Limasito received the tidings of the amazing turn in the affairs of Gentleman Geoff's Billie with mingled emotions in which pride and respectful awe predominated, but to Kearn Thode it came as an uncomprehended disaster.
In vain he told himself that he should rejoice at her change of fortune; that he had divined from the moment of their first meeting the subtle shade of difference in caste between the young girl and those who surrounded her, and strove to exult that she had indeed come into her own.
A strange, unacknowledged depression assailed him. His proffered aid had once more proved superfluous; the young relative of the Ripley Halsteads and heiress of Giles Murdaugh would have no need of the good offices of his sister, nor in their reversed positions would his friendship be as instrumental in her future as he had hoped.
She was quick-witted and adaptable; she would be a tremendous social success with a little expert coaching, and he——? A petroleum engineer, a mere cog in the wheel of a great corporation, without prospects other than might lie in the success of his present doubtful mission, could be of no future interest to Willa Murdaugh.
Decency demanded that he congratulate her on her good fortune, he assured himself as he rode out that evening to the Casa de Limas. But decency did not explain or defend the fact that he roweled his willing pinto all the way, and arrived in a state of mind that was the reverse of felicitation.
She received his forced greeting with the matter-of-fact directness which was characteristic of her.
"Yes. It's a pretty big thing to have come to me all of a sudden," she remarked, "but I reckon it isn't going to carry me off my feet. Dad always told me never to start anything I couldn't finish, and although this seems to have been kind of started for me before I was born, I reckon I can see it through. I never guessed I wasn't Dad's own girl and I'd just as lief never have known, but it's going to work in with what I want to do."
"Of course!" He essayed to speak lightly. "Your future is assured now, the future your—Gentleman Geoff wanted you to have. It sounds like presumption now; my offer to take you to my sister——"
"Why?" Her clear eyes turned wonderingly on him in the moonlight, and he mentally cursed his dog-in-the-manger mood. "I thought it was real kind of you, kinder than anything that anyone except Dad has ever done. I didn't even have a name, you know. I was just the daughter of—what did that lawyer call him?—a 'peripatetic gambler', but you—you——"
She broke off in sudden confusion, and he drew a swift breath.
"You were yourself, and I told you that nothing else mattered." His tone was very low.
"But I'm something else, now." There was a note of shy, wistful eagerness in her voice. "I—I'm Willa Murdaugh and that seems to mean a lot, up in New York. I'm not just Gentleman Geoff's Billie, I'm going to be a lady, like your sister——"
"You will be a much more important one, with a highly exalted social position and hosts of influential friends," he responded slowly. "You will meet her, she is an acquaintance of the Halsteads and their set, but you will find her a simple, unfashionable girl, compared to the rest. If you had gone to make your home with her, as I suggested, you would not have known the smart crowd that will flock about you now, but clever people who have done or are doing big things. I wonder how the social life will strike you?"
"All of a heap, I expect," she replied, absently. Her voice was colorless, stunned. "That was what you meant, that I should go and live with your sister? And you, would you have been there, too?"
"I?" he laughed with a trace of bitterness. "I am a rolling stone, Miss Murdaugh. My work calls me to the ends of the earth, but I would probably have looked in on you every few years to say 'hello.' However, you would scarcely have been with my sister as long as that. Some lucky fellow would have persuaded you to make him happy. You will be a great social success——"
"As if I cared!" She stopped him with her familiar little gesture. "I—I didn't just understand what you meant. I thought—but it doesn't matter anyway, does it? I've got to get in the game anyway, but you don't suppose I want to, do you? You don't suppose I want the money of that old man who stacked the cards against my poor father, or care about these Halstead people that never knew I was alive? I am doing it because I think Dad would want me to, and because it will help me in something else I've set out to do."
"The thing you spoke of, that you could not let me or anyone in on?" he asked in surprise. "Haven't you relinquished it, whatever it was? You'll be too much taken up with your new life to remember old plans and ideas when you plunge into the society game."
"'Relinquish'?" she repeated, and he saw her whole form grow tense and rigid. "Why, it's what I'm living for—what I'm going through with this inheritance outfit for! Dad said the Indians were right, they never forget a kindness or an injury. I'm like them, in that. I'll never forget, never, until the score is wiped clean!"
"Someone has hurt you?" he demanded. "You have another trouble, aside from your grief? The government will take care of El Negrito, it must be something else. Won't you tell me? It may be that I can help, in some way. I—I would do anything for you!"
"Nobody can help me." She shook her head gently. "I told you once, Mr. Thode, that I must play a lone hand."
"But you can trust me," he urged. "If I could only make you believe that! If I could only make you see how much it would mean to me to be of the slightest service——"
He halted abruptly, and she waited, scarcely breathing, for there was an impetuous fervent ring in his tones which made her heart leap suddenly and then almost cease to beat. But the young man did not continue.
"Thank you," she said at last, very quietly. "I am sure that I could trust you, Mr. Thode, but there is nothing you or anyone could do; it is just that I owe a debt to someone, and I mean to pay it. But don't let us talk of that any more. Shall I see you, sometime, up in New York?"
"Perhaps, when my work here is finished." He turned his head away from her. "You will have so many new friends that you will scarcely remember those you leave behind down here."
"How unjust you are!" She faced him hotly. "Do you think I could ever forget what you did when El Negrito came; how you rode to the barracks at the risk of your life?"
"I had small choice," he reminded her. "Had I stayed I would have been killed."
"So would we all. But it was not for yourself you took the chance, it was for us." She laid her hand upon his arm. "I—I don't want you to think that I will ever forget and I hope that we shall be friends."
"Always that!" He took her small hand in both of his. "It doesn't seem likely, but if there is ever anything that I can do for you, any service that I can render, I would like to feel, in spite of the little time you have known me, that you would call on me before anyone else you may meet. After all, Gentleman Geoff laid a charge upon me, you know, and I want to be worthy of it. When I return, if I may, I will come to you."
