Children of the Whirlwind
to do anything he likes to his own daughter. Give it to her proper if
she don't come across with the truth!”
Jimmie stepped closer to her and bared his yellow teeth. “I haven't
given you a basting since you were fifteen--but I'll paste you one right
in the mouth if you don't talk straight talk!”
“You hear that!” Barney gritted at her. He believed there was justice in
his wrath--as indeed there was, of a sort. “Think what Jimmie and I've
put into this, in time and hard coin! We've given you your chance, we've
made you! And then, after hard work and waiting and our spending so
much, and everything comes out exactly as we figured, you go and throw
us down--not just yourself, but us and our rights! Now you talk straight
stuff! Tell us, why did you refuse Sherwood when he proposed? And why
did you tell me that lie about his not proposing?”
Maggie realized she was in a desperate plight, with these two inflamed
gazes upon her. Never had she felt so little of a daughter's liking for
Old Jimmie as now when she looked into his lean, harsh, yellow-fanged
face. And she had no illusions about Barney. He might love her, as she
knew he did; but that would not be a check upon his ruthlessness if he
thought himself balked or betrayed.
Just then her telephone began to ring. She started to move toward it,
but Barney's grip checked her short.
“You're going to answer me--not any damned telephone! Let it ring!”
The bell rang for a minute or two before it stilled its shrill clamor.
Its ringing was in a way a brief respite to Maggie, for it gave her
additional time to consider what should be her course. She realized
that she dared not let Barney believe at this moment that she had turned
against him. Again she fell back upon her cool, self-confident manner.
“You want to know why? The answer is simple enough. I thought I might
try out an improvement of our plan--something that might suit me
better.”
“What's that?” Barney harshly demanded.
“Since Miss Sherwood fell for me so easy, it struck me that she'd be
pretty sure to fall for me if I told her the whole truth about myself.
That is, everything except our scheme to play Dick for a sucker.”
“What're you driving at?”
“Don't you see? If she forgave me being what I am, and I rather think
she would, and with Dick liking me as he does--why, it struck me as the
best thing for yours truly to marry Dick for keeps.”
“What?” Though Barney's voice was low, it had the effect of a startled
and savage roar. “And chuck us over-board?”
“Not at all. If I married Dick for keeps, I intended to pay you a lump
sum, or else a regular amount each year.”
“No, you don't!” Barney cried in the same muffled roar.
“Perhaps not--I haven't decided,” Maggie said evenly. “I've merely been
telling you, as you requested me, why I did as I did. I refused Dick,
and lied to you, so that I might have more time to think over what I
really wanted to do.”
Instinctively she had counted on rousing Barney's jealousy in order to
throw him off the track of her real thoughts. She succeeded.
“I can tell you what you're going to do!” Barney flung at her with
fierce mastery. “You're not going to put over a sure-enough marriage
with any Dick Sherwood! When there's that kind of a marriage, I'm going
to be the man! And you're going to go right straight ahead with our old
plan! Dick'll propose again if you give him half a chance. And when he
does, you say 'yes'! Understand? That's what you're going to do!”
There was no safety in openly defying Barney. And as a matter of fact
what he had ordered was what, in the shifting currents of her thoughts,
the steady momentum of her old ambitions and purposes had been pushing
her toward. So she said, in her even voice:
“You waste such a lot of your good energy, Barney, by exploding when
there's nothing to blow up. That's exactly what I'd decided to do. Miss
Sherwood has asked me out to Cedar Crest to-morrow afternoon, and I'm
going.”
Barney let go the hold he had kept upon her wrists, and the dark look
slowly lifted from his face. “Why didn't you tell a fellow this at
first?” he half grumbled. Then with a grim enthusiasm: “And when you
come back, you're going to tell us it's all settled!”
“Of course--if he asks me. And now suppose you two go away. You've given
me a headache, and I want to rest.”
“We'll go,” said Barney. “But there may be some more points about this
that we may want to talk over a little later to-night. So better get all
the rest you can.”
But when they had gone and left her to the silence of her pretentious
and characterless suite, Maggie did not rest. She had made up her mind;
she was going to do as she had said. But there was still that same
turmoil within her.
Again she thought of Larry. But she would not admit to herself that her
real motive for suddenly deciding to go to Cedar Crest on the morrow was
the chance of seeing him.
CHAPTER XXVI
During all these days Larry waited for news of the result of the
experiment in psychology which meant so much to his life. He had not
expected to hear directly from Maggie; but he had counted upon learning
at once from Dick, if not by words, then either from eloquent dejection
which would proclaim Dick's refusal (and Larry's success) or from an
ebullient joy which would proclaim that Maggie had accepted him. But
Dick's sober but not unhappy behavior announced neither of these two
to Larry; and the matter was too personal, altogether too delicate, to
permit Larry to ask Dick the result, however subtly he might ask it.
