Children of the Whirlwind
“So you paint, too. What else can you do? Let's have a look.”
“It's too rotten. I'd rather let you see something else--though all my
stuff is bad.”
“You wouldn't do any little thing, would you, to brighten this tiredest
hour in the day of a tired business man,” complained Dick. “I've really
been a business man to-day, Captain. Worked like the devil--or an
angel--whichever works the harder.”
He lit a cigarette and settled with a sigh on the corner of Larry's
desk. Larry regarded him with a stranger and more contradicting
mixture of feelings than he had ever thought to contain: solicitude for
Dick--jealousy of him--and the instinct to protect Maggie. This last
seemed to Larry grotesquely absurd the instant it seethed up in him, but
there the instinct was: was Dick treating Maggie right?
“How was the show last night, Dick?”
“Punk!”
“I thought you said you were to see 'The Jest.' I've heard it's one of
the best things for years.”
“Oh, I guess the show's all right. But the company was poor. My company,
I mean. The person I wanted to see couldn't come.”
“Hope you had a supper party that made up for the disappointment,”
pursued Larry, adroitly trying to lead him on.
“I sure had that, Captain!”
Dick slid to a chair beside Larry, dropped a hand on Larry's knee, and
said in a lowered tone:
“Captain, I've recently met a new girl--and believe me, she's a
knock-out!”
“Better keep clear of those show girls, Dick.”
“Never again! The last one cured me for life. Miss Cameron--Maggie
Cameron, how's that for a name?--is no Broadway girl, Captain. She's not
even a New York girl.”
“No?”
“She's from some place out West. Father owned several big ranches. She
says that explains her crudeness. Her crude? I should say not! They
don't grow better manners right here in New York. And she's pretty, and
clever, and utterly naive about everything in New York. Though I must
say,” Dick added, “that I'm not so keen about her cousin and her uncle.
I'd met the cousin a few times the last year or two around town; he
belongs here. The two are the sort of poor stock that crops out in every
good family. They've got one merit, though: they don't try to impose on
her too much.”
“What is your Miss Cameron doing in New York?”
“Having her first look at the town before going to some resort for the
summer; perhaps taking a cottage somewhere. I say, Captain”--leaning
closer--“I wish you didn't feel you had to stick around this apartment
so tight. I'd like to take you out and introduce you to her.”
Larry could imagine the resulting scene if ever this innocently proposed
introduction were given.
“I guess that for the present I'll have to depend upon your reports,
Dick.”
“Well, you can take it from me that she's just about all right!”
It was Larry's strange instinct to protect Maggie that prompted his next
remark:
“You're not just out joy-riding, are you, Dick?”
Dick flushed. “Nothing of that sort. She's not that kind of girl.
Besides--I think it's the real thing, Captain.”
The honest look in Dick's eyes, even more than his words, quieted
Larry's fear for Maggie. Presently Dick walked out leaving Larry yet
another problem added to his life. He could not let anything happen
to Maggie. He could not let anything happen to Dick. He had to protect
each; he had to do something. Yet what could he do?
Yes, this certainly was a problem! He paced the room, another victim of
the ancient predicament of divided and antagonistic duty.
CHAPTER XIX
The night of Larry's unexpected call upon her at the Grantham, Maggie
had pulled herself together and aided by the imposing Miss Grierson had
done her best as ingenue hostess to her pseudo-cousin, Barney, and her
pseudo-uncle, Old Jimmie, and to their quarry, Dick Sherwood, whom
they were so cautiously stalking. But when Dick had gone, and when Miss
Grierson had withdrawn to permit her charge a little visit with her
relatives, Barney had been prompt with his dissatisfaction.
“What was the matter with you to-night, Maggie?” he demanded. “You
didn't play up to your usual form.”
“If you don't like the way I did it, you may get some one else,” Maggie
snapped back.
“Aw, don't get sore. If I'm stage-managing this show, I guess it's my
business to tell you how to act the part, and to tell you when you're
endangering the success of the piece by giving a poor performance.”
“Maybe you'd better get some one else to take my part right now.”
Maggie's tone and look were implacable. Barney moved uneasily. That was
the worst about Maggie: she wouldn't take advice from any one unless the
advice were a coincidence with or an enlargement of her own wishes, and
she was particularly temperish to-night. He hastened to appease her.
“I guess the best of us have our off days. It's all right
unless”--Barney hesitated, business fear and jealousy suddenly seizing
him--“unless the way you acted tonight means you don't intend to go
through with it?”
“Why shouldn't I go through with it?”
“No reason. Unless you acted as you did to-night because”--again Barney
hesitated; again jealousy prompted him on--“because you've heard in some
way from Larry Brainard. Have you heard from Larry?”
Maggie met his gaze without flinching. She would take the necessary
measures in the morning with Miss Grierson to keep that lady from
indiscreet talking.
“I have not heard from Larry, and if I had, it wouldn't be any of your
business, Barney Palmer!”
He chose to ignore the verbal slap in his face of her last phrase. “No,
I guess you haven't heard from Larry. And I guess none of us will hear
from him--not for a long time. He's certainly fixed himself for fair!”
“He sure has,” agreed Old Jimmie.
Maggie said nothing.