"Oh, will you?" She flushed and gently withdrew her hand. "That is, unless you will be ashamed of me. I reckon I'll be kind of a shock to city folks, the same as they'll be to me."
"Now it is you who are unjust!" he cried. "I shall always be proud of your friendship, and remember these days in Limasito as the most wonderful I have ever known——"
Thode checked himself once more.
"Good-bye, Billie. When next I see you, it will be Miss Willa Murdaugh who will greet me, but it is Gentleman Geoff's Billie who will linger in my thoughts always. Will you say once again what you said to me in the lane: 'Buena suerte'?"
"Good luck, with all my heart, but not good-bye." She hesitated. "I sha'n't see you to-morrow before we start?"
He shook his head.
"The whole town will be on hand to give you a send-off. I would not intrude on the leave-taking of all your old friends, and besides I must ride far out to-morrow," he prevaricated. "There is a lease I must look into for the company over near La Roda. So it must be good-bye, now."
"Not that, but hasta la vista!" She lifted her chin valiantly, although her smile was a trifle wan. "That means 'until we meet again', you know, and I feel somehow that it will be soon."
"I hope so, with all my heart!" With a swift, impetuous movement he bent and kissed her hand. "Hasta la vista!"
Billie watched him until he disappeared down the avenue of flowering trees, then, brushing her hand across her eyes, she turned and went into the house.
Sallie Bailey looked up with a twinkle from the shirt she was patching.
"Well, carita, did he?" she demanded with much interest.
"Did he what?" Billie paused at the foot of the stairs.
"Did he—say anything?"
"Oh, a heap. I'm going to be a hit in society and forget all my friends and everything down here and roll in that money like a pinto in the pasture. I wish to goodness that I was dead!"
"No, you don't," Sallie retorted comfortably. "You're just beginning to take notice, that's all, and so's he. He ain't saddle-broke yet and he's gun-shy, but he'll get used to the report o' that money o' yours in time. Men are a good deal like pintos; some you can coax and some you can bully, but they all of 'em buck at the first gate. Don't you worry your head about Mr. Kearn Thode, honey; wait till the next round-up, and you'll have him roped, tied, and branded before he knows where he's at."
Billie mounted three steps and halted, her head held high.
"Him?" she queried with infinite scorn. "I don't want him! Dad asked him to look out for me, you see, and he thinks I'm kind of on his hands, but I'll show him! I'm liable to make some big mistakes, and I reckon that Mrs. Halstead will earn all the money my grandfather left her to teach me the rules of the game, but I'll sit tight and learn if it breaks me and when it comes my turn to play, I'll show them all I'm not a piker, anyway!"
"You wasn't ever that, Billie," the older woman observed gently, for the girl's hurt heart was on her sleeve. "I reckon he only meant to be kind."
"I don't want kindness!" the ungrateful Billie responded savagely. "I don't want condescension and duty-friendship. I want, I want—oh, I want Dad!"
Limasito was indeed out in full force to speed her on her way the following morning. The news had traveled quickly over the countryside and every style of conveyance, from a mule-team to the latest improved jitney, lined the plaza. White, Mex', and Mongolian, from the richest oil operator to the lowliest peon, her friends had gathered to say farewell.
They stampeded her on the Calle Rivera and unceremoniously held up Mr. North's impressive car before the hotel, while Jim Baggott, in an ancient silk hat and bibulously primed for the occasion, read an ungrammatical but fervent valediction.
Billie could only throw both hands out to them, laughing and sobbing in one breath as the car moved off down a lane of solidly packed humanity and disappeared in a whirl of dust.
"'S on the house!" Jim Baggott waved toward the bar with one hand and openly wiped his eyes with the other. "Gonna make a gosh-almighty swell of her, are they? Well, I wish'm luck, but they'll never change her heart or break her spirit. She's our'n, an' she'll come back if I have to go after her myself, so help me! What you-all have?"
True to his word, Kearn Thode had ridden out at daybreak and ridden hard, but only the pinto knew where they were going and he was too jaded to care. A sleepless night of bewilderment and self-disgust at his own surly, unaccountable mood had brought a revelation that stunned and humbled him.
He loved her! In a blinding flash of realization, he saw that from the moment of their first meeting she had possessed him, body and soul. It was that which had stirred his resentment to berserk rage when Starr Wiley had laid insolent hands upon her in the lane; it was for her and her alone that he had run the gantlet of El Negrito's forces and dared the desperate ride.
And she? Immeasurably removed from him now, impenetrably walled in from his presumptuous gaze by the newly-gained inheritance, there was yet a golden key which he might find here in this flower-grown wilderness which would grant him entrance to her world on an equal footing with all men. She could not have learned to care for him in their few hours of companionship, but at least no one else held claim to her. There was still a chance!
It was characteristic of him that, having worked out his problem, he wasted no thought on futile regret or selfish repining at the fortune which had smiled on her. It should smile on him, too, and then, and not till then, he would go to her.
The Pool of the Lost Souls! That was the solution, that the golden key to the future! That others had been before him in the fruitless search of weary generations past was of no moment in the fire of his enthusiasm.
The noontide blaze of heat found him many miles upon an unfamiliar road, and, heedless of lurking enemies in the undergrowth, he flung himself down in the shade of a mighty orchid-laden tree, while the puzzled but equable pinto grazed nearby.
Worn with the emotional conflict through which he had passed, and the sleepless night preceding the hard-ridden hours, his day-dream faded into deep slumber and the shadows were slanting across the road when he awoke with a sudden start. No living thing was in sight save the pinto tethered close at hand; the road ran level and white and deserted as far as the eye could see and only the afternoon breeze rustled the dense foliage above and about him, yet Thode could have sworn that he was under observation.
