Children of the Whirlwind, Leroy Scott [read full novel txt] 📗

held out the roses to her. And then quickly, to forestall refusal: "I cut out more than we can use for the house. And I'd like to have you have them."

"Thank you," and Maggie took the flowers.

For an instant their eyes held. In every outward circumstance the event was a commonplace - this meeting of father and daughter, not knowing each other. It was hardly more than a commonplace to Maggie: just a tall, white-haired gardener respectfully offering her roses. And it was hardly more to Joe Ellison: just a tribute evoked by his hungry interest in every well-seeming girl of the approximate age of his daughter.

At the moment's end Joe Ellison had bowed and started back for his flower beds. "Who is that man?" asked Maggie, gazing after him. "I never saw such eyes."

"We used to be pals in Sing Sing," Larry replied. He went on to give briefly some of the details of Joe Ellison's story, never dreaming how he and Maggie were entangled in that story, nor how they were to be involved in its untanglement. Perhaps they were fortunate in this ignorance. Within the boundaries of what they did know life already held enough of problems and complications.

Larry had just finished his condensed history when Dick Sherwood appeared and ordered them to the veranda for tea. There were just the five of them, Miss Sherwood, Maggie, Hunt, Dick, and Larry. Miss Sherwood was as gracious as before, and she seemingly took Maggie's strained manner and occasional confusions as further proof of her genuineness. Dick beamed at the impression she was making upon his sister.

As for Maggie, she was living through the climax of that afternoon's strain. And she dared not show it. She forced herself to do her best acting, sipping her tea with a steady hand. And what made her situation harder was that two of the party, Larry and Hunt, were treating her with the charmed deference they might accord a charming stranger, when a word from either of them might destroy the fragile edifice of her deception.

At last it was over, and all was ready for her to start back to town with Dick. When Miss Sherwood kissed her and warmly begged her to come again soon, the very last of her control seemed to be slipping from her - but she held on. Larry and Hunt she managed to say goodbye to in the manner of her new acquaintanceship.

"Isn't she simply splendid!" exclaimed Miss Sherwood when Dick had stepped into the car and the two had started away.

Larry pretended not to have heard. He felt precariously guilty toward this woman who had befriended him. The next instant he had forgotten Miss Sherwood and his pulsing thoughts were all on Maggie in that speeding car. She had been profoundly shaken by that afternoon's experience, this much he knew. But what was going to be the real effect upon her of his carefully thought-out design? Was it going to be such as to save her and Dick? - and eventually win her for himself?

In the presence of Miss Sherwood Larry tried to behave as if nothing had happened more than the pleasant interruption of an informal tea: but beneath that calm all his senses were waiting breathless, so to speak, for news of what had happened within Maggie, and what might be happening to her.


CHAPTER XXV


When Maggie sped away from Cedar Crest in the low seat of the roadster beside the happy Dick, she felt herself more of a criminal than at any time in her life, and a criminal that miraculously was making her escape out of an inescapable set of circumstances.

Beyond her relief at this escape she did not know these first few minutes what she thought or felt. Too much had happened, and what had happened had all turned out so differently from what she had expected, for her to set in orderly array this chaos of reactions within herself and read the meaning of that afternoon's visit. She managed, with a great effort, to keep under control the outer extremities of her senses, and thus respond with the correct "yes" or "no" or "indeed" when some response from her was required by Dick's happy conversation.

Near Roslyn they swung off the turnpike into an unfrequented, shady road. Dick steered to one side beneath a locust-tree and silenced the motor.

"Why are you stopping?" she asked in sudden alarm.

"So we can talk without a piece of impertinent machinery roaring interruptions at us," replied Dick with forced lightness. And then in a voice he could not make light: "I want to talk to you about - about my sister. Isn't she splendid?"

"She is!" There was no wavering of her thoughts as Maggie emphatically said this.

"I'm mighty glad you like her. She certainly liked you. She's all the family I've got, and since you two hit it off so well together I hope - I hope, Maggie - "

And then Dick plunged into it, stammeringly, but earnestly. He told her how much he loved her, in old phrases that his boyish ardor made vibrantly new. He loved her! And if she would marry him, her influence would make him take the brace all his friends had urged upon him. She'd make him a man! And she could see how pleased it would make his sister. And he would do his best to make Maggie happy - his very best!

