Monstrous! He had seen the open door and deliberately slammed it in her face. Luckily for them both she had heard, all unsuspected by him as he slowly hung the receiver on the hook, the soliloquy wherein he gave her a pointed hint of the distress with which he abdicated—which knowledge was all that deterred her from despising him with the fervour of a woman scorned.
Resolutely Shirley set herself to the task of forgetting Bryce when, after the passage of a few weeks, she realized that he was quite sincere in his determination to forget her. Frequent glimpses of him on the streets of Sequoia, the occasional mention of his name in the Sequoia Sentinel, the very whistle of Cardigan's mill, made her task a difficult one; and presently in desperation she packed up and departed for an indefinite stay in the southern part of the State. At the end of six weeks, however, she discovered that absence had had the traditional effect upon her heart and found herself possessed of a great curiosity to study the villain at short range and discover, if possible, what new rascality he might be meditating. About this time, a providential attack of that aristocratic ailment, gout, having laid Colonel Pennington low, she told herself her duty lay in Sequoia, that she had Shirley Sumner in hand at last and that the danger was over. In consequence, she returned to Sequoia.
The fascination which a lighted candle holds for a moth is too well known to require further elucidation here. In yielding one day to a desire to visit the Valley of the Giants, Shirley told herself that she was going there to gather wild blackberries. She had been thinking of a certain blackberry pie, which thought naturally induced reflection on Bryce Cardigan and reminded Shirley of her first visit to the Giants under the escort of a boy in knickerbockers. She had a very vivid remembrance of that little amphitheatre with the sunbeams falling like a halo on the plain tombstone; she wondered if the years had changed it all and decided that there could not possibly be any harm in indulging a very natural curiosity to visit and investigate.
Her meeting with Moira McTavish that day, and the subsequent friendship formed with the woods-boss's daughter, renewed all her old apprehensions. On the assumption that Shirley and Bryce were practically strangers to each other (an assumption which Shirley, for obvious reasons, did not attempt to dissipate), Moira did not hesitate to mention Bryce very frequently. To her he was the one human being in the world utterly worth while, and it is natural for women to discuss, frequently and at great length, the subject nearest their hearts. In the three stock subjects of the admirable sex—man, dress, and the ills that flesh is heir to—man readily holds the ascendancy; and by degrees Moira—discovering that Shirley, having all the dresses she required (several dozen more, in fact) and being neither subnormal mentally nor fragile physically, gave the last two topics scant attention—formed the habit of expatiating at great length on the latter. Moira described Bryce in minute detail and related to her eager auditor little unconscious daily acts of kindness, thoughtfulness, or humour performed by Bryce—his devotion to his father, his idealistic attitude toward the Cardigan employees, his ability, his industry, the wonderful care he bestowed upon his fingernails, his marvellous taste in neckwear, the boyishness of his lighter and the mannishness of his serious moments. And presently, little by little, Shirley's resentment against him faded, and in her heart was born a great wistfulness bred of the hope that some day she would meet Bryce Cardigan on the street and that he would pause, lift his hat, smile at her his compelling smile and, forthwith proceed to bully her into being friendly and forgiving—browbeat her into admitting her change of heart and glorying in it.
To this remarkable state of mind had Shirley Sumner attained at the time old John Cardigan, leading his last little trump in a vain hope that it would enable him to take the odd trick in the huge game he had played for fifty years, decided to sell his Valley of the Giants.
Shortly after joining her uncle in Sequoia, Shirley had learned from the Colonel the history of old man Cardigan and his Valley of the Giants, or as the townspeople called it, Cardigan's Redwoods. Therefore she was familiar with its importance to the assets of the Laguna Grande Lumber Company, since, while that quarter-section remained the property of John Cardigan, two thousand five hundred acres of splendid timber owned by the former were rendered inaccessible. Her uncle had explained to her that ultimately this would mean the tying up of some two million dollars, and inasmuch as the Colonel never figured less than five per cent. return on anything, he was in this instance facing a net loss of one hundred thousand dollars for each year obstinate John Cardigan persisted in retaining that quarter-section.
“I'd gladly give him a hundred thousand for that miserable little dab of timber and let him keep a couple of acres surrounding his wife's grave, if the old fool would only listen to reason,” the Colonel had complained bitterly to her. “I've offered him that price a score of times, and he tells me blandly the property isn't for sale. Well, he who laughs last laughs best, and if I can't get that quarter-section by paying more than ten times what it's worth in the open market, I'll get it some other way, if it costs me a million.”
“How?” Shirley had queried at the time.
“Never mind, my dear,” he had answered darkly. “You wouldn't understand the procedure if I told you. I'll have to run all around Robin Hood's barn and put up a deal of money, one way or another, but in the end I'll get it all back with interest—and Cardigan's Redwoods! The old man can't last forever, and what with his fool methods of doing business, he's about broke, anyhow. I expect to do business with his executor or his receiver within a year.”
Shirley, as explained in a preceding chapter, had been present the night John Cardigan, desperate and brought to bay at last, had telephoned Pennington at the latter's home, accepting Pennington's last offer for the Valley of the Giants. The cruel triumph in the Colonel's handsome face as he curtly rebuffed old Cardigan had been too apparent for the girl to mistake; recalling her conversation with him anent the impending possibility of his doing business with John Cardigan's receiver or executor, she realized now that a crisis had come in the affairs of the Cardigans, and across her vision there flashed again the vision of Bryce Cardigan's homecoming—of a tall old man with his trembling arms clasped around his boy, with grizzled cheek laid against his son's, as one who, seeking comfort through bitter years, at length had found it.