Children of the Whirlwind Page 21

  CHAPTER XXI

  Larry came down the stairway from Hunt's studio in a mood of highelation. Through Hunt's promise of cooperation he had at least made astart in his unformed plan regarding Maggie. Somehow, he'd work out andput across the rest of it.

  Then Hunt's prediction of the trouble that might rise throughhis silence recurred to Larry. Indeed, that was a delicatesituation!--containing all kinds of possible disasters for himself aswell as for Hunt. He would have to be most watchful, most careful, or hewould find himself entangled in worse circumstances than at present.

  As he came down into the little back room, his grandmother was sittingover her interminable accounts, each of which represented a littleprofit to herself, some a little relief to many, some a tragedy to afew; and many of which were in code, for these represented transactionsof a character which no pawnshop, particularly one reputed to be afence, wishes ever to have understood by those presumptive busy-bodies,the police. When Larry had first entered, she had merely given him anunsurprised "good-evening" and permitted him to pass on. But now, ashe told her good-night and turned to leave, she said in her thin,monotonous voice:

  "Sit down for a minute, Larry. I want to talk to you."

  Larry obeyed. "Yes, grandmother."

  But the Duchess did not at once speak. She held her red-rimmed,unblinking eyes on him steadily. Larry waited patiently. Though she wasso composed, so self-contained, Larry knew her well enough to know thatwhat was passing in her mind was something of deep importance, at leastto her.

  At length she spoke. "You saw Maggie that night you hurried away fromhere?"

  "Yes, grandmother. Have you heard from her since the?--or from Barney orOld Jimmie?"

  The Duchess shook her head. "Do you mind telling me what happened thatnight--and what Maggie's doing?"

  Larry told her of the scene in Maggie's suite at the Grantham, told ofthe plan in which Maggie was involved and of his own added predicament.This last the Duchess seemingly ignored.

  "Just about what I supposed she was doing," she said. "And you triedagain to get her to give it up?"

  "Yes."

  "And she refused?"

  "Yes." And he added: "Refused more emphatically than before."

  The Duchess studied him a long moment. Then: "You're not trying to makeher give that up just because you think she's worth saving. You like hera lot, Larry?"

  "I love her," Larry admitted.

  "I'm sorry about that, Larry." There was real emotion in the old voicenow. "I've told you that you're all I've got left. And now thatyou've at last started right, I want everything to go right with you.Everything! And Maggie will never help things go right with you. Yourlove for her can only mean misery and misfortune. You can't change her."

  Larry came out with the questions he had asked himself so frequentlythese last days. "But why did her manner change so when she heard Barneyand the others? Why did she help me escape?"

  "That was because, deep down, she really loves you. That's the worstpart of it: you both love each other." The Duchess slowly nodded herhead. "You both love each other. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't carewhat you tried to do. But I tell you again you can't change her. She'stoo sure of herself. She'll always try to make you go _her way_--and ifyou don't, you'll never get a smile from her. And because you love eachother, I'm afraid you'll give in and go her way. That's what I'm afraidof. Won't you just cut her out of your life, Larry?"

  It had been a prodigiously long speech for the Duchess. And Larryrealized that the emotion behind it was a thousand times what showed inthe thin voice of the bent, gestureless figure.

  "For your sake I'm sorry, grandmother. But I can't."

  "Then it's only fair to tell you, Larry," she said in a more composedtone which expressed a finality of decision, "that if there's everanything I can do to stop this, I'll do it. For she's bad for you--whatwith her stiff spirit--and the ideas Old Jimmie has put into her--andthe way Old Jimmie has brought her up. I'll stop things if I can."

  Larry made no reply. The Duchess continued looking at him steadily fora long space. He knew she was thinking; and he was wondering what waspassing through that shrewd old brain, when she remarked:

  "By the way, Larry, I just remembered what you told me of that old SingSing friend--Joe Ellison. Have you heard from him recently?"

  "He's out, and he's working where I am."

  "Yes? What's he doing?"

  "He's working there as a gardener."

  Again she was silent a space, her sunken eyes steady With thought. Thenshe said:

  "From the time he was twenty till he was thirty I knew Joe Ellisonwell--better than I've ever told you. He knew your mother when she wasa girl, Larry. I wish you'd ask him to come in to see me. As soon as hecan manage it."

  Larry promised. His grandmother said no more about Maggie, and presentlyLarry bade her good-night and made his cautious way, ever on the lookoutfor danger, to where he had left his roadster, and thence safely out toCedar Crest. But the Duchess sat for hours exactly as he had left her,her accounts unheeded, thinking, thinking, thinking over an utterlyimpossible possibility that had first presented itself faintly to herseveral days before. She did not see how the thing could be; and yetsomehow it might be, for many a strange thing did happen in this borderworld where for so long she had lived. When finally she went to bed sheslept little; her busy conjectures would not permit sleep. And thoughthe next day she went about her shop seemingly as usual, she was stillthinking.

  That night Joe Ellison came. They met as though they had last seen eachother but yesterday.

  "Good-evening, Joe."

  "Glad to see you, Duchess."

  She held out to him a box of the best cigars, which she had boughtagainst his coming, for she had remembered Joe Ellison's once fastidioustaste regarding tobacco. He lit one, and they fell into the easy silenceof old friends, taking up their friendship exactly where it had beenbroken off. As a matter of fact, Joe Ellison might have been herson-in-law but for her own firm attitude. He had known her daughter verymuch better than her words to Larry the previous evening had indicated.Not only had Joe known her while a girl down here, but much later hehad learned in what convent she was going to school and there had beensurreptitious love-making despite convent rules and boundaries--till theDuchess had learned what was going on. She had had a square out-and-outtalk with Joe; the romance had suddenly ended; and later Larry'smother had married elsewhere. But the snuffed-out romance had madeno difference in the friendship between the Duchess and Joe; each hadrecognized the other as square, as that word was understood in theirborder world.

  To Joe Ellison the Duchess was changed but little since twenty-odd yearsago. She had seemed old even then; though as a youth he had known oldmen who had talked of her beauty when a young woman and of how shehad queened it among the reckless spirits of that far time. But to theDuchess the change in Joe Ellison was astounding. She had last seenhim in his middle thirties: black-haired, handsome, careful of dress,powerful of physique, dominant, fiery-tempered, fearless of any livingthing, but with these hot qualities checked into a surface appearance ofunruffled equanimity by his self-control and his habitual reticence. Andnow to see him thin, white-haired, bent, his old fire seemingly burnedto gray ashes--the Duchess, who had seen much in her generations, wasalmost appalled at the transformation.

  At first the Duchess skillfully guided the talk among commonplaces.

  "Larry tells me you're out with him."

  "Yes," said Joe. "Larry's been a mighty good