He flung the thought from him with a laugh as he picked himself up, but it persisted in spite of his efforts to exorcise it. Something unexplained but almost tangible rode at his shoulder on the homeward way, and he caught himself more than once straining his ears for a betraying sound behind him. So acute was the sensation of surveillance that he pulled up abruptly around a sharp turn in the road and listened, but no following hoof-beats broke the stillness, and mentally deriding the notion, he cantered on into town.
His mid-day reverie had carried him back over every detail of the legend Ben Hallock had related of the Pool, and one chance remark returned to him with the force of an inspiration. Hallock himself had learned the story from a hunchbacked Mexican who had it from his grandmother, and the little José, the crippled victim of Starr Wiley's heedless brutality, had been hunchbacked; the old crone in the shack by the zapote trees, his grandmother, looked as if many mysteries and legends might be hidden behind her fierce, inscrutable eyes.
This was slender foundation on which to build a theory, but how else had the little lad awakened the vengeful antipathy of Wiley? What was it that he refused to tell him?
Thode had more than a suspicion that Wiley's objective in Limasito was closely allied to his own. If José had indeed been Hallock's informant, and the unscrupulous promoter had traced the legend to this latest source, his anger at being unable to bully the boy into further disclosures would be easily understood.
That night, when the moon had risen, Thode crossed the plaza and started out on foot for the shack. He would not allow himself a glance in the direction of the metamorphosed Blue Chip, but resolutely held his thoughts to the immediate issue. José had accepted him not only as a benefactor but as the friend of his adored señorita; would he be induced to speak?
The shack was dark when he finally reached it and only silence greeted his knock upon the sagging door. It yielded to his touch, and after a moment's hesitation he stepped inside, and groping, found the lamp.
Touching a match to the wick, he replaced the cracked chimney and looked about him. Gone!
The little one-room dwelling was in chaos, the chest of drawers ransacked and even the two poor beds had been pulled violently apart. Everything spoke of hasty and frenzied flight. What could it mean?
As the young engineer stood bewildered at this unexpected scene, there came over his senses once more the inexplicable intuition of the afternoon. Someone, something was spying upon him!
He thrust it into the back of his mind, however, striving to recall a memory which eluded him. What had Billie told him of a witch's cauldron in the grove of zapote trees, where the old crone had wrought magic which to her, at least, was very real? Could the explanation of this amazing evanescence be found there?
Shading the lamp with his hand, he stumbled out the door and followed the weed-choked path to the little clearing. A huge battered kettle lay on its side in a heap of ashes which looked as though they had recently been alight. Thode stirred them with his foot, then bent hastily; they were still warm, and from their midst protruded a gleam of something white.
Kneeling, he set the lamp carefully upon the ground beside him and pulled the scrap of paper from its hiding-place. It was partially burned, but some freak of air-current or flame had left its destruction incomplete, and he saw that a rude plan or map had been drawn upon it.
He had only time to note that an irregular oval was traced in its center, with a crooked, wavering cross at one end. Then as he bent closer to the light a twig snapped treacherously behind him and a crushing blow upon his head blotted out consciousness.
Mr. Mason North's elation at the culmination of his protracted search gave way to vague but undeniable misgiving before the end of the return journey. Miss Murdaugh was utterly unlike anything he could have preconceived. His trained legal mind, unburdened with imagination, had nevertheless presented possibilities, during the two years of his previous investigation, from which his fastidious soul shrank. What could a creature brought up by a wandering card-sharp in mining-camps and frontier towns offer for rescue and redemption?
His fears had vanished at first sight of her, however, Here was a girl, untutored and unconventional, to be sure, but singularly free from any corruption and with distinct social possibilities.
He patronized her in bland condescension at their journey's start and found her gratifyingly amenable, but they had scarcely crossed the border, before he found to his stupefaction that he was confronted by a will as serenely implacable as his own.
Willa listened to his didactic suggestions with an open mind and a direct unwavering gaze which he found mildly disconcerting, but she acted upon them only after due and independent consideration and those that did not meet with her approval she rejected in a quiet finality of manner which, while it left their surface cordiality undisturbed, nevertheless brooked no further argument.
His idea of engaging a maid or chaperon for the trip she had vetoed promptly.
"I've always looked out for myself, and I reckon I can now, so long as you're around to see that the train don't get uncoupled while you're in the smoker or I'm in the observation car," she informed him. "I have to kind of get on to myself, after all that's been happening to me, and I couldn't with some nosey Jane at my heels every minute. I suppose there will have to be someone to shine up my nails and fix my hair and cinch my clothes on me, but that can wait till Mrs. Halstead picks one out."
Mr. North shrank from such unfeminine candor, but he made no further reference to a duenna, although as the journey progressed he regretted his weakness. Willa had an inexplicable penchant for disappearing at intervals, suddenly and without warning. Where she could get to on a train or station platform, from under his very eyes, and what errand prompted her were beyond his comprehension; but she eluded him with the utmost ease and sang-froid whenever the spirit moved her, and her matter-of-fact explanations when she returned were obviously and designedly open to question.
He could feel himself aging beneath the strain and he heartily wished his charge in Mrs. Halstead's capable hands. His wife had been dead so long that the paths of feminine idiosyncrasies were an untrodden maze to him, and his condescension turned to consternation and an awed respect.
In spite of his anxiety, the girl proved a fascinating study. She showed no interest in the outside world and rarely glanced from the car window, but her naïve curiosity concerning their fellow passengers and friendly familiarity toward them kept him constantly on the qui vive.
It was only when at last their journey drew to a close that she evinced the slightest desire for information concerning the family of which she was to be a member.
"Mrs. Halstead is my father's cousin, isn't she?" she asked. "Has she any children?"
"A son and daughter." Mr. North laid aside the newspaper from behind which he had been furtively watching her. "Vernon is twenty-three, and a friend of my boy, Winthrop. Angelica is two years his junior, a most accomplished young woman and quite a leader in the more youthful set. You will be able to learn a great deal from her."
