If the Shoe Fits—/Chapter 6
VI
FOR ten days John Rand, mining engineer, who had never at one time in his life owned a thousand dollars, had lived in the Rudd household, had been accepted as its head, and had found himself in the end fitting very comfortably into the shoes of a multi-millionaire. He could have run away, but he could not see in what way that would help matters, and it was more pleasant to stay where he was.
After that first day when he had driven to the bank and deliberately forged Jasper Ruud's name to checks amounting to nearly five thousand dollars, he had plunged recklessly and deeply into Ruud's financial affairs. He had attended two directors' meetings, he had made them explain matters to him, and he had voted as he thought wisest. He had seen Mr. Warrington, had learned that the attorney had paid Lon Kelton the ten thousand dollars which were demanded as damages, and he had drawn ten thousand dollars from Jasper Ruud's account and had paid it over to the lawyer.
The man whom the flying engine had mangled in the Yonkers freight yards had been buried, unidentified. It seemed to John Rand that nothing, no possible happening, could throw him out of the position into which he was fitting more securely day by day, nothing beyond his own volition. And the tenth day of security, of influence and importance and affluence, was the most thoroughly wretched day John Rand had ever lived through. Because it had started out being the most wonderfully happy day he had ever known.
For he did not want Jasper Ruud's millions, he did not want to be influential and a millionaire. The thing that he wanted he could never have if he had these things. For to have them he must be Jasper Ruud, and therefore Audrey Ruud's brother.
To have been interested in the dainty beauty of Audrey Rudd when he first saw her at McAdams's home was but natural. That he should remain in the same house with her for ten days and remain merely interested was impossible. That he should eventually wake up to himself, and realize that he was thinking daily and nightly of the rarest, most radiantly wonderful girl in all the world was inevitable.
Mrs. Ruud had said that afternoon:
“Well, I must say, Jasper, that you and Audrey are becoming the most affectionate brother and sister I ever heard of. It's very praiseworthy, I am sure, a very lovely spectacle. But I think that Audrey could put a little more time on her books without its hurting her. And your business—”
She hadn't finished. There was no need for her to do so. Audrey was sitting with eyes demurely downcast, John Rand's face was a flaming scarlet.
They had breakfasted together this morning, as usual, Audrey and “John Rand, dear.” She had grumbled that she had a headache and didn't know what French grammars were good for, anyway. He had suggested a trip up the river in the new steam yacht. And they had not gotten home until late afternoon. John Rand had deliberately cut a meeting of the board of directors of the Eastern and Western Mining Corporation. Audrey had chosen to ignore that Mrs. Quinby Cushton was to call. It had been a day of blue sky, quietly lapping water, a keen, riotous wind from the ocean whispering adventurous things. A day of frolic and laughter and dream-building.
For no longer was Audrey concerned the least little bit about the continued absence of her brother. She had come to believe John Rand implicitly. She believed that Ruud had sent him to the police station ... that she had learned from McAdams and she promptly put it down to Rand's credit that he had not told her—and that he had unwittingly been forced into playing the part of Ruud. And she confided to him why she was not worried at her brother's failure to return.
When Ruud was at the stage of his boyhood when he “gloried and drank deep” of the doings of the gallant heroes who gallop through the pages of those rare volumes with bright pictures on their paper covers, pictures of men with guns and masks and daggers, sold by book dealers at ten cents each, he had read to her and they had shivered together over the hair-raising exploits. And they had planned what they would do were they ever sought by the bloodhounds of the law. Ruud would disguise himself as a sailor and he would take a ship around the Horn and to San Francisco. Then he would change his disguise, assume a blue shirt, big boots, a pick and shovel and beard, and would go up into the mountains of California where, according to the story books, each man attended to his own business, went by what name he pleased, and asked no questions.
“But,” Rand had objected, “those were the plans of a boy. And your brother—”
“Has gone straight to California,” she had maintained, smiling at him.
“But,” came a second objection, “he must have seen the papers, must have known that he could come back.”
“Cherchez la femme!” she laughed. “There's 'a lady, such a lady,' who lives in the mountains of California. Then seek the other woman ... that's Mother! Mother has a very strong will, John Rand, dear. And mother doesn't like the lady in California. I'll bet you a box of candy and a ticket to the opera and what you please that Jasper Ruud has seen his chance to scamper away, sky-larking and love-making without mother's knowing it! Anyway, he's as old in years as I am in experience,” whereupon she looked very wise, “and he can take care of himself.”
