in the languages, he ought to avoid Americans and cultivate the natives. Then, who could tell? if he worked hard and was lucky, he might have something exhibited at the Salon and return to America a famous painter.

"If I do," smiled Jefferson, "you shall be the first to congratulate me. I shall come and ask you to be my wife. May I?"

he added,

Shirley smiled gravely.

"Get famous first. You may not want me then."

"I shall always want you," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, bending over her. In the dim light of the porch he saw that her tear-stained face was drawn and pale. He rose and held out his hand.

"Good-bye," he said simply.

"Good-bye, Jefferson." She rose and put her hand in his. "We shall always be friends. I, too, am going away."

"You going away--where to?" he asked surprised.

"I have work to do in connection with my father's case," she said.

"You?" said Jefferson puzzled. "You have work to do--what work?"

"I can't say what it is, Jefferson. There are good reasons why I can't. You must take my word for it that it is urgent and important work." Then she added: "You go your way, Jefferson; I will go mine. It was not our destiny to belong to each other. You will become famous as an artist. And I--"

"And you--" echoed Jefferson.

"I--I shall devote my life to my father. It's no use, Jefferson--really--I've thought it all out. You must not come back to me--you understand. We must be alone with our grief--father and I. Good-bye."

He raised her hand to his lips.

"Good-bye, Shirley. Don't forget me. I shall come back for you."

He went down the porch and she watched him go out of the gate and down the road until she could see his figure no longer. Then she turned back and sank into her chair and burying her face in her handkerchief she gave way to a torrent of tears which afforded some relief to the weight on her heart. Presently the others returned from their walk and she told them about the visitor.

"Mr. Ryder's son, Jefferson, was here. We crossed on the same ship. I introduced him to Judge Stott on the dock."

The judge looked surprised, but he merely said:

"I hope for his sake that he is a different man from his father."

"He is," replied Shirley simply, and nothing more was said.

Two days went by, during which Shirley went on completing the preparations for her visit to New York. It was arranged that Stott should escort her to the city. Shortly before they started for the train a letter arrived for Shirley. Like the first one it had been forwarded by her publishers. It read as follows:

MISS SHIRLEY GREEN,

_Dear Madam._--I shall be happy to see you at my residence--Fifth Avenue--any afternoon that you will mention.

Yours very truly, JOHN BURKETT RYDER, per B.

Shirley smiled in triumph as, unseen by her father and mother, she pa.s.sed it over to Stott. She at once sat down and wrote this reply:

MR. JOHN BURKETT RYDER,

_Dear Sir._--I am sorry that I am unable to comply with your request. I prefer the invitation to call at your private residence should come from Mrs. Ryder.

Yours, etc., SHIRLEY GREEN.

She laughed as she showed this to Stott:

"He'll write me again," she said, "and next time his wife will sign the letter."

An hour later she left Ma.s.sapequa for the city.

CHAPTER XI

The Hon. Fitzroy Bagley had every reason to feel satisfied with himself. His _affaire de coeur_ with the Senator's daughter was progressing more smoothly than ever, and nothing now seemed likely to interfere with his carefully prepared plans to capture an American heiress. The interview with Kate Roberts in the library, so awkwardly disturbed by Jefferson's unexpected intrusion, had been followed by other interviews more secret and more successful, and the plausible secretary had contrived so well to persuade the girl that he really thought the world of her, and that a brilliant future awaited her as his wife, that it was not long before he found her in a mood to refuse him nothing.

Bagley urged immediate marriage; he insinuated that Jefferson had treated her shamefully and that she owed it to herself to show the world that there were other men as good as the one who had jilted her. He argued that in view of the Senator being bent on the match with Ryder's son it would be worse than useless for him, Bagley, to make formal application for her hand, so, as he explained, the only thing which remained was a runaway marriage. Confronted with the _fait accompli_, papa Roberts would bow to the inevitable.

They could get married quietly in town, go away for a short trip, and when the Senator had gotten over his first disappointment they would be welcomed back with open arms.

Kate listened willingly enough to this specious reasoning. In her heart she was piqued at Jefferson's indifference and she was foolish enough to really believe that this marriage with a British n.o.bleman, twice removed, would be in the nature of a triumph over him. Besides, this project of an elopement appealed strangely to her frivolous imagination; it put her in the same cla.s.s as all her favourite novel heroines. And it would be capital fun!

Meantime, Senator Roberts, in blissful ignorance of this little plot against his domestic peace, was growing impatient and he approached his friend Ryder once more on the subject of his son Jefferson. The young man, he said, had been back from Europe some time. He insisted on knowing what his att.i.tude was towards his daughter. If they were engaged to be married he said there should be a public announcement of the fact. It was unfair to him and a slight to his daughter to let matters hang fire in this unsatisfactory way and he hinted that both himself and his daughter might demand their pa.s.sports from the Ryder mansion unless some explanation were forthcoming.

Ryder was in a quandary. He had no wish to quarrel with his useful Washington ally; he recognized the reasonableness of his complaint. Yet what could he do? Much as he himself desired the marriage, his son was obstinate and showed little inclination to settle down. He even hinted at attractions in another quarter. He did not tell the Senator of his recent interview with his son when the latter made it very plain that the marriage could never take place. Ryder, Sr., had his own reasons for wishing to temporize.