Willa pondered this in silence for a minute or two.
"What does she do?" she queried, finally.
"Why—ah, she drives her own car, and goes in for all the latest fads and diversions. I am not familiar with them myself. She sings and dances——"
"My mother did that," Willa remarked, with a quizzical glance at him.
Mr. North reddened.
"Oh, not——not in that fashion! I mean for charity; war relief and that sort of thing. Quite respectable and praiseworthy."
"I see," said Willa slowly. "It's only proper when you do it for nothing, just because you like it. If it's work, it isn't nice."
Her interlocutor writhed, but cannily forbore argument. He had learned more valuable pointers in the past few days on the matter of rebuttal than Blackstone ever revealed to him.
"And the boy, Vernon. What does he do?" Willa resumed.
"He motors and plays golf and tennis." Mr. North cast wildly about in his mind for an inspiration. What did the young beggar do, anyway, that would meet with the approval of this socialistic Amazon? "Cards, too. He's an inveterate—I mean, enthusiastic, card-player."
Willa rewarded his efforts with a wriggle of interest.
"Monte, stud or blackjack?" she demanded. "What's his limit? Good loser?"
"Very!" The family lawyer was on solid ground here. "In fact I may say the best and most consistent loser I have knowledge of. It has not been decided yet what—ah, field of industry he will enter. He is just out of the university."
"There's a Mr. Halstead, I suppose?"
"Yes, of course. He is the first vice-president of the Vitality and Casualty Insurance Company, and director in several banks and corporations. A very busy man and an important, influential one."
"What does he do that he likes?" Willa persisted, unimpressed.
"Bless me, I haven't an idea! I've known him for a quarter of a century, but I've never heard him discuss anything except finance."
"And Mrs. Halstead?"
"Ah, my dear, there is a character for you!" Mr. North beamed. "She's chairman of a dozen charity organizations, leader in every new movement that appears, and manages to find ample time for her social duties, besides. A wonderful woman! You are fortunate in having her for your sponsor and mentor, and I—ah, I trust that you will follow her directions in all things. You must show your appreciation of her kindness in taking you into her home and making you one of themselves by obeying her without question. Her experience and knowledge of the world will be invaluable to you."
The swift roar of the train into the tunnel precluded comment from his charge, and in the vast station she vanished once more. This time she remained absent for so long that the distracted attorney was on the point of despatching a battalion of porters to search for her when she reappeared, slightly flushed but serene.
"In heaven's name, where have you been?" Mr. North demanded testily. "How many times have I instructed you to remain close at my side when we alight!"
"I knew where you were, you see," she exclaimed calmly. "There was something I had to attend to."
"Telegrams to your friends? Surely they might have waited until a more suitable time! You have caused me great anxiety——"
"I'm sorry if I worried you, Mr. North." Her tone was chastened, but there was an undernote of warning. "I've been free so long that I kind of forget I'm under extradition."
A wave of contrition swept over his ill-humor as her slim-clad figure preceded him out to the waiting motor. She had been coolly insubordinate, of course, but she was young and very much alone in a strange environment. She could be led, perhaps, but she would never be driven.
Cesare, the Halsteads' chauffeur, touched the brim of his cap smartly, and Willa bestowed upon him a dazzling smile. Only the snap of the limousine door prevented her shaking hands.
"He looks like a right-nice boy," she remarked naïvely. "Do you suppose he'll teach me how to drive a car of my own?"
"If he is told to do so," Mr. North replied with dignity, "and it is decided that you are to have a car."
She darted an appraising glance at him, but he vaguely felt a certain ambiguous quality in the silence which followed, and congratulated himself that they had reached their journey's end.
Mrs. Ripley Halstead awaited them in the drawing-room. She was a tall, commanding woman in the indefinite forties, with a high, thin nose and cold, slightly protruding eyes. Her dark hair, still untouched by gray, was arranged in a modishly severe fashion and her smile extended no farther than her straight lips.
"So this is our little cousin?" She brushed the girl's cheek with a light kiss. "My dear Willa, words cannot express our pleasure that you have been found at last, we have doubted and feared for so long. I hope that you will be very happy here with us, and I am sure that we shall all manage famously."
"Thank you," Willa murmured, through stiffened lips. "This situation has been kind of thrust on both of us, but I reckon we can make the best of it."
The lady gasped and turned to the attorney, who was watching with a gleam of speculation in his eye.
"Mason, we have much to thank you for in restoring our young relative to us, but I must defer that now. You will dine with us?"
"Thank you, no." He bowed over her hand. "To tell you the truth, I am rather fagged out from my trip, and I am anxious to get on up-town. Please, tell Ripley that I will see him to-morrow, and transfer the necessary papers to him.—Au revoir, my dear. Try to remember what I have told you."
Willa stared with dazed eyes about the pretty room to which she was ushered. The furniture was of ivory and dull gold, the walls, draperies and floor a soft French blue, and delicate rose-shaded lights glowed delicately in many brackets.
The drawing-room she had taken as a matter of course; it impressed her as being not unlike that of the big hotel at Tampico, but to be expected to live and move around and sleep in this fragile, stifling, cluttered doll's house of a room was unthinkable. It was hers, the maid had said so; therefore, she would make the best of it, in her own fashion.
A half-hour later the house-maid presented herself at Mrs. Halstead's door in a state bordering on hysteria.
"If you please, Madame, the young lady, Miss Murdaugh, has taken her room all to pieces. The draperies' are down from the windows and piled in a corner with the cushions from the chaise longue, and the bed is moved over to the windows and stripped down to the blanket. All the rose shades are off the lights and the furniture is pushed back against the wall. Miss Murdaugh rang for me just now to take all the drapery and things out of the room, and I thought I had better come to you."
Mrs. Halstead stepped forward, but stopped with a slight compression of her lips.