So it had been a wonderful day, cloudless and blue and rippling with sunshine. And now, because it had been so happy, such a bubbling, effervescent day, John Rand was utterly miserable. For, he reflected, Jasper Ruud was not coming back, for the simple reason that he was dead. And how was John Rand to win the one thing in the universe he wanted? To be sure, Audrey claimed now that he in no slightest way resembled Jasper Ruud. He knew already that he loved her, he dared hope, as is the way with youth and love, that she would some day love him. And when that day came what should he do? For the world was all about them, and the world thought that it knew perfectly well that he and she were brother and sister.
“If,” he grumbled to himself, “there were only a third man like Jasper Ruud, I'd look the world over for him and would give him the whole of Jasper Ruud's fortune, just so that I could take Audrey Ruud up into my arms and run away with her to some lost island in the far seas.”
So this afternoon, sitting at the window of Jasper Ruud's private sitting-room, frowning out across the river, which had been so beautiful a thing a little while ago, and which now was as joyless as the Styx, John Rand gave himself up to the bitterness that welled up within him. He had just learned to the uttermost how undesirable a thing wealth could be when it brought with it the exclusion of Something Else. And he felt very much like cursing Jasper Ruud, not because he had set the police upon him in the first place, but because he had allowed himself to be run over and mangled by an engine.
Audrey broke suddenly into his black musings. She had flung his door open and from the threshold looked in at him, a great amusement dancing in her eyes,
“Will you do something for me?” He saw the mischief in her eyes and wondered what it might mean. “You have been so good to me, just like a really truly brother. Do you know, I'll be almost sorry when Jasper does come back!”
“I wouldn't be,” he told her vehemently.
“Oh! You're getting tired of staying here? Of seeing so much of me—”
“As a sister, yes,” bluntly.
She moved back a step, and he saw the color go running up into her cheeks. But she went on hurriedly.
“And since you've been so good I've prepared a little surprise for you! Will you go downstairs and see what's in the music-room? And I'll peek in at the keyhole and watch you.”
“What is it?”
She shook her head at him. “It's a surprise. And you're to go right now.” She stood aside for him to pass, and when he had gone down the stairs she followed, crying softly, “Don't forget that I'm going to be at the keyhole to see how you like your surprise.”
He laughed back at her and ran down into the hallway. The music-room was at the far end of the house. The door was closed. He flung it open. At first he saw nothing that had not been here when she sang to him last night. The shades were low drawn, it was misty twilight in here. And then—
Then he heard a low cry of gladness and saw a woman, a young and remarkably pretty woman, coming towards him out of the shadows. He saw that there was a look of great tenderness in her deep, dusky eyes, and that an earnest joyousness trembled upon her red lips, in her smile and in her voice.
“Jasper! Oh, Jasper—thank God! Thank God!”
And then he saw the flash of her white arms as a loose wrap dropped from her shoulders and to the floor, and felt them about his neck.
“I—I,” he stammered, knowing full well that he was growing violently red, knowing that a very mirthful young lady was keeping her word and was “peeking” in at them from the door behind him. “There—there's a mistake, you know. I—”
She was half laughing, half crying.
“You dear old Jasper.” The words floated up to him from her lips hidden against his breast. “Of course there was a mistake. And I would have come right away when you were in trouble, but I was up at our camp in the Sierra Nevada, and didn't hear a thing of it until it was all over. And, Jasper,” in a faint whisper, her eyes shining up into his, her cheeks flushed although not by any means as flushed as were John Rand's, “aren't you going to—”
“To what?” he demanded awkwardly, catching her hands and drawing them away from his shoulders.
“Kiss me?” She dropped her head quickly, as though ashamed of her boldness. And then when he stood still, merely letting her hands fall from his slowly relaxing fingers, she exclaimed, half-playfully, half-reproachfully, “Don't you love me any more? What is the matter, Jasper?”
He heard a suppressed, gurgling giggle from the hallway behind him, and for an instant thought blindly and madly of turning and rushing from the room to take Miss Audrey by her shoulders and shake her. And he realized dimly that he couldn't do such a thing, and that although he couldn't assure the lady before him that he loved her, still he could not turn his back upon her and run.
“What is it, Jasper?” she was asking again, a vague trouble in her eyes, her soft voice trembling a little. “I thought—I thought that you would be glad to see me, and I—I—have I made a mistake, Jasper?”