The young super-adventuress - she herself had mentally used the word "adventuress" in thinking of herself, as being more genteel and mentally aristocratic than the cruder words by which Barney and Old Jimmie and their kind designated a woman accomplice - this young super- adventuress, who had schemed all this so adroitly, and worked toward it with the best of her brain and her conscious charm, was seized with new panic as she listened to the eager torrent of his imploring words, as she gazed into the quivering earnestness of his frank, blue-eyed face. She wished she could get out of the machine and run away or sink through the floor-boards of the car. For she really liked Dick.

"I'm - I'm not so good as you think," she whispered. And then some unsuspected force within her impelled her to say: "Dick, if you knew the truth - "

He caught her shoulders. "I know all the truth about you I want to know! You're wonderful, and I love you! Will you marry me? Answer that. That's all I want to know!"

He had checked the confession that impulsively had surged toward her lips. Silent, her eyes wide, her breath coming sharply, she sat gazing at him. . . . And then from out the portion of her brain where were stored her purposes, and the momentum of her pride and determination, there flashed the realization that she had won! The thing that Barney and Old Jimmie had prepared and she had so skillfully worked toward, was at last achieved! She had only to say "yes," and either of those two plans which Barney had outlined could at once be put in operation
- and there could be no doubt of the swift success of either. Dick's eager, trusting face was guarantee that there would come no obstruction from him.

She felt that in some strange way she had been caught in a trap. Yes, what they had worked for, they had won! And yet, in this moment of winning, as elements of her vast dizziness, Maggie felt sick and ashamed - felt a frenzied desire to run away from the whole affair. For Maggie, cynical, all-confident, and eighteen, was proving really a very poor adventuress.

"Please, Maggie" - his imploring voice broke in upon her - "won't you answer me? You like me, don't you? - you'll marry me, won't you?"

"I like you, Dick," she choked out - and it was some slight comfort to her to be telling this much of the truth - "but - but I can't marry you."

"Maggie!" It was a cry of surprised pain, and the pain in his voice shot acutely into her. "From the way you acted toward me - I thought - I hoped - " He sharply halted the accusation which had risen to his lips. "I'm not going to take that answer as final, Maggie," he said doggedly. "I'm going to give you more time to think it over - more time for me to try. Then I'll ask you again."

That which prompted Maggie's response was a mixture of impulses: the desire, and this offered opportunity, to escape; and a faint reassertion of the momentum of her purpose. For with one such as Maggie, the set purposes may be seemingly overwhelmed, but death comes hard.

"All right," she breathed rapidly. "Only please get me back as quickly as you can. I'm to have dinner with my - my cousin, and I'll be very late."

Dick drove her into the city in almost unbroken silence and left her at the great doors of the Grantham, abustle with a dozen lackeys in purple livery. She stood a moment and watched him drive away. He really was a nice boy - Dick.

As she shot up the elevator, she thought of a hitherto forgotten element of that afternoon's bewildering situation. Barney Palmer! And Barney was, she knew, now up in her sitting-room, impatiently waiting for her report of what he had good reason to believe would prove a successful experience. If she told the truth - that Dick had proposed, just as they had planned for him to do - and she had refused him - why, Barney - !

She seemed caught on every side!

Maggie got into her suite by way of her bedroom. She wanted time to gather her wits for meeting Barney. When Miss Grierson told her that her cousin was still waiting to take her to dinner, she requested her companion to inform Barney that she would be in as soon as she had dressed. She wasted all the time she legitimately could in changing into a dinner-gown, and when at length she stepped into her sitting- room she was to Barney's eye the same cool Maggie as always.

Barney rose as she entered. He was in smart dinner jacket; these days Barney was wearing the smartest of everything that money could secure. There was a shadow of impatience on his face, but it was instantly dissipated by Maggie's self-composed, direct-eyed beauty.

"How'd you come out with Miss Sherwood?" he whispered eagerly.

"Well enough for her to kiss me good-bye, and beg me to come again."

"I've got to hand it to you, Maggie! You're sure some swell actress - you've sure got class!" His dark eyes gleamed on her with half a dozen pleasures: admiration of what she was in herself - admiration of what she had just achieved - anticipation of results, many results - anticipation of what she was later to mean to him in a personal way. "If you can put it over on a swell like Miss Sherwood, you can put it over on any one!" He exulted. "As soon as we clean up this job in hand, we'll move on to one big thing after another!"

And then out came the question Maggie had been bracing herself for: "How about Dick Sherwood? Did he finally come across with that proposal?"

"No," Maggie answered steadily.

"No? Why not?" exclaimed Barney sharply. "I thought that was all that was holding him back - waiting for his sister to look you over and give you