So Larry could only wait--and wonder. The truth did not occur to Larry;
he did not see that there might be another alternative to the two
possible reactions he had calculated upon. He did not bear in mind that
Maggie's youthful obstinacy, her belief in herself and her ways, were
too solid a structure to yield at once to one moral shock, however
wisely planned and however strong. He did not at this time hold in mind
that any real change in so decided a character as Maggie, if change
there was to be, would be preceded and accompanied by a turbulent period
in which she would hardly know who she was, or where she was, or what
she was going to do--and that at the end of such a period there might be
no change at all.
Inasmuch as just then Maggie was his major interest, it seemed to Larry
in his safe seclusion that he was merely marking time, and marking time
with feet that were frantically impatient. He felt he could not stand
much longer his own inactivity and his ignorance of what Maggie was
doing and what was happening to her. He could not remain in this
sanctuary pulling strings, and very long and fragile strings, and
strings which might be the mistaken ones, for any much greater period.
He felt that he simply had to walk out of this splendid safety, back
into the dangers from which he had fled, where he might at least have
the possible advantage of being in the very midst of Maggie's affairs
and fight for her more openly and have a more direct influence upon her.
He knew that, sooner or later, he was going to throw caution aside
and appear suddenly among his enemies, unless something of a definite
character developed. But for these slow, irritating days he held himself
in check with difficulty, hoping that things might come to him, that he
would not have to go forth to them.
He had brought Hunt's portrait of Maggie to Cedar Crest in the bottom of
his trunk, and kept it locked in his chiffonier. During these days,
more frequently than before, he would take out the portrait and in
the security of his locked room would gaze long at that keen-visioned
portrayal of her many characters. No doubt of it: there was a possible
splendid woman there! And no doubt of it: he loved that woman utterly!
During these days of his ignorance, while Maggie was struggling in the
darkness of her unexplored being, Larry drove himself grimly at the
business to which under happier circumstances he would have gone under
the irresistible suasion of pure joy. One afternoon he presented to
Miss Sherwood an outline for his growing plan for the development of
the Sherwood properties on the basis of good homes at fair rentals. He
discovered that, in spite of her generous giving, she had much the same
attitude toward Charity as his own: that the only sound Charity, except
for those temporarily or permanently handicapped or disabled, was the
giving of honest values for honest returns--and that was not Charity at
all.
The project of reforming the shiftless character of the Sherwood
properties, and of relieving even in a small degree New York's housing
congestion, appealed at once to her imagination and her sensible
idealism.
“A splendid plan!” she exclaimed, regarding Larry with those wise,
humorous eyes of hers, which were now very serious and penetrating. “You
have been working much harder than I had thought. And if you will pardon
my saying it, you have more of the soundly humane vision which big
business enterprise should have than I had thought.”
“Thank you!” said Larry.
“That's a splendid dream,” she continued; “but it will take hard work to
translate that dream into a reality. We shall need architects, builders,
a heavy initial expense, time--and a more modern and alert management.”
“Yes, Miss Sherwood.”
She did not speak for a moment. Her penetrating eyes, which had been
fixed on him in close thought, were yet more penetrating. Finally she
said:
“That's a big thing, a useful thing. The present agents wish to be
relieved of our affairs as soon as I can make arrangements--and I'd
like nothing better than for Dick to drop what he's doing and get into
something constructive and useful like this. But Dick cannot do it
alone; he's too unsettled, and too inexperienced to cope with some of
the sharper business practices.”
She paused again, still regarding him with those keen eyes, which seemed
to be weighing him. Finally she said, almost abruptly:
“Will you take charge of this with Dick? He likes you and respects
your judgment; I'm sure you'd help steady him down. Of course you lack
practical experience, but you can take in a practical man who will
supply this element. Practical experience is one of the commonest
articles on the market; vision and initiative are among the rarest--and
you have them. What do you say?”
Larry could not say anything at once. The suddenness of her offer, the
largeness of his opportunity, bewildered him for the moment. And his
bewilderment was added to by his swift realization of quite another
element involved in her frank proposition. He was now engaged in the
enterprise of foisting a bogus article, Maggie, upon this woman who was
offering him her complete confidence--an enterprise of most questionable
ethics and very dubious issue. If he accepted her offer, and the result
of this enterprise were disaster, what would Miss Sherwood then think of
him?
He took refuge in evasion. “I'm not going to try to tell you how much
I appreciate your proposition, Miss Sherwood. But do you mind if I hold
back my answer for the present and think it over? Anyhow, to do all
that is required I must be able to work in the open--and I can't do
that until I get free of my entanglements with the police and my old
acquaintances.”
Thus it was agreed upon. Miss Sherwood turned to another subject. The
pre-public show of Hunt's pictures had opened the previous day.
“When you were in the city yesterday, did you get in to see Mr. Hunt's
exhibition?”
“No,” he answered. “Although I wanted to. But you know I've already seen
all of Mr. Hunt's pictures that Mr. Graham has in his gallery. How was
the opening?”
“Crowded with guests. And since they had been told that the pictures
were unusual and good, of course the people were enthusiastic.”