Children of the Whirlwind
“No,” he said evenly. “I knew you were here. And before that I knew you
were coming.”
That was almost too much for Maggie. Hunt had known and Larry had known;
both were people belonging to her old life, both the last people
she expected to meet in such circumstances. She could only stare at
him--entirely taken aback by this meeting.
And indeed it was a strangely different meeting from the last time she
had seen him, at the Grantham; strangely different from those earlier
meetings down at the Duchess's when both had been grubs as yet
unmetamorphosized. Now standing in the arbor they looked a pair of
weekend guests, in keeping with the place. For, as Maggie had noted,
Larry in his well-cut flannels was as greatly transformed as Hunt.
It was Larry who ended the silence. “Shall we sit down?”
She mechanically sank to the bench, still staring at him.
“What are you doing here?” she managed to breathe.
“I belong here.”
“Belong here?”
“I work here,” he explained. “I'm called 'Mr. Brandon,' but Miss
Sherwood knows exactly who I am and what I've been.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Since that night when Barney and Old Jimmie took you away to begin your
new career--the same night that I ran away from those gunmen who thought
I was a squealer, and from Casey and Gavegan.”
“And all the while that Barney and my father and the police have thought
you hiding some place in the West, you've been with the Sherwoods?”
“Yes. And I've got to remain in hiding until something happens that will
clear me. If the police or Barney and his friends learn where I am--you
can guess what will happen.”
She nodded.
“Hunt got me here,” he went on to explain. “I'm assisting in trying to
get the Sherwood business affairs in better shape. I might as well tell
you, Maggie,” he added quietly, “that Dick Sherwood is my very good
friend.”
“Dick Sherwood!” she breathed.
“And I might as well tell you,” he went on, “that since that night at
the Grantham when I heard his voice, I've known that Dick is the sucker
you and Barney and Old Jimmie are trying to trim.”
She half rose, and her voice sounded sharply: “Then you've got me caught
in a trap! You've told them about me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Not so loud, or we may attract attention,” he warned her. “I haven't
told because you had your chance to give me away to Barney that night at
the Grantham. And you didn't give me away.”
She sank slowly back to the bench. “Is that your only reason?”
“No,” he answered truthfully. “Exposing you would merely mean that you'd
feel harder toward me--and harder toward every one else. I don't want
that.”
She pondered this a moment. “Then--you're not going to tell?”
He shook his head. “I don't expect to. I want you to be free to decide
what you're going to do--though I hope you'll decide not to go through
with this thing you're doing.”
She made no response. Larry had spoken with control until now, but his
next words burst from him.
“Don't you see what a situation it's put me in, Maggie--trying to play
square with my friends, the Sherwoods, and trying to play square with
you?”
Again she did not answer.
“Maggie, you're too good for what you're doing--it's all a terrible
mistake!” he cried passionately. 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 attitude, 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 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.