Children of the Whirlwind
fear that his seeing her might somehow result in an accident that would
destroy her happy ignorance. Maggie, can you conceive the tremendous
meaning to your father of what he believes he has created? And can you
conceive the tremendous difference between the dream he lives upon, and
the reality?”
She was white, staring, wilted. For once all the defiance,
self-confidence, bravado, melted out of her, and she was just an
appalled and frightened young girl.
After a moment she managed to repeat the question Larry had ignored: “Is
my real father--still in prison?”
“You'd like to see your real father?” he asked her.
“I think--I'd like to have a glimpse of him,” she breathed.
Larry, just before this, had noted Joe Ellison in his blue overalls and
wide straw hat cleaning out a bank of young dahlias a distance up the
bluff. He now took Maggie's arm and guided her in that direction.
“See that man there working among the dahlias?--the man who once brought
you a bunch of roses? Joe Ellison is his name. He's the man I've been
talking about--your father.”
He felt her quivering under his hand for a moment, and heard her breath
come in swift, spasmodic pants. He was wondering what was the effect
upon her of this climax of his revelation, when she whispered:
“Do you suppose--I can speak--to my father?”
“Of course. He likes all young women. And I told you that he and I were
close friends.”
“Then--come on.” She arose, clinging to him, and drew him after her.
Halfway to Joe she breathed: “You please say something first. Anything.”
He recognized this as the appeal of one whose faculties were reeling.
There had never been any attempt here at Cedar Crest to conceal Joe
Ellison's past, and in Larry's case there had been only such concealment
as might help his evasion of his dangers. And so Larry remarked as Joe
Ellison took his wide hat off his white hair and stood bareheaded before
them:
“Joe, Miss Cameron knows who I really am, and about my having been in
Sing Sing; and I've just told her about our having been friends there.
Also I told her about your having a daughter. It interested her and she
asked me if she couldn't talk to you, so I brought her over.”
Larry stood aside and tensely watched this meeting between father and
daughter. Joe bowed slightly, and with a dignified grace that overalls
and over fifteen years of prison could not take from one who during
his early and middle manhood had been known as the perfection of the
finished gentleman. His gray eyes warmed with appreciation of the young
figure before him, just as Larry had seen them grow bright watching the
young figures disporting in the Sound.
“It is very gracious for a young woman like you, Miss Cameron,” he said
in a voice of grave courtesy, “to be interested enough in an old man
like me to want to talk with him.”
Maggie made the supreme effort of her life to keep herself in hand.
“I wanted to talk to you because of something Mr. Brainard told me
about--about your having a daughter.”
Larry felt that this was too sacred a scene for him to intrude upon.
“Would you mind excusing me,” he said; “there are some calculations I've
got to rush out”--and he returned to the bench on which they had been
sitting and pretended to busy himself over a pocket notebook.
While Larry had been speaking and moving away, Maggie had swiftly
been appraising her father. His gray eyes were direct as against the
furtiveness of Jimmie's; his mouth had a firm kindliness as against the
wrinkled cunning of Jimmie's; his bearing was erect, self-possessed,
as against Jimmie's bent, shuffling carriage. Maggie felt no swift-born
daughter love for this stranger who was her father. The turmoil of her
discovery filled her too completely to admit a full-grown affection; but
she thrilled with the sense of the vast difference between her supposed
father and this her real father.
In the meantime her father had spoken. Joe would have been more reserved
with men or with older women; but with this girl, so much the sort of
girl he had long dreamed about, his reserve vanished without resistance,
and in its place was a desire to talk to this beautiful creature who
came out of the world which the big white house represented.
“I have a daughter, yes,” he said. “But Larry--Mr. Brainard perhaps I
should say--has likely told you all there is to tell.”
“I'd like to hear it from you, please--if you don't mind.”
“There's really not much to tell,” he said. “You know what I was and
what happened. When I went to prison my daughter was too young to
remember me--less than two years old. I didn't want her ever to be drawn
into the sort of life that had been mine, or be the sort of woman that a
girl becomes who gets into that life. And I didn't want her ever to have
the stigma, and the handicap, of her knowing and the world knowing that
her father was a convict. You can't understand it fully, Miss Cameron,
but perhaps you can understand a little how disgraced you would feel,
what a handicap it would be, if your father were a convict. I had a good
friend I could trust. So I turned my daughter over to him, to be
brought up with no knowledge of my existence, and with every reasonable
advantage that a nice girl should have. I guess that's all, Miss
Cameron.”
“This friend--what was his name?”
“Carlisle--Jimmie Carlisle. But his name could never have meant anything
to you. Besides, he's dead now.”
Maggie forced herself on. “Your plan--it turned out all right? And
you--you are happy?”
“Yes.” In the sympathetic atmosphere which this young girl's presence
created for him, Joe's emotions flowed into words more freely than ever
before in the company of a human being. Though he was answering her,
what he was really doing was rather just letting his heart use its
long-silent voice, speak its exultant dream and belief.