“Seems to me we've got this young Sherwood hooked,” said Old Jimmie, who
had been impatient during this unprofitable bickering. “Seems to me
it's time to settle just how we're going to get his dough. How about it,
Barney?”
“Plenty of time for that, Jimmie. This is a big fish, and we've got to
be absolutely sure we've got him hooked so he can't get off. We've got
to play safe here; it's worth waiting for, believe me. Besides, all the
while Maggie's getting practice.”
“Seems to me we ought to make our clean-up quick. So that--so that--”
“See here--you think you got some other swell game you want to use
Maggie in?”
Old Jimmie's shifty gaze wavered before Barney's glare.
“No. But she's my daughter, ain't she?”
“Yes. But who's running this?” Barney demanded. Thank Heavens, Old
Jimmie was one person he did not have to treat like a prima donna!
“You are.”
“Then shut up, and let me run it!”
“You might at least tell if you've decided how you're going to run it,”
persisted Old Jimmie.
“Will you shut up!” snapped Barney.
Old Jimmie said no more. And having asserted his supremacy over at least
one of the two, Barney relented and condescended to talk, lounging back
in his chair with that self-conscious grace which had helped make him a
figure of increasing note in the gayer restaurants of New York.
It did not enter into Barney's calculations, present or for the future,
to make Maggie the mistress of any man. Not that Barney was restrained
by moral considerations. The thing was just bad business. Such a woman
makes but comparatively little; and what is worse, if she chooses, she
makes it all for herself. And Barney, in his cynical wisdom of his poor
world, further knew that the average man enticed into this poor trap,
after the woman has said yes, and after the first brief freshness has
lost its bloom, becomes a tight-wad and there is little real money to be
got from him for any one.
“It's like this: once we've got this Sherwood bird safely hooked,”
expanded Barney with the air of an authority, flicking off his cigarette
ash with his best restaurant manner, “we can play the game a hundred
ways. But the marriage proposition is the best bet, and there are two
best ways of working that.”
“Which d'you think we ought to use, Barney?” inquired Old Jimmie.
But Barney went on as if the older man had not asked a question. “Both
ways depend upon Sherwood being crazy in love, and upon his coming
across with a proposal and sticking to it. The first way, after being
proposed to, Maggie must break down and confess she's married to a man
she doesn't love and who doesn't love her. This husband would probably
give her a divorce, but he's a cagy guy and is out for the coin, and
if he smelled that she wanted to remarry some one with money he would
demand a large price for her freedom. Maggie must further confess that
she really has no money, and is therefore helpless. Then Sherwood offers
to meet the terms of this brute of a husband. If Sherwood falls for this
we shove in a dummy husband who takes Sherwood's dough--and a big
bank roll it will be!--and that'll be the last Sherwood'll ever see of
Maggie.”
Old Jimmie nodded. “When it's worked right, that always brings home the
kale.”
“The only question is,” continued Barney, “can Maggie put that stuff
over? How about it, Maggie? Think you're good enough to handle a
proposition like that?”
Looking the handsome Barney straight in the eyes, Maggie for the moment
thought only of his desire to manage her and of the challenge in his
tone. Larry and the appeal he had made to her were forgotten, as was
also Dick Sherwood.
“Anything you're good enough to think up, Barney Palmer, I guess I'm
good enough to put over,” she answered coolly.
And then: “What's the other way?” she asked.
“Old stuff. Have to be a sure-enough marriage. Sherwoods are big-time
people, you know; a sister who's a regular somebody. After marriage,
family permitted to learn truth--perhaps something much worse
than truth. Family horrified. They pay Maggie a big wad for
a separation--same as so many horrified families get rid of
daughters-in-law they don't like. Which of the ways suits you best,
Maggie?”
Maggie shrugged her shoulders with indifference. It suited her present
mood to maintain her attitude of being equal to any enterprise.
“Which do you like best, Barney?” Old Jimmie asked.
“The second is safer. But then it's slower; and there would be lawyers'
fees which would eat into our profits; and then because of the publicity
we might have to wait some time before it would be safe to use Maggie
again. The first plan isn't so complicated, it's quick, and at once
we've got Maggie free to use in other operations. The first looks the
best bet to me--but, as I said, we don't have to decide yet. We can let
developments help make the actual decision for us.”
Barney did not add that a further reason for his objecting to the second
plan was that he didn't want Maggie actually tied in marriage to any
man. That was a relationship his hopes were reserving for himself.
Barney's inborn desire for acknowledged chieftainship again craved
assertion and pressed him on to say:
“You see, Maggie, how much depends on you. You've got a whale of a
chance for a beginner. I hope you take a big brace over to-night and
play up to the possibilities of your part.”
“You take care of your end, and I'll take care of mine!” was her sharp
retort.
Barney was flustered for a moment by his second failure to dominate
Maggie. “Oh, well, we'll not row,” he tried to say easily. “We
understand each other, and we're each trying to help the other fellow's
game--that's the main point.”
The two men left, Jimmie without kissing his daughter good-night. This
caused Maggie no surprise. A kiss, not the lack of it, would have been
the thing that would have excited wonder in Maggie.
Barney went away well satisfied on the whole with the manner in which
the affair was progressing, and with his management of it and of Maggie.