The Lion and The Mouse Part 35

Her self-respect demanded that she inform the financier of her true ident.i.ty.

"I cannot marry your son with these lies upon my lips!" she cried.

"I cannot go on with this deception. I told you you did not know who I was, who my people were. My story about them, my name, everything about me is false, every word I have uttered is a lie, a fraud, a cheat! I would not tell you now, but you trusted me and are willing to entrust your son's future, your family honour in my keeping, and I can't keep back the truth from you. Mr. Ryder, I am the daughter of the man you hate. I am the woman your son loves. I am Shirley Rossmore!"

Ryder took his cigar from his lips and rose slowly to his feet.

"You? You?" he stammered.

[Photo, from the play, of Jefferson and Shirley appealing to Mr. Ryder]

"For G.o.d's sake, Mr. Ryder, don't permit this foul injustice."--Act III.

"Yes--yes, I am the Rossmore woman! Listen, Mr. Ryder. Don't turn away from me. Go to Washington on behalf of my father, and I promise you I will never see your son again--never, never!"

"Ah, Shirley!" cried Jefferson, "you don't love me!"

"Yes, Jeff, I do; G.o.d knows I do! But if I must break my own heart to save my father I will do it."

"Would you sacrifice my happiness and your own?"

"No happiness can be built on lies, Jeff. We must build on truth or our whole house will crumble and fall. We have deceived your father, but he will forgive that, won't you?" she said, appealing to Ryder, "and you will go to Washington, you will save my father's honour, his life, you will--?"

They stood face to face--this slim, delicate girl battling for her father's life, arrayed against a cold-blooded, heartless, unscrupulous man, deaf to every impulse of human sympathy or pity.

Since this woman had deceived him, fooled him, he would deal with her as with everyone else who crossed his will. She laid her hand on his arm, pleading with him. Brutally, savagely, he thrust her aside.

"No, no, I will not!" he thundered. "You have wormed yourself into my confidence by means of lies and deceit. You have tricked me, fooled me to the very limit! Oh, it is easy to see how you have beguiled my son into the folly of loving you! And you--you have the brazen effrontery to ask me to plead for your father? No! No!

No! Let the law take its course, and now Miss Rossmore--you will please leave my house to-morrow morning!"

Shirley stood listening to what he had to say, her face white, her mouth quivering. At last the crisis had come. It was a fight to the finish between this man, the incarnation of corporate greed and herself, representing the fundamental principles of right and justice. She turned on him in a fury:

"Yes, I will leave your house to-night! Do you think I would remain another hour beneath the roof of a man who is as blind to justice, as deaf to mercy, as incapable of human sympathy as you are!"

She raised her voice; and as she stood there denouncing the man of money, her eyes flashing and her head thrown back, she looked like some avenging angel defying one of the powers of Evil.

"Leave the room!" shouted Ryder, beside himself, and pointing to the door.

"Father!" cried Jefferson, starting forward to protect the girl he loved.

"You have tricked him as you have me!" thundered Ryder.

"It is your own vanity that has tricked you!" cried Shirley contemptuously. "You lay traps for yourself and walk into them.

You compel everyone around you to lie to you, to cajole you, to praise you, to deceive you! At least, you cannot accuse me of flattering you. I have never fawned upon you as you compel your family and your friends and your dependents to do. I have always appealed to your better nature by telling you the truth, and in your heart you know that I am speaking the truth now."

"Go!" he commanded.

"Yes, let us go, Shirley!" said Jefferson.

"No, Jeff, I came here alone and I'm going alone!"

"You are not. I shall go with you. I intend to make you my wife!"

Ryder laughed scornfully.

"No," cried Shirley. "Do you think I'd marry a man whose father is as deep a discredit to the human race as your father is? No, I wouldn't marry the son of such a merciless tyrant! He refuses to lift his voice to save my father. I refuse to marry his son!"

She turned on Ryder with all the fury of a tiger:

"You think if you lived in the olden days you'd be a Caesar or an Alexander. But you wouldn't! You'd be a Nero--a Nero! Sink my self-respect to the extent of marrying into your family!" she exclaimed contemptuously. "Never! I am going to Washington without your aid. I am going to save my father if I have to go on my knees to every United States Senator. I'll go to the White House; I'll tell the President what you are! Marry your son--no, thank you!

No, thank you!"

Exhausted by the vehemence of her pa.s.sionate outburst, Shirley hurried from the room, leaving Ryder speechless, staring at his son.

CHAPTER XVI

When Shirley reached her rooms she broke down completely, she threw herself upon a sofa and burst into a fit of violent sobbing.

After all, she was only a woman and the ordeal through which she had pa.s.sed would have taxed the strongest powers of endurance. She had borne up courageously while there remained the faintest chance that she might succeed in moving the financier to pity, but now that all hopes in that direction were shattered and she herself had been ordered harshly from the house like any ordinary malefactor, the reaction set in, and she gave way freely to her long pent-up anguish and distress. Nothing now could save her father--not even this journey to Washington which she determined to take nevertheless, for, according to what Stott had said, the Senate was to take a vote that very night.

She looked at the time--eleven o'clock. She had told Mr. Ryder that she would leave his house at once, but on reflection it was impossible for a girl alone to seek a room at that hour. It would be midnight before she could get her things packed. No, she would stay under this hated roof until morning and then take the first train to Washington. There was still a chance that the vote might be delayed, in which case she might yet succeed in winning over some of the senators. She began to gather her things together and was thus engaged when she, heard a knock at her door.

"Who's there?" she called out.

"It's I," replied a familiar voice.

Shirley went to the door and opening it found Jefferson on the threshold. He made no attempt to enter, nor did she invite him in.

He looked tired and careworn.

"Of course, you're not going to-night?" he asked anxiously. "My father did not mean to-night."

"No, Jeff," she said wearily; "not to-night. It's a little too late. I did not realize it. To-morrow morning, early."

He seemed rea.s.sured and held out his hand:

"Good-night, dearest--you're a brave girl. You made a splendid fight."

"It didn't do much good," she replied in a disheartened, listless way.

"But it set him thinking," rejoined Jefferson. "No one ever spoke to my father like that before. It did him good. He's still marching up and down the library, chewing the cud--"

Noticing Shirley's tired face and her eyes, with great black circles underneath, he stopped short.

"Now don't do any more packing to-night," he said. "Go to bed and in the morning I'll come up and help you. Good night!"

"Good night, Jeff," she smiled.

He went downstairs, and after doing some more packing she went to bed. But it was hours before she got to sleep, and then she dreamed that she was in the Senate Chamber and that she saw Ryder suddenly rise and denounce himself before the astonished senators as a perjurer and traitor to his country, while she returned to Ma.s.sapequa with the glad news that her father was acquitted.