“Somewhere out in the world--I don't know where, and I don't want to
know--my daughter has now grown into a wholesome, splendid young woman!”
he said in a vibrant voice. Brooding in solitude so long upon his
careful plan that he believed could not fail, had made the keen Joe
Ellison less suspicious concerning it than he otherwise would have
been--perhaps had made him a bit daffy on this one subject. “I have
saved my daughter from all the grime she might have known, and which
might have soiled her, and even pulled her down if I hadn't thought
out in good time my plan to protect her. And of course I am happy!” he
exulted. “I have done the best thing that it was possible for me to
do, the thing which I wanted most to do! Instead of what she might have
been, I have as a daughter just such a nice girl as you are--just about
your own age--though, of course, she hasn't your money, your social
position, and naturally not quite the advantages you have had. Of course
I'm happy!”
“You're--you're sure she's all that?”
Again his words were as much a statement aloud to himself of his
constant dream as they were a direct answer to Maggie. “Of course! There
was enough money--the plan was in the hands of a friend who knew how
to handle such a thing--she's never known anything but the very best
surroundings--and until she was fourteen I had regular reports on how
wonderfully she was progressing. You see my friend had had her legally
adopted by a splendid family, so there's no doubt about everything being
for the best.”
“And you”--Maggie drove herself on--“don't you ever want to see her?”
“Of course I do. But at the very beginning I fixed things so I could
not; so that I would not even know where she is. Removed temptation from
myself, you see. Don't you see the possible results if I should try to
see her? Something might happen that would bring out the truth, and that
would ruin her happiness, her career. Don't you see?”
His gray eyes, bright with his great dream, were fixed intently upon
Maggie; and yet she felt that they were gazing far beyond her at some
other girl... at his girl.
“I--I--” she gulped and swayed and would have fallen if he had not been
quick to catch her arm.
“You are sick, Miss?” he asked anxiously.
“I--I have been,” she stammered, trying to regain control of her
faculties. “It's--it's that--and my not eating--and standing in this
hot sun. Thank you very much for what you've told me. I'd--I'd better be
getting back.”
“I'll help you.” And very gently, with a firm hand under one arm, he
escorted her to the bench where Larry sat scribbling nothings. He then
raised his hat and returned to his dahlias.
“Well?” queried Larry when they were alone.
“I can't stand it to stay here and talk to these people,” she replied
in an agonized whisper. “I must get away from here quick, so that I can
think.”
“May I come with you?”
“No, Larry--I must be alone. Please, Larry, please get into the house,
and manage to fake a telephone message for me, calling me back to New
York at once.”
“All right.” And Larry hurried away. She sat, pale, breathing rapidly,
her whole being clenched, staring fixedly out at the Sound. Five minutes
later Larry was back.
“It's all arranged, Maggie. I've told the people; they're sorry you've
got to go. And Dick is getting his car ready.”
She turned her eyes upon him. He had never seen in them such a look.
They were feverish, with a dazed, affrighted horror. She clutched his
arm.
“You must promise never to tell my father about me!”
“I won't. Unless I have to.”
“But you must not! Never!” she cried desperately. “He thinks I'm--Oh,
don't you understand? If he were to learn what I really am, it would
kill him. He must keep his dream. For his sake he must never find out,
he must keep on thinking of me just the same. Now, you understand?”
Larry slowly nodded.
Her next words were dully vibrant with stricken awe. “And it means that
I can never have him for my father! Never! And I think--I'd--I'd like
him for a father! Don't you see?”
Again Larry nodded. In this entirely new phase of her, a white-faced,
stricken, shivering girl, Larry felt a poignant sympathy for her the
like of which had never tingled through him in her conquering moods.
Indeed Maggie's situation was opening out into great human problems such
as neither he nor any one else had ever foreseen!
“There comes Dick,” she whispered. “I must do my best to hold myself
together. Good-bye, Larry.”
A minute later, Larry just behind her, she was crossing the lawn on
Dick's arm, explaining her weakness and pallor by the sudden dizziness
which had come upon her in consequence of not eating and of being in the
hot sun.
CHAPTER XXXI
Larry was far more deeply moved this time when Maggie drove away
with Dick than on that former occasion when he had tried to play with
adroitness upon her psychological reactions. Now he knew that her very
world was shaken; that her soul was stunned and reeling; that she was
fighting with all her strength for a brief outward composure.
He had loved her for months, but he had never so loved her as in this
hour when all her artificial defenses had been battered down and she had
been just a bewildered, agonized girl, with just the emotions and
first thoughts that any other normal girl would have had under the same
circumstances. His great desire had been to be with her, to comfort her,
help her; but he realized that she had been correct in her instinct to
be by herself for a while, to try to comprehend it all, to try to think
her way out.
When Maggie was out of sight he excused himself from having tea, left
Hunt and Miss Sherwood upon the veranda, and sought his study. But
though he had neglected his work the whole day, he now gave it no
attention. He sat at his desk and thought of Maggie: tried to think
of what she was going to do. Her situation was so complicated with big