"Very well, Katie. You may remove them, for the time being. I will see Miss Murdaugh about it later."
When the housemaid had withdrawn, her mistress dropped rather than seated herself in the nearest chair. The mechanical smile had vanished and her eyes narrowed. She foresaw friction ahead.
Willa, serenely unconscious that she had offended, slipped into the one thin black gown which she possessed, a mail-order purchase which had given her immense satisfaction, but when dinner was announced and she descended the stairs, she paused aghast at the splendor before her.
A girl stood in the drawing-room door in a marvelous creation which seemed made of diamond-tipped, rainbow-tinted mist. From it her youthful shoulders and slim neck rose creamily, surmounted by a small head banded boyishly with golden hair. Her wide eyes were china blue, her nose piquantly retroussé and she was as vacuously pretty as a wax doll.
"How do you do?" She came forward with a graceful fluttering movement. "You are Willa, aren't you? I hope we are going to be terribly good friends. I'm your cousin, Angelica."
"Named after a dessert." A languid, teasing voice came from behind her. "Welcome to our city, my dear cousin! Hope you won't find us too peaceable after Mexico."
"No fear!" The doll-like eyes snapped dangerously. "This is my brother Vernon, Willa. Mother will be down in a moment."
Willa had suffered herself to be pecked at by the other girl's perfumed lips, and now she took the hand of the dapper youth who confronted her. He was fair like his sister, but the resemblance ended there. His nose was long and sharp, his forehead slanting, his close-set eyes a greenish-gray. She wondered how anything human could look so like a fox, as she returned his quizzical stare with a direct, level one, and relinquished his hand.
"I'm pleased to meet you," she remarked simply, and noted the quick flash of amusement which passed from brother to sister. "I reckon I can stand a little peace and quiet, after what I've been through lately. I don't hardly know where I'm at, yet."
Vernon's mouth twisted suddenly as he turned away, and Angelica responded in obvious haste.
"Yes, I imagine you do feel rather upset. Mr. North must have seemed like a fairy godfather when he appeared with his astounding news for you."
"A fairy godfather? He's kind of a hefty one, isn't he?" Willa smiled, adding quickly: "He was real kind on the trip coming up; didn't seem like he could do enough for me, but I reckon he was glad to get me here at last."
"As we are to have you, my dear." A mild, genial voice sounded from the stairs' foot, and the three young people turned. "Let me welcome you to your home. We hope to make up to you for being exiled for so long from it."
A tall, iron-gray head bent, and Willa found herself gazing into keen, kindly eyes. Her own blurred as her hand rested between those of Ripley Halstead and something seemed to grip her by the throat. Gentleman Geoff's face swam for a moment before her in a mist of tears.
She essayed an unintelligible phrase, and perceiving her emotion, he tactfully covered it.
"You must be starved; I know we are. Children, where's your mother? After dinner we must have a little talk, eh? There will be so much for you to do and see that we shall have to plan out a sort of campaign.—Oh, there you are, Irene!"
Willa's secret anxiety as to forks being allayed by the discovery that service was laid for but one course at a time, she was able to give herself up during the meal to a frank study of her new-found relatives. She was going to like Ripley Halstead; already liked him, and each passing moment confirmed her first opinion. Concerning the others, she was not so sure. There was a mental reservation behind Mrs. Halstead's surface cordiality, and the bewitching Angelica seemed too seraphically sweet and gentle to ring quite true. Vernon was a type with which in a more crude stratum of humanity she had become familiar in the gaming-rooms of the Blue Chip. Weak without being absolutely vicious, crafty without initiative, he would be a mere tool in dominant unscrupulous hands or an average, decent fellow if his better instincts were aroused.
Dinner over, they repaired to the drawing-room, but the little family gathering soon disintegrated, to Willa's profound relief.
Angelica flitted away to a dance, Vernon betook himself to his club and Mr. Halstead, forgetting his expressed intention of a talk with her, shut himself in his study. When she found herself alone with her hostess, Willa mentally braced her nerves for a cross-examination, but the ordeal was deferred.
"My dear, you must be quite worn out. We have much to talk over, for we must all readjust ourselves, and become really acquainted, but you must rest first, and accustom yourself to your new surroundings." Mrs. Halstead smiled. "I am sorry you did not like your room! I had planned it very carefully for you."
"Oh!" Willa cried, in quick dismay. "I didn't know! It was awfully pretty, but I'm used to air and space and I didn't feel like I could breathe in it. I'll put them back to-morrow, and try it, all those hangings and things, if you say so."
"No, you shall have your own room arranged as you please. You will soon grow accustomed to pretty things. We must get rid of that somber mourning at once, and plan a suitable wardrobe."
"But——" Willa paused in dismay. "Maybe Mr. North didn't tell you. I—I have lost someone who was all the world to me! I feel somehow that I couldn't give up the black, not yet anyway. It would look as if I wanted folks to think I'd forgotten——"
"I understand. You refer to your former guardian? But, my dear, that life is behind you now, and you must put everything from your thoughts but the future and what we are all going to help you make of it."
Willa rose.
"You are all very kind," she said in a stifled voice. "I'm bound to be a heap of nuisance to you, I'm afraid, though I made up my mind not to buck the game strong till I'd learned the rules. But don't ask me to be a piker and forget Dad! You don't know what he was to me! I appreciate what you-all are trying to do, Mrs. Halstead, and I sympathize with you, for it's going to be a tough job all around, no matter how I try to follow your lead, but don't stack the cards on the first deal, please. All I've got in the world now is my memory of the best friend that ever lived!"
"Your loyalty is very touching, dear child, and I would be the last to impugn it." Mrs. Halstead put two rigid dutiful arms about her. "Your clothes are a mere detail which we will take up later. You must go to bed now, and sleep."
