Children of the Whirlwind
Could Larry have foreseen the very real misery--for any doubt of her
own qualities, any fear of her ability to carry herself well in any
situation, are among the most acute of a proud woman's miseries--which
for some twenty-four hours was brought upon Maggie by the well-meant
intrigue of which he was pulling the hidden strings, he might, because
of his love for Maggie, have discarded his design even while he was
creating it, and have sought a measure pregnant with less distress. But
perhaps it was just as well that Larry did not know. Perhaps, even, it
was just as well that he did not know what his grandmother knew.
Maggie's pride would not let her evade the risk; and her instinct
for self-preservation dictated that she should reduce the risk to its
minimum. So she wrote her acceptance--Miss Grierson attended to the
phrasing of her note--but expressed her regret that she would be able to
come only for the tea-hour. Drinking tea must be much the same, reasoned
Maggie, whether it be drunk in a smart hotel or in a smart country home.
Maggie's native shrewdness suggested her simplest summer gown as likely
to have committed the fewest errors, and the invaluable stupidity of
Miss Grierson aided her toward correctness if not originality. When
Dick came he was delighted with her appearance. On the way out he
was ebulliently excited in his talk. Maggie averaged a fair degree of
sensibility in her responses, though only her ears heard him. She was
far more excited than he, and every moment her excitement mounted, for
every moment she was speeding nearer the greatest ordeal of her life.
When at length they curved through the lawns of satin smoothness and
Dick slowed down the car before the long white house, splendid in its
simplicity, Maggie's excitement had added unto it a palpitant, chilling
awe. And unto this was added consternation when, as they mounted the
steps, Miss Sherwood smilingly crossed the piazza and welcomed her
without waiting for an introduction. Maggie mumbled some reply; she
later could not remember what it was. Indeed she never had met such a
woman: so finished, so gracious, so unaffected, with a sparkle of humor
in her brown eyes; and the rich plainness of her white linen frock
made Maggie conscious that her own supposed simplicity was cheap and
ostentatious. If Miss Sherwood had received her with hostility, doubt,
or even chilled civility, the situation would have been easier; the
aroused Maggie would then have made use of her own great endowment of
hauteur and self-esteem. But to be received with this frank cordiality,
on a basis of a equality with this finished woman--that left Maggie for
the moment without arms. She had, in her high moments, believed herself
an adventuress whose poise and plans nothing could unbalance. Now she
found herself suddenly just a young girl of eighteen who didn't know
what to do.
Had Maggie but known it that sudden unconscious confusion, which seemed
to betray her, was really more effective for her purpose than would
have been the best of conscious acting. It established her at once as an
unstagey ingenue--simple, unspoiled, unacquainted with the formulas and
formalities of the world.
Miss Sherwood, in her easy possession of the situation, banished Dick
with “Run away for a while, Dick, and give us two women a chance to get
acquainted.” She had caught Maggie's embarrassment, and led her to
a corner of the veranda which looked down upon the gardens and the
glistering Sound. She spoke of the impersonal beauties spread before
their vision, until she judged that Maggie's first flutter had abated;
then she led the way to wicker chairs beside a table where obviously tea
was to be spread.
Miss Sherwood accepted Maggie for exactly what she seemed to be; and
presently she was saying in a low voice, with her smiling, unoffending
directness:
“Excuse the liberty of an older woman, Miss Cameron--but I don't wonder
that Dick likes you. You see, he's told me.”
If Maggie had been at loss for her cue before, she had it now. It was
unpretentiousness.
“But, Miss Sherwood--I'm so crude,” she faltered, acting her best. “Out
West I never had any chances to learn. Not any chances like your Eastern
girls.”
“That's no difference, my dear. You are a nice, simple girl--that's what
counts!”
“Thank you,” said Maggie.
“So few of our rich girls of the East know what it is to be simple,”
continued Miss Sherwood. “Too many are all affectation, and pose, and
forwardness. At twenty they know all there is to be known, they are
blasees--cynical--ready for divorce before they are ready for marriage.
By contrast you are so wholesome, so refreshing.”
“Thank you,” Maggie again murmured.
And as the two women sat there, sprung from the extremes of life, but
for the moment on the level of equals, and as the older talked on, there
grew up in Maggie two violently contradictory emotions. One was triumph.
She had won out here, just as she had said she would win out; and won
out with what Barney had declared to be the most difficult person to get
the better of, a finished woman of the world. Indeed, that was triumph!
The other emotion she did not understand so well. And just then
she could not analyze it. It was an unexpected dismay--a vague but
permeating sickness--a dazed sense that she was being carried by
unfamiliar forces toward she knew not what.
She held fast to her sense of triumph. That was the more apprehendable
and positive; triumph was what she had set forth to win. This sense of
triumph was at its highest, and she was resting in its elating security,
when a car stopped before the house and a large man got out and started
up the steps. From the first moment there was something familiar to
Maggie in his carriage, but not till Miss Sherwood, who had risen and
crossed toward him, greeted him as “Mr. Hunt,” did Maggie recognize the
well-dressed visitor as the shabby, boisterous painter whom she had last
seen down at the Duchess's.
