After Larry's many days and nights of futile searching of his brain for a plan that would accord with his fundamental idea for awakening the unguessed other self of Maggie, the plan, which finally came to him complete in all its details in a single moment, was so simple and obvious that he marveled it could have been plainly before his eyes all this while without his ever seeing it. Of course the plan was dangerous and of doubtful issue. It had to be so, because it involved the reactions of strong-tempered persons as yet unacquainted who would have no foreknowledge of the design behind their new relationship; and because its success or failure, which might also mean his own complete failure, the complete loss of all he had thus far gained, depended largely upon the twist of events which he could not foresee and therefore could not guide.
Briefly, his plan was so to manage as to have Maggie received in the Sherwood household as a guest, to have her receive the frank, unquestioning hospitality (and perhaps friendship) of such a gracious, highly placed, unpretentious woman as Miss Sherwood, so distinctly a native of, and not an immigrant to, the great world. To be received as a friend by those against whom she plotted, to have the generous, unsuspecting friendship of Miss Sherwood—if anything just then had a chance to open the blinded Maggie's eyes to the evil and error of what she was engaged upon, if anything had a chance to appeal to the finer things he believed to exist unrecognized or suppressed in Maggie, this was that thing.
And best part of this plan, its effect would be only within Maggie's self. No one need know that anything had happened. There would be no exposure, no humiliation.
Of course there was the great question of how to get Miss Sherwood to invite Maggie; and whether indeed Miss Sherwood would invite her at all. And there was the further question, the invitation being sent, of whether Maggie would accept.
Larry decided to manipulate his design through Dick Sherwood. Late that afternoon, when Dick, just returned from the city, dropped into, as was his before-dinner custom, the office-study which had been set aside for Larry's use, Larry, after an adroit approach to his subject, continued:
“And since I've been wished on you as a sort of step-uncle, there's something I'd like to suggest—if I don't seem to be fairly jimmying my way into your affairs.”
“Door's unlocked and wide open, Captain,” said Dick. “Walk right in and take the best chair.”
“Thanks. Remember telling me about a young woman you recently met? A Miss Maggie—Maggie—”
“Miss Cameron,” Dick prompted. “Of course I remember.”
“And remember your telling me that this time it's the real thing?”
“And it IS the real thing!”
“You haven't—excuse me—asked her to marry you yet?”
“No. I've been trying to get up my nerve.”
“Here's where you've got to excuse me once more, Dick—it's not my business to tell you what should be your relations with your family—but have you told your sister?”
“No.” Dick hesitated. “I suppose I should. But I hadn't thought of it—yet. You see—” Again Dick hesitated.
“Yes?” prompted Larry.
“There are her relatives—that cousin and uncle. I guess it must have been my thinking of them that prevented my thinking of what you suggest.”
“But you told me they hadn't interfered much, and never would interfere.” Larry gently pressed his point: “And look at it from Miss Cameron's angle of view. If it's the real thing, and you're behaving that way toward her, hasn't she good grounds for thinking it strange that you haven't introduced her to your family?”
“By George, you're right, Captain! I'll see to that at once.”
“Of course, Dick,” Larry went on, carefully feeling his way, “you know much better than I the proper way to do such things—but don't you think it would be rather nice, when you tell your sister, that you suggest to her that she invite Miss Cameron out here for a little visit? If they are to meet, I know Miss Cameron, or any girl, would take it as more of a tribute to be received in your own home than merely to meet in a big commonplace hotel.”
“Right again, Captain! I'd tell Isabel to-night, and ask her to send the invitation—only I'm booked to scoot right back to the city for a little party as soon as I get some things together, and I'll stay overnight in the apartment. But I'll attend to the thing to-morrow night, sure.”
“May I ask just one favor in the meantime?”
“One favor? A dozen, Captain!”
“I'll take the other eleven later. Just now I only ask, since you haven't proposed, that you won't—er—commit yourself any further, in any way, with Miss Cameron until after you've told your sister and until after Miss Cameron has been out here.”
“Oh, I say now!” protested Dick.
“I am merely suggesting that affairs remain in statu quo until after Miss Cameron's visit with your sister. That's not asking much of you, Dick—nor asking it for a very long time.”
“Oh, of course I'll do it, Captain,” grumbled Dick affectionately. “You've got me where I'll do almost anything you want me to do.”
But Dick did not speak to his sister the following evening. The next morning news came to Miss Sherwood of a friend's illness, and she and her novel-reading aunt hurried off at once on what was to prove to be a week's absence. But this delay in his plan did not worry Larry greatly as it otherwise would have done, for Dick repeated his promise to hold a stiff rein upon himself until after he should have spoken to his sister. And Larry believed he could rely upon Dick's pledged word.