Willa stumbled from the room with a sense of baffled defeat as if she had incontinently butted against a wall of granite. Her aching heart cried out for familiar things and faces, but she steeled herself valiantly. She must play the game!
"Well, what do you think of her?" Mason North's eyes twinkled as he put the question to the Ripley Halsteads in solemn conference on the following evening.
"A very interesting young woman," Halstead replied emphatically. "She's refreshingly genuine and original, in this artificial, cut-and-dried age."
Mrs. Halstead shuddered.
"Aboriginal, I should say," she murmured. "And quite astonishingly impervious to the social amenities."
"I gathered that, myself," Mason North nodded. "I talked to her till I was blue in the face, but unless she could see a direct reason for doing a thing, or not doing it, she followed her own instinct."
"It wouldn't lead her far wrong," declared Halstead. "She may lack the minor hypocrisies, but she'll wall herself in with them soon enough, the Lord knows. She's willing to listen to reason, that's something.
"The life down there may have been rough, but it has not destroyed her native fineness and high principle. I don't say that I should care to have Angie go through such an experience, but it might have made a man of Vernon to buck up against it. Look at young Thode!"
"Kearn Thode?" The attorney glanced up quickly. "I thought he was out West?"
"No. Larkin tells me he sent him to Mexico a few months ago. I wonder if Willa happened to run across him? He's a splendid fellow and Larkin banks on his judgment and efficiency. That's the sort of life to bring out the best in a man, or a woman either, to judge from our small cousin. I like her independence, I don't mind telling you. It shows self-reliance and strength."
"But Willa has not the slightest idea of obligation," his wife remarked. "She seems rather to look on the situation as one for mutual commiseration. Any other poor, neglected, friendless creature from the backwoods would be transported into the seventh heaven at such great good fortune, but she accepts it as a more or less onerous duty."
"You wouldn't call her exactly friendless if you had witnessed the parting ovation she received; the whole town turned out. She's more than a popular favorite down there, she's an idol. Everyone seems to worship her, down to the lowest half-breed. If we handle her right, I shouldn't wonder if she turns out to be a mighty-fine woman."
"If we do?" Mrs. Halstead raised her eyebrows. "Perhaps you have some method to suggest. I admit that for the moment I am baffled. She refused flatly last night to go out of mourning, and I was really thankful for it after reflection; we can at least keep her in the background now, until I have succeeded in eliminating some of those frightful gambling expressions from her vocabulary. She seems to have been passionately fond of the impossible person who brought her up. I shudder to think of the impression she would make now on our circle of friends. She doesn't seem in the least ashamed of her past environment, or desirous of concealing her connection with such a character."
The attorney chuckled.
"I wouldn't advise you to tackle that subject for awhile," he said. "You ought to have heard the flaying she gave me when I suggested that no one but the immediate family need know about her foster father. Her opinion of her respected grandfather, in comparison with Gentleman Geoff, was illuminating."
He gave them the gist of it, and Mrs. Halstead listened with tightened lips.
"I shall tell Willa quite plainly that we and our friends are not interested in her past but only in what she is and may become. She appears to have at least a glimmering of sense and she must soon perceive for herself how disgraceful the whole unfortunate affair would seem to outsiders." She paused. "There is something that I do not quite understand about Willa. You are sure, Mason, that she has no vulgar, clandestine affair on her hands?"
"Good heavens, I should hope not! We've got enough to contend with as things stand without that." The attorney bounced forward in his chair. "What on earth put such an idea into your head, my dear Irene?"
"She was already in the breakfast-room when I came down this morning, and I thought she looked remarkably fresh, but with these naturally pale people you never can tell." Mrs. Halstead, too, leaned forward impressively. "Willa said nothing about having been out, and naturally such a possibility never occurred to me, but Welsh tells me she drove up in a taxi-cab at half-past nine. She must have slipped out very early, for he did not see her go."
"Surely you questioned her?" her husband asked. North was speechless.
"'She had been out to take a look about the city.'" Mrs. Halstead shrugged. "She hadn't thought it worth while mentioning; she had always gone and come as she pleased."
"Exactly the same stall she gave me!" the attorney exploded. "We'd better look into this, for she gave me the slip half a dozen times on the train and in stations and I never could get any satisfaction out of her."
"I explained that young ladies did not go about alone in that fashion, at least unless their families knew and sanctioned it, and I pointed out the danger of losing her way. She promised to be more careful another time, but her manner was ambiguous, to say the least. She may have privately intended to be careful lest her future expeditions be discovered, but I have arranged to circumvent that. Whatever we do, we must have no breath of gossip until she is firmly established."
If Willa was aware of the respectful surveillance to which she was subjected thereafter she made no sign, possibly because she eluded it whenever she felt inclined with the utmost ease, and no tales were carried back. The servants beneath Mrs. Halstead's iron rule were too fearful of losing their positions to admit a failure of duty unless they were cornered and secretly they sympathized with the strange young lady. Thus Willa came and went as her pleasure dictated in the early-morning hours.
Her first real clash came during a discussion of finances with the attorney and Ripley Halstead. The latter had insisted on showing her exactly how the fortune left her by her grandfather was being manipulated for her interests, and she listened in grave attention. When the matter was concluded, Mr. North cleared his throat with a nervous but ingratiating smile.
"Now, my dear, I think we should come to an understanding about your other inheritance; that left to you by—ah, Gentleman Geoff. Mr. Baggott, the executor, informed me that the sale of your foster father's establishment alone netted two hundred thousand dollars and there are other securities and bank deposits, besides. He very ill-advisedly turned them over to you, but you, of course, cannot think of handling such a sum on your own initiative. It must be invested under mature judgment, and you are still a minor. If you will place the necessary deeds and memoranda in our hands——"
"I am not a minor under Mexican law." Willa bent a steady gaze upon him. "Dad trusted me with absolute control and I'm going to play a lone hand as far as that money is concerned, Mr. North. You can tie as many strings as you please to the Murdaugh fortune, I'm not worrying about that; I have enough without it, and what I've got I'm going to keep."
