Children of the Whirlwind Part 32

Again she did not answer.

"Maggie, you're too good for what you're doing--it's all a terrible mistake!" he cried pa.s.sionately. Then he remembered himself, and spoke with more composure. "Oh, I know there's not much use in talking to you now--while you feel as you do about yourself--and while you feel as you do about me. But you know I love you, and want to marry you--when--" He halted.

"When?" she prompted, almost involuntarily.

"When you see things differently--and when I can go around the world a free man, not a fugitive from Barney and his gunmen and the police."

Again Maggie was silent for a moment. It was as if she were trying to press out of her mind what he had said about loving her. Truly this was, indeed, different from their previous meetings. Before, there had almost invariably been a defiant att.i.tude, a dispute, a quarrel. Now she had no desire to quarrel.

Finally she said with an effort to be that self-controlled person which she had established as her model:

"You seem to have your chance here to put over what you boasted to me about. You remember making good in a straight way."

"Yes. And I shall make good--if only they will let me alone." He paused an instant. "But I have no illusions about the present," he went on quietly. "I'm in quiet water for a time; I've got a period of safety; and I'm using this chance to put in some hard work. But presently the police and Barney and the others will learn where I am. Then I'll have all that fight over again--only the next time it'll be harder."

She was startled into a show of interest. "You think that's really going to happen?"

"It's bound to. There's no escaping it. If for no other reason, I myself won't be able to stand being penned up indefinitely. Something will happen, I don't know what, which will pull me out into the open world--and then for me the deluge!"

He made this prediction grimly. He was not a fatalist, but it had been borne in upon him recently that this thing was inescapable. As for him, when that time came, he was going to put up the best fight that was in him.

He caught the strained look which had come into Maggie's face, and it prompted him suddenly to lean toward her and say:

"Maggie, do you still think I'm a stool and a squealer?"

"I--"

She broke off. She had a surging impulse to go on and say something to Larry. A great deal. She was not conscious of what that great deal was.

She was conscious only of the impulse. There was too great a turmoil within her, begotten by the strain of her visit on Miss Sherwood and these unexpected meetings, for any motive, impulse, or decision to emerge to even a brief supremacy. And so, during this period when her brain would not operate, she let herself be swept on by the momentum of the forces which had previously determined her direction--her pride, her self-confidence, her ambition, the alliance of fortune between her and Barney and Old Jimmie.

They were sitting in this silence when footsteps again sounded on the gravel, and a shadow blotted the arbor floor.

"Excuse me, Larry," said a man's voice.

"Sure. What is it, Joe?"

Before her Maggie saw the tall, thin man in overalls, his removed broad-brimmed hat revealing his white hair, whom she had noticed a little earlier working among the flowers. He held a bunch of the choicest pickings from the abundant rose gardens, their stems bound in maple leaves as temporary protection against their thorns. He was gazing at Maggie, respectful, hungry admiration in his somber eyes.

"I thought perhaps the young lady might care for these." He 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 circ.u.mstance 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 d.i.c.k Sherwood appeared and ordered them to the veranda for tea. There were just the five of them, Miss Sherwood, Maggie, Hunt, d.i.c.k, 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. d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k. 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 acquaintances.h.i.+p.

"Isn't she simply splendid!" exclaimed Miss Sherwood when d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k?--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 d.i.c.k, 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 circ.u.mstances.

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 d.i.c.k's happy conversation.

Near Roslyn they swung off the turnpike into an unfrequented, shady road. d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k.

"I'm--I'm not so good as you think," she whispered. And then some unsuspected force within her impelled her to say: "d.i.c.k, 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. d.i.c.k'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, d.i.c.k," 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.