During this week of waiting and necessary inactivity Larry concentrated upon another phase of his many-sided plan—to make of himself a business success. As has been said, he saw his chance of this in the handling of Miss Sherwood's affairs; and saw it particularly in an idea that had begun to grow upon him since he became aware, through statements and letters from the agents turned over to him, of the extent of the Sherwood real-estate holdings and since he had got some glimmering of their condition. His previous venturings about the city had engendered in him a sense of moderate security; so he now began to make flying trips into New York in the smart roadster Miss Sherwood had placed at his disposal.
On each trip Larry made swift visits to several of the properties, until finally he had covered the entire list Miss Sherwood had furnished him through the agents. His survey corroborated his surmise. The property, mostly neglected apartment and tenement houses, was in an almost equally bad way whether one regarded it from the standpoint of sanitation, comfort, or cold financial returns. The fault for this was due to the fact that the Sherwoods had left the property entirely in the care of the agents, and the agents, being old, old-fashioned, and weary of business to the point of being almost ready to retire, had left the property to itself.
Prompted by these bad conditions, and to some degree by the then critical housing famine, with its records of some thousands of families having no place at all to go and some thousands of families being compelled for the sake of mere shelter to pay two and three times what they could afford for a few poor rooms, and with its records of profiteering landlords, Larry began to make notes for a plan which he intended later to elaborate—a plan which he tentatively entitled: “Suggestions for the Development of Sherwood Real-Estate Holdings.” Larry, knowing from the stubs of Miss Sherwood's checkbook what would be likely to please her, gave as much consideration to Service as to Profit. The basis of his growing plan was good apartments at fair rentals. That he saw as the greatest of public services in the present crisis. But the return upon the investment had to be a reasonable one. Larry did not believe in Charity, except for extreme cases. He believed, and his belief had grown out of a wide experience with many kinds of people, that Charity, of course to a smaller extent, was as definitely a source of social evil as the then much-talked-of Profiteering.
In the meantime he was seeing his old friend, Joe Ellison, every day; perhaps smoking with Ellison in his cottage after he had finished his day's work among the roses, perhaps walking along the bluff which hung above the Sound, whose cool, clear waters splashed with vacation laziness upon the shingle. The two men rarely spoke, and never of the past. Larry was well acquainted with, and understood, the older man's deep-rooted wish to avoid all talk bearing upon deeds and associates of other days; that was a part of his life and a phase of existence that Joe Ellison was trying to forget, and Larry by his silence deferred to his friend's desire.
On the day after Joe Ellison's visit to the Duchess, Larry had received a note from his grandmother, addressed, of course, to “Mr. Brandon.” There was no danger in her writing Larry if she took adequate precautions: mail addressed to Cedar Crest was not bothered by postal and police officials; it was only mail which came to the house of the Duchess which received the attention of these gentlemen.
The note was one which the Duchess, after that night of thought which had so shaken her old heart, had decided to be a necessity if her plan of never telling of her discovery of Maggie's real paternity were to be a success. The major portion of her note dwelt upon a generality with which Larry already was acquainted: Joe's desire to keep clear of all talk touching upon the deeds and the people of his past. And then in a careless-seeming last sentence the Duchess packed the carefully calculated substance of her entire note:
“It may not be very important—but particularly avoid ever mentioning the mere name of Jimmie Carlisle. They used to know each other, and their acquaintance is about the bitterest thing Joe Ellison has to remember.”
Of course he'd never mention Old Jimmie Carlisle, Larry said to himself as he destroyed the note—never guessing, in making this natural response to what seemed a most natural request, that he had become an unconscious partner in the plan of the warm-hearted, scheming Duchess.
There was one detail of Joe Ellison's behavior which aroused Larry's mild curiosity. Directly beneath one of Joe's gardens, hardly a hundred yards away, was a bit of beach and a pavilion which were used in common by the families from the surrounding estates. The girls and younger women were just home from schools and colleges, and at high tide were always on the beach. At this period, whenever he was at Cedar Crest, Larry saw Joe, his work apparently forgotten, gazing fixedly down upon the young figures splashing about the water in their bright bathing-suits or lounging about the pavilion in their smart summer frocks.
This interest made Larry wonder, though to be sure not very seriously. For he had never a guess of how deep Joe's interest was. He did not know, could not know, that that tall, fixed figure, with its one absorbing idea, was thinking of his daughter. He could not know that Joe Ellison, emotionally elated and with a hungry, self-denying affection that reached out toward them all, was seeing his daughter as just such a girl as one of these—simple, wholesome, well-brought-up. He could not know that Joe, in a way, perceived his daughter in every nice young woman he saw.