"Little cousin, that would be impossible." Halstead shook his head. "I would not interfere in any way with your personal liberty, but this is a matter in which you must defer to your proper guardians. You are incapable of managing it alone, and it is unthinkable that you should try."
"I'm very sorry, Cousin Ripley; I seem to be saying that all the time, don't I?" She smiled faintly, but her little chin was set in determined lines. "You may not have known it, but I've banked and invested Dad's money—and speculated with it, too—for the last three years, and he always said he would trust my judgment before any hombre in Mexico. I know you don't like me to speak of Dad, but I only wanted you to know that I'm really quite capable."
"Willa, my dear—" began Halstead, but the lawyer stopped him with a gesture.
"Do you realize that we can have the entire estate taken out of your hands by process of law and turned over to us as your guardians? We most certainly shall, if you persist, in order to protect you against your own wilful recklessness. My dear, you will not force us to such a disagreeable and expensive step? You are not going to disappoint us by proving ungrateful for the interest we have taken in you?"
"I am not ungrateful!" she cried passionately. "I know you are all trying to help me and look out for me, and I am thankful. I—I can't give up the control of my own money, for I may have to use it. It's really mine, Dad gave it to me, and I'm not going to have to ask for it when I want it, or explain what I want it for. If you try to take it from me, I'll have to fight for it. Everyone in Limasito will back me up, and the law down there is on their side and mine, remember. Everything else is in your hands and I am grateful to you for taking care of it, but Dad's money isn't part of the Murdaugh outfit, and I mean to keep it for myself."
No further argument could avail to move her an iota from her position and the matter perforce rested, but when the two men were alone together, Ripley Halstead looked at his attorney with a troubled question in his eyes.
North nodded solemnly.
"It's blackmail!" he announced. "She's paying hush-money to someone and planning flight if the truth, whatever it may be, is discovered. Why else would she insist on retaining control of the money she considers peculiarly her own? I thought I had learned every detail of the past, and that her life was an open book, but you never can tell. There may have been some foolish romance or entanglement—"
"No." Halsted shook his head. "You're on the wrong track there, I'm sure of it. Willa is too high-minded to compromise herself, and level-headed enough to be safe from sentimental folly under any circumstances. If she had become involved in any difficulty, you can bank on it that she would come out with the truth, straight from the shoulder; she would be the last person in the world to allow herself to be intimidated. She may be being bled through pity or a mistaken sense of loyalty, but I don't see what we can do now to stop it."
"The first step will be to discover what her game is." The attorney chuckled ruefully. "To use her own parlance, Ripley, that young woman called my bluff, and her cards are high. Litigation would be a wearisome business and we couldn't buck her crowd down there. She'd have the executor, Baggott, appointed as trustee of the old gambler's estate, and he would be wax in her hands. We can only watch her, and try to prevent her doing anything foolishly quixotic."
The next day Willa paid her first visit to a famous modiste in Mrs. Halstead's company, and returned exhausted but impressed. The latent feminine instinct for adornment had taken possession of her and through the long evening she dreamed in a hazy rapture. The motive which had so far actuated her on her course was temporarily laid aside and in its stead came vague scenes of the future, when she should have learned how to carry those marvelous creations with the trained ease and elegance of Angelica, and was wholly transformed from the plain, awkward creature of the Limasito days. Perhaps, when Kearn Thode came to New York—
A sudden sound, subdued but unmistakably familiar, roused her from her reverie. What could it mean? She sprang from her chair and stood listening intently. The family were supposed to have gone to a dinner-party, yet from somewhere above had come a chorus of male laughter, and down the stairs to her opened door echoed the rattle and clink of poker chips.
Willa crept out to the hall wistfully, drawn by the well-remembered sound as by a magnet, and step by step ascended the stairs. A door at the left was ajar and through it came a warm ray of light and the odor of cigarettes.
"If that wasn't a hunch, I'll eat my shirt!" A buoyant voice exulted. "Stuck two raises before the draw and then filled an inside straight! What do you call it?"
"Lunacy, even if it did break for you," Vernon drawled. "You ought to be shot at sunrise. No more post-mortems. Ante up there, Cal."
Willa tiptoed to the door and peered within. Vernon and four strange young men were seated about a table in the center of the room, which was evidently a den or study.
Vernon was dealing, and his neighbor at the left sat with his back squarely to the door. Over his shoulder, Willa could see his cards as he picked them up; an ace, king, ten, jack, and another king. He refused to open, but the downy-mustached boy on his left, whose voice Willa had first heard, performed that service. The other two strangers stayed out, Vernon trailed and Willa eyed the slim, dark youth whose hand she could see in fascinated suspense.
"Mine are punk." He yawned indifferently, and threw his cards down upon the table.
The eavesdropper gasped, but watched with narrowed eyes as his tapering fingers lingered, gathering up and sorting the discards with studied listlessness.
The opener checked, the boy next raised him two and Vernon dropped.
"Brace of manicurists!" The first boy showed his openers ruefully. "Couldn't better 'em. It's all yours, Art."
The dark youth shuffled the cards twice dexterously and dealt. This time he held four kings and a seven.
"Go to it, Winnie," he said lazily.
"No, thanks." Winnie shook his head. "The tall grass for mine."
His neighbor refused likewise, but the lad with the tortoise-rimmed glasses next Vernon straightened involuntarily.
"I'll open it." His voice trembled.
"Good-night!" Vernon dropped his cards as if they burned him. "Sure you're looking at 'em straight, Pete?"
"Come again." The dealer shoved two blues out on the board.
"Back to you." The opener's fingers twitched as he dropped four.
"Once more."
"And two."
"That's enough for me." The dealer shrugged, and pushed forward two chips more.