“That's it, that's it,” he said hurriedly, moving back a step. “There are mistakes all round, aren't there?” He tried to laugh easily, and his attempt reminded him of the efforts of a young rooster trying to crow with a new-born voice. “Won't you sit down, Miss—Miss— You see, I—I didn't expect you, and I was just—just very busy and—er—ah, I'm not feeling just right, and—”
“Jasper!” He could see that he had alarmed her, could catch a new note of positive fear in her voice. “You are not well!”
“No. I'm not well. That is, I'm not exactly sick, you know. Just a little out of sorts.” And then, as she came towards him again, her eyes full of tender sympathy, feeling that he must say something, that he must stop her before he allowed her to make love to him again, “That's a very pretty hat you have on!”
“Hat!” She stopped short, regarding him with deeply puzzled eyes. “Why do you talk about a thing like that now? Why are you—this way?”
“You see, I—” And he stopped, What could he say? He saw in her eyes that the one thing in the world that she wanted was for him to put his two arms about her and kiss her. It might have been no unpleasant task ten days ago, but now—and again he could hear Audrey in the hall smother a giggle under her handkerchief. “What time is it?” He fumbled with his watch, dragged it out, stared at it without seeing the hands and cried, “Why, it's three o'clock! And I've an engagement, a very important engagement, at three! You'll excuse me, I know you will, if I hurry away? I'll send Audrey in...”
“Jasper.” Her tone reminded him of the tinkle of ice in a glass. He stopped at the door and half turned. “I am sorry I made such a mistake. They told me of your interest in that Chatterton girl ... and I was a little fool and believed you instead. It's all right, Jasper. I am not going to cry.” Her voice was already choking, the ice all melted out of it. “It is evident that they told me the truth and that—that you are tired of me. It is just as well to be frank, is it not?” The tortured little smile made him wince. “Only,” the thaw freezing over again, “remember that I forgave you once before, and that I am not an old glove to be put on and off!” Her wrap was on again, and she had passed through the door beside him, drawing away from him so that her skirts should not touch him. “And remember that there will be no use coming to me again when you are tired of your Chatterton girl.”
She went down the hallway and out at the front door. The door did not slam behind her. She closed it slowly, quietly, firmly.
“Which means that she is awful mad,” cried Miss Audrey, delightedly. “My, won't Jasper have a lovely time trying to explain!”
“You little Imp!” He made her face him, and took her by the two shoulders as he might have taken a very, very little girl. “I've a mind to...”
“Mr. Clysdale to see Mr. Ruud,” announced a servant.
“Tell Mr. Clysdale to go to the—”
“Sh!” commanded Audrey, wriggling out of his grasp and escaping up the stairway. “And you really must see him, John Rand, dear. It's very important business.”
“Who's he?” he demanded. “I don't want to see anybody but you and—”
“But you must! And may I listen again? It's so much fun!”
He strode away to the little reception room. A pale young man, very conscious of his first young mustache, was walking up and down nervously and turned quickly as Rand came in.
“Hello, Jas, old boy.” He put out a boneless hand and made a wry face as Rand crushed it in his. “I thought I'd drop in, you know.”
“So I see,” retorted Rand with no great attempt at graciousness. “What can I do for you?”
“I say. You're mighty business-like to-day, Jas.”
“Yes, I'm busy. Some very unpleasant but none the less important business to transact,” lifting his voice for the benefit of Miss Audrey, whom he had seen tip-toe down the stairs after him. “What is it?”
Clysdale brushed the silky growth upon his lip with caressing fingers and admired the flower in his button-hole before he found courage to answer.
“It's what I spoke to you about before, you know.” His manner was insinuating, his tone confidential. “About—ah—Miss Audrey. You know, Jas, old fellow—”
“Well,” snapped Rand. “What about her?”
“I—you know I love her to distraction, Jas. You know I want to marry her—”
“Marry her?” shouted Rand. “What the devil are you talking about? I'm going to marry her myself!”
Clysdale's mouth sagged open, his small eyes opened until they were no longer small.
“Marry her!” he stuttered. “You! What do you mean?”
“Mean?” shouted John Rand. “I mean what I—” Then he remembered that he was supposed to be Jasper Ruud, and he ended weakly, “I mean I'm going to marry her to somebody I've picked out for her, of course!”
“But, old fellow, I—I thought that—that I—that you thought—”
“Well, I've changed my mind. Audrey isn't going to marry you now or later. I've got somebody else for her. That's all. Good day, Clysdale.”
Clysdale did not close the door slowly nor yet quietly. And as John Rand turned toward the staircase he caught a glimpse of a pair of trim ankles flitting ahead and heard the merry gurgle of Audrey's laughter.