Toward evening of the seventh day of her visit, Miss Sherwood returned. Larry was on the piazza when the car bearing her swept into the white-graveled curve of the drive. The car was a handsome, powerful roadster. Larry had started out to be of such assistance as he could, when the figure at the wheel, a man, sprang from the car and helped Miss Sherwood alight. Larry saw that the man was Hunt—such a different Hunt!—and he had begun a quick retreat when Hunt's voice called after him:
“You there—wait a minute! I want a little chin-chin with you.”
Larry halted. He could not help overhearing the few words that passed between Hunt and Miss Sherwood.
“Thank you ever so much,” she said in her even voice. “Then you're coming?”
“I promised, didn't I?”
“Then good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
They shook hands friendly enough, but rather formally, and Miss Sherwood turned to the house. Hunt called to Larry:
“Come here, son.”
Larry crossed to the big painter who was standing beside the power-bulged hood of his low-swung car.
“Happened to drop in where she was—brought her home—aunt following in that hearse with its five-foot cushions she always rides in,” Hunt explained. And then: “Well, I suppose you've got to give me the once-over. Hurry up, and get it done with.”
Larry obeyed. Hunt's wild hair had been smartly barbered, he had on a swagger dust-coat, and beneath it flannels of the smartest cut. Further, he bore himself as if smart clothes and smart cars had always been items of his equipment.
“Well, young fellow, spill it,” he commanded. “What do I look like?”
“Like Solomon in all his glory. No, more like the he-dressmaker of the Queen of Sheba.”
“I'm going to run you up every telephone post we come to for that insult! Hop in, son, and we'll take a little voyage around the earth in eighty seconds.”
Larry got in. Once out of the drive the car leaped away as though intent upon keeping to Hunt's time-table. But after a mile or two Hunt quieted the roaring monster to a conversational pace.
“Get one of the invitations to my show?” he asked.
“Yes. Several days ago. That dealer certainly got it up in great shape.”
“You must have hypnotized Graham. That old paint pirate is giving the engine all the gas she'll stand—and believe me, he's sure getting up a lot of speed.” Hunt grinned. “That private pre-exhibition show you suggested is proving the best publicity idea Graham ever had in his musty old shop. Everywhere I go, people are talking about the darned thing. Every man, woman and child, also unmarried females of both sexes, who got invitations are coming—and those who didn't get 'em are trying to bribe the traffic cop at Forty-Second Street to let 'em in.”
Hunt paused for a chuckle. “And I'm having the time of my young life with the people who always thought I couldn't paint, and who are now trying to sidle up to me on the suspicion that possibly after all I can paint. What's got that bunch buffaloed is the fact that Graham has let it leak out that I'm likely to make bales of money from my painting. The idea of any one making money out of painting, that's too much for their heads. Oh, this is the life, Larry!”
Larry started to congratulate him, but was instantly interrupted with:
“I admit I'm a painter, and always will admit it. But this present thing is all your doing. We'll try to square things sometime. But I didn't ask you to come along to hear verbostical acrobatics about myself. I asked you to learn if you'd worked out your plan yet regarding Maggie?”
“Yes.” And Larry proceeded to give the details of his design.
“Regular psychological stuff!” exclaimed Hunt. And then: “Say, you're some stage-manager! Or rather same playwright! Playwrights that know tell me it's one of their most difficult tricks—to get all their leading characters on the stage at the same time. And here you've got it all fixed to bring on Miss Sherwood, Dick, Maggie, yourself, and the all-important me—for don't forget I shall be slipping out to Cedar Crest occasionally.”
“As for myself,” remarked Larry, “I shall remain very much behind the scenes. Maggie'll never see me.”
“Well, here's hoping you're good enough playwright to manage your characters so they won't run away from you and mix up an ending you never dreamed of!”
The car paused again in the drive and Larry got out.
“I say, Larry,” Hunt whispered eagerly, “who's that tall, white-haired man working over there among the roses?”
“Joe Ellison. He's that man I told you about my getting to know in Sing Sing. Remember?”
“Oh, yes! The crook who was having his baby brought up to be a real person. Say, he's a sure-enough character! Lordy, but I'd love to paint that face!... So-long, son.”
The car swung around the drive and roared away. Larry mounted to the piazza. Dick was waiting for him, and excitedly drew him down to one corner that crimson ramblers had woven into a nook for confidences.
“Captain, old scout,” he said in a low, happy voice, “I've just told sis. Put the whole proposition up to her, just as you told me. She took it like a regular fellow. Your whole idea was one hundred per cent right. Sis is inside now getting off that invitation to Miss Cameron, asking her to come out day after to-morrow.”
Larry involuntarily caught the veranda railing. “I hope it works out—for the best,” he said.
“Oh, it will—no doubt of it!” cried the exultant Dick. “And, Captain, if it does, it'll be all your doing!”