The others sat in wordless enthralment as Pete stood pat and the dealer, with a smile, laid down the pack untouched. The betting proceeded cautiously at first, then by leaps and bounds as Pete lost his head and plunged wildly.
A small mountain of blue chips lay in the center of the table, and the dark, smiling youth seemed prepared to raise it indefinitely, when Pete sighed and drew his hand before his blurred eye-glasses.
"Call you!" he squeaked. "What you got, Cal?"
The dealer spread his hand out upon the board and his opponent emitted a moan of anguish as the four kings were exposed.
"And I opened—openedmind you, with four messenger boys, pat!"
Willa did not wait for the buzz of excited comment. Instead she turned and sped noiselessly down the stair to her room. When she reappeared a few moments later she wore a corsage bunch of violets which stuck out oddly from her black gown, and carried a jingling purse.
Ascending once more, she tapped at the door and then slipped shyly in.
"Excuse me!" she said to the open-mouthed group who rose as one man. "I heard the game going on and I thought maybe you'd let me sit in for a round or two. It isn't just regular, I know, but if you won't tell,Iwon't."
"Willa!" Vernon's face was crimson. "I—I'm quite sure mother wouldn't approve of——"
"Of the game?" she smiled. "Who's going to carry tales, if I don't? I reckon you've forgotten to introduce your friends."
"Forgive me." Vernon gathered his wits together with an obvious effort, and complied. The loser of the last phenomenal hand, she learned, was Peter Follinsbee, his right-hand neighbor Arthur Judson, and "Winnie" proved to be the son whom Mason North had mentioned. His was the voice she had first heard, and she shook hands cordially with him, but merely bowed to the slim, dark youth, whose name was Calvert Shirley.
"My—my cousin, Miss Murdaugh." Vernon finished, adding desperately: "Really, Willa, I'm sorry, but it's out of the question——"
"Vernie, have a heart! We'd all be delighted if Miss Murdaugh will join us!" Winnie's eyes twinkled with mischief. "We're only playing a ten-cent limit. Miss Murdaugh, if you're familiar with the game——"
"I'm on speaking terms with it," Willa nodded. "Ten-dollarlimit you mean, don't you, Mr. North? I'm right here with you."
"Oh, I say!" Follinsbee blinked deprecatingly. "We couldn't allow a lady to play such a stiff game with all of us——"
"Son," Willa admonished him, "I've bucked a game that hit the skies more than once, so don't you worry about me. Who's banking?"
"Oh, all right, if you really want to," Vernon capitulated, in deadly fear of further revelations. "Only keep mum about it or there'll be the very deuce to pay."
Willa seated herself between "Pete" Follinsbee and "Art" Judson, directly across the table from "Cal" Shirley, and the game recommenced.
Winnie Mason looked upon her advent as a huge joke, but the others were plainly ill at ease, until a hand or two showed them that they were in the presence of a sure and expert player.
If she realized their stupefaction at the unexpected materialization in their midst of the mysterious and much heralded Miss Murdaugh she gave no sign, but played conservatively, her eyes always upon the slim, agile fingers of her vis-à-vis.
His deal came and passed without incident, but when the round of the table had been made once more, and Vernon dealt, Cal Shirley again refused to open and dropped out.
Willa, with a pair of aces, did likewise, and watched him gather up her hand with his own and the other discards.
Vernon crowed triumphantly as he raked in the pot, but Willa scarcely heard. One hand had flown to the violets at her belt, and she waited, tense and motionless, until Shirley had shuffled and lifted the top card to deal.
Then there came a sinuous, silken rustle; fingers like steel wires tore the pack from his grasp and he found himself looking into the mouth of a small but eminently practical revolver.
"Hands up, you yellow son of a Greaser!" Willa's voice rang out above the amazed gasp which ran around the table. "I saw you running up the hands before when you cleaned Mr. Follinsbee on four planted jacks. That's why I eased myself into the game."
Shirley obeyed, with a sickly smile.
"Really, this is most extraordinary!" he drawled. "Is your charming cousin about to entertain us with a bit of wild-West melodrama, Vernie?"
"No," Willa interposed. "I'm going to show you what we do with a crook below the border.—Mr. North, will you take this pack and deal face up for Mr. Shirley? You'll find that somebody will have a hand to go the limit on, but our friend over there will top him, pat."
Mechanically, Winnie North complied, and, in a silence broken only by the whispering fall of the cards, he dropped before Willa herself a king full, and at the erstwhile dealer's place, four damning eights.
"You infernal scoundrel!" They were all on their feet, but it was Vernon's voice which rumbled in unexpected strength. "If my cousin weren't here, I'd thrash you within an inch of your life!"
"Don't mind me!" The revolver wavered regretfully in Willa's fingers. "I'd have winged him at the start, but I reckon shooting don't go in New York. I'll take a chance, though, if he don't loosen up with every peso he's stolen."
The threat was wholly unnecessary. With shaking hands the cheat made restitution, his sallow face gray-green and distorted with silent rage.
"Now, vamoose!" Willa commanded. "If I don't hear the front door slam in just thirty seconds, you'll be the deadest hombre this side of Kingdom Come!"
There were a few seconds to spare from her ultimatum when the scurry of feet ceased in a thud which echoed through the silent house.
Willa slipped the revolver back under her belt and turned with a little rueful smile to her cousin.
"I—I suppose it wasn't just what a lady ought to have done——" she began, apologetically.
"It was wonderful!" Winthrop North's eyes shone. "You saw him stack up the cards on Pete Follinsbee, and then dug up that revolver and came in here to expose him! It's the gamest thing I ever heard of a girl doing! Congratulations, Miss Murdaugh!"
Vernon pulled himself together, and held out his hand. "I'm proud of my cousin! Only—what in thunder will the mater say if this gets out?"
"I know what Dad would have said." Willa flushed. "But I suppose I've made a regular hash of—of my début!"