It was quite possible that Jefferson might change his mind and abandon his idea of going abroad and he suggested to the Senator that perhaps if he, the Senator, made the engagement public through the newspapers it might have the salutary effect of forcing his son's hand.

So a few mornings later there appeared among the society notes in several of the New York papers this paragraph:

"The engagement is announced of Miss Katherine Roberts, only daughter of senator Roberts of Wisconsin, to Jefferson Ryder, son of Mr. John Burkett Ryder."

Two persons in New York happened to see the item about the same time and both were equally interested, although it affected them in a different manner. One was Shirley Rossmore, who had chanced to pick up the newspaper at the breakfast table in her boarding house.

"So soon?" she murmured to herself. Well, why not? She could not blame Jefferson. He had often spoken to her of this match arranged by his father and they had laughed over it as a typical marriage of convenience modelled after the Continental pattern. Jefferson, she knew, had never cared for the girl nor taken the affair seriously. Some powerful influences must have been at work to make him surrender so easily. Here again she recognized the masterly hand of Ryder, Sr., and more than ever she was eager to meet this extraordinary man and measure her strength with his. Her mind, indeed, was too full of her father's troubles to grieve over her own however much she might have been inclined to do so under other circ.u.mstances, and all that day she did her best to banish the paragraph from her thoughts. More than a week had pa.s.sed since she left Ma.s.sapequa and what with corresponding with financiers, calling on editors and publishers, every moment of her time had been kept busy. She had found a quiet and reasonable priced boarding house off Washington Square and here Stott had called several times to see her. Her correspondence with Mr. Ryder had now reached a phase when it was impossible to invent any further excuses for delaying the interview asked for. As she had foreseen, a day or two after her arrival in town she had received a note from Mrs. Ryder asking her to do her the honour to call and see her, and Shirley, after waiting another two days, had replied making an appointment for the following day at three o'clock. This was the same day on which the paragraph concerning the Ryder-Roberts engagement appeared in the society chronicles of the metropolis.

Directly after the meagre meal which in New York boarding houses is dignified by the name of luncheon, Shirley proceeded to get ready for this portentous visit to the Ryder mansion. She was anxious to make a favourable impression on the financier, so she took some pains with her personal appearance. She always looked stylish, no matter what she wore, and her poverty was of too recent date to make much difference to her wardrobe, which was still well supplied with Paris-made gowns. She selected a simple close-fitting gown of gray chiffon cloth and a picture hat of Leghorn straw heaped with red roses, Shirley's favourite flower.

Thus arrayed, she sallied forth at two o'clock--a little gray mouse to do battle with the formidable lion.

The sky was threatening, so instead of walking a short way up Fifth Avenue for exercise, as she had intended doing, she cut across town through Ninth Street, and took the surface car on Fourth Avenue. This would put her down at Madison Avenue and Seventy-fourth Street, which was only a block from the Ryder residence. She looked so pretty and was so well dressed that the pa.s.sers-by who looked after her wondered why she did not take a cab instead of standing on a street corner for a car. But one's outward appearance is not always a faithful index to the condition of one's pocketbook, and Shirley was rapidly acquiring the art of economy.

It was not without a certain trepidation that she began this journey. So far, all her plans had been based largely on theory, but now that she was actually on her way to Mr. Ryder all sorts of misgivings beset her. Suppose he knew her by sight and roughly accused her of obtaining access to his house under false pretences and then had her ejected by the servants? How terrible and humiliating that would be! And even if he did not how could she possibly find those letters with him watching her, and all in the brief time of a conventional afternoon call? It had been an absurd idea from the first. Stott was right; she saw that now. But she had entered upon it and she was not going to confess herself beaten until she had tried. And as the car sped along Madison Avenue, gradually drawing nearer to the house which she was going to enter disguised as it were, like a burglar, she felt cold chills run up and down her spine--the same sensation that one experiences when one rings the bell of a dentist's where one has gone to have a tooth extracted. In fact, she felt so nervous and frightened that if she had not been ashamed before herself she would have turned back. In about twenty minutes the car stopped at the corner of Seventy-fourth Street. Shirley descended and with a quickened pulse walked towards the Ryder mansion, which she knew well by sight.

There was one other person in New York who, that same morning, had read the newspaper item regarding the Ryder-Roberts betrothal, and he did not take the matter so calmly as Shirley had done. On the contrary, it had the effect of putting him into a violent rage.

This was Jefferson. He was working in his studio when he read it and five minutes later he was tearing up-town to seek the author of it. He understood its object, of course; they wanted to force his hand, to shame him into this marriage, to so entangle him with the girl that no other alternative would be possible to an honourable man. It was a despicable trick and he had no doubt that his father was at the back of it. So his mind now was fully made up. He would go away at once where they could not make his life a burden with this odious marriage which was fast becoming a nightmare to him. He would close up his studio and leave immediately for Europe. He would show his father once for all that he was a man and expected to be treated as one.