When Miss Sherwood's invitation reached Maggie, Barney and Old Jimmie were with her. The pair had growled a lot, though not directly at Maggie, at the seeming lack of progress Maggie had made during the past week. Barney was a firm enough believer in his rogue's creed of first getting your fish securely hooked; but, on the other hand, there was the danger, if the hooked fish be allowed to remain too long in the water, that it would disastrously shake itself free of the barb and swim away. That was what Barney was afraid had been happening with Dick Sherwood. Therefore he was thinking of returning to his abandoned scheme of selling stock to Dick. He might get Dick's money in that way, though of course not so much money, and of course not so safely.
And another item which for some time had not been pleasing Barney was that Larry Brainard had not yet been finally taken care of, either by the police or by that unofficial force to which he had given orders. So he had good reason for permitting himself the relaxation of scowling when he was not on public exhibition.
But when Maggie, after reading the invitation, tossed it, together with a note from Dick, across to Barney without comment, the color of his entire world changed for that favorite son of Broadway. The surly gloom of the end of a profitless enterprise became magically an aurora borealis of superior hopes:—no, something infinitely more substantial than any heaven-painting flare of iridescent colors.
“Maggie, it's the real thing! At last!” he cried.
“What is it?” asked Old Jimmie.
Barney gave him the letter. Jimmie read it through, then handed it back, slowly shaking his head.
“I don't see nothing to get excited about,” said the ever-doubtful, ever-hesitant Jimmie. “It's only an invitation.”
“Aw, hell!” ejaculated the exasperated Barney in disgust. “If some one handed you a government bond all you could see would be a cigar coupon! That invitation, together with this note from Dick Sherwood saying he'll call and take Maggie out, means that the fish is all ready to be landed. Try to come back to life, Jimmie. If you knew anything at all about big-league society, you'd know that sending invitations to meet the family—that's the way these swells do things when they're all set to do business. We're all ready for the killing—the big clean-up!”
He turned to Maggie. “Great stuff, Maggie. I knew you could put it over. Of course you're going?”
“Of course,” replied Maggie with a composure which was wholly of her manner.
A sudden doubt came out of this glory to becloud Barney's master mind. “I don't know,” he said slowly. “It's one proposition to make one of these men swells believe that a woman is the real thing. And it's another proposition to put it over on one of these women swells. They've got eyes for every little detail, and they know the difference between the genuine article and an imitation. I've heard a lot about this Miss Sherwood; they say she's one of the cleverest of the swells. Think you can walk into her house and put it over on her, Maggie?”
“Of course—why not?” answered Maggie, again with that composure which was prompted by her pride's desire to make Barney, and every one else, believe her equal to any situation.
Barney's animation returned. “All right. If you think you can swing it, you can swing it, and the job's the same as finished and we're made!”
Left to herself, and the imposing propriety and magnificent stupidity of Miss Grierson, Maggie made no attempt to keep up her appearance of confidence. All her thoughts were upon this opportunity which insisted upon looking to her like a menace. She tried to whip her self-confidence, of which she was so proud, into a condition of constant pregnancy. But the plain fact was that Maggie, the misguided child of a stolen birthright, whose soaring spirit was striving so hard to live up to the traditions and conventions of cynicism, whose young ambition it was to outshine and surpass all possible competitors in this world in which she had been placed, who in her pride believed she knew so much of life—the plain fact was that Maggie was in a state bordering on funk.
This invitation from Miss Sherwood was an ordeal she had never counted on. She had watched the fine ladies at the millinery shop and while selling cigarettes at the Ritzmore, when she had been modeling her manners, and had believed herself just as fine a lady as they. But that had been in the abstract. Now she was face to face with a situation that was painfully concrete—a real test: she had to place herself into close contrast with, and under the close observation of, a real lady, and in that lady's own home. And in all her life she had not once been in a fine home! In fine hotels, yes—but fine hotels were the common refuge of butcher, baker, floor-walker, thief, swell, and each had approximately the same attention; and all she now felt she had really learned were a few such matters as the use of table silver and finger bowls.
It came to her that Barney, in his moment of doubt, had spoken more soundly than he had imagined when he had said that it was easier to fool a man about a woman than it was to fool a woman. How tragically true that was! While trying to learn to be a lady by working in smart shops, she had learned that the occasional man who had ventured in after woman's gear was hopelessly ignorant and bought whatever was skillfully thrust upon him, but that it was impossible to slip an inferior or unsuitable or out-dated article over on the woman who really knew.
And Miss Sherwood was the kind of woman who really knew! Who knew everything. Could she possibly, possibly pass herself off on Miss Sherwood as the genuine article?...
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.
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?”
“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.