Panic seized upon her. Miss Sherwood was leading him toward where she
sat and his first clear sight of her would mean the end. There was
no possible escape; she could only await her fate. And when she was
denounced as a fraud, and her glittering victory was gone, she could
only take herself away with as much of the defiance of admitted defeat
as she could assume--and that wouldn't be much.
She gazed up at Hunt, whitely, awaiting extermination. Miss Sherwood's
voice came to her from an infinite distance, introducing them. Hunt
bowed, with a formally polite smile, and said formally, “I'm very glad
to meet you, Miss Cameron.”
Not till he and Miss Sherwood were seated and chatting did Maggie
realize the fullness of the astounding fact that he had not recognized
her. This was far more upsetting to her than would have been recognition
and exposure; she had been all braced for that, but not for what had
actually happened. She was certain he must have known her; nothing had
really changed about her except her dress, and only a few weeks had
passed since he had been seeing her daily down at the Duchess's,
and since she had been his model, and he had studied every line and
expression of her face with those sharp painter's eyes of his.
And so as the two chatted, she putting in a stumbling phrase when they
turned to her, Maggie Carlisle, Maggie Cameron, Maggie Ellison, that
gallant and all-confident adventuress who till the present had never
admitted herself seriously disturbed by a problem, sat limply in her
chair, a very young girl, indeed, and wondered how this thing could
possibly be.
CHAPTER XXIV
Presently Miss Sherwood said something about tea, excused herself, and
disappeared within the house. Maggie saw that Hunt watched Miss Sherwood
till she was safely within doors; then she was aware that he was gazing
steadily at her; then she saw him execute a slow, solemn wink.
Maggie almost sprang from her chair.
“Shall we take a little stroll, Miss Cameron?” Hunt asked. “I think it
will be some time before Miss Sherwood will want us for tea.”
“Yes--thank you,” Maggie stammered.
Hunt led her down a walk of white gravel to where a circle of Hiawatha
roses were trained into a graceful mosque, now daintily glorious with
its solid covering of yellow-hearted red blooms. Within this retreat was
a rustic bench, and on this Hunt seated her and took a place beside her.
He looked her over with the cool, direct, studious eyes which reminded
her of his gaze when he had been painting her.
“Well, Maggie,” he finally commented, “you certainly look the part you
picked out for yourself, and you seem to be putting it over. Always had
an idea you could handle something big if you went after it. How d'you
like the life, being a swell lady crook?”
She had hardly heard his banter. She needed to ask him no questions
about his presence here; his ease of bearing had conveyed to her
unconsciously from the first instant that her previous half-contemptuous
estimate of him had been altogether wrong and that he was now in his
natural element. Her first question went straight to the cause of her
amazement.
“Didn't you recognize me when you first saw me with Miss Sherwood?”
“Yes.”
“Weren't you surprised?”
“Nope,” he answered with deliberate monosyllabioness.
“Why not?”
“I'd been wised up that I'd be likely to meet you--and here.”
“Here! By whom?”
“By advice of counsel I must decline to answer.”
“Why didn't you tell Miss Sherwood who I am and show me up?”
“Because I'd been requested not to tell.”
“Requested by whom?”
“Maggie,” he drawled, “you seem to be making a go of this lady crook
business--but I think you might have been even more of a shining light
as a criminal cross-examiner. However, I refuse to be cross-examined
further. By the way,” he drawled on, “how goes it with those dear souls,
Barney and Old Jimmie?”
She ignored his question.
“Please! Who asked you not to tell?”
There was a sudden glint of good-humored malice in his eyes. “Mind if I
smoke?”
“No.”
He drew out a silver cigarette case and opened it. “Empty!” he
exclaimed. “Excuse me while I get something from the house to smoke.
I'll be right back.”
Without waiting for her permission he stepped out of the arbor and she
heard his footsteps crunching up the gravel path. Maggie waited his
return in pulsing suspense. Her situation had been developing beyond
anything she had ever dreamed of; she was aquiver as to what might
happen next. So absorbed was she in her chaos of feeling and thoughts
that she did not even hear the humble symphony of the hundreds of bees
drawing their treasure from the golden hearts of the roses; and did
not see, across the path a score of yards away, the tall figure of Joe
Ellison among the rosebushes, pruning-shears in hand, with which he
had been cutting out dead blossoms, gazing at her with that hungry,
admiring, speculative look with which he had regarded the young women
upon the beach.
Presently she heard Hunt's footsteps coming down the path. Then she
detected a second pair. Dick accompanying him, she thought. And then
Hunt appeared before her, and was saying in his big voice: “Miss
Cameron, permit me to present my friend, Mr. Brandon.” And then he added
in a lowered voice, grinning with the impish delight of an overgrown boy
who is playing a trick: “Thought I'd better go through the motions of
introducing you people, so it would look as if you'd just met for the
first time.” And with that he was gone.
Maggie had risen galvanically. For the moment she could only stare. Then
she got out his name.
“Larry!” she whispered. “You here?”
“Yes.”
Astounded as she was, she had caught instantly the total lack of
amazement on Larry's part.
“You're--you're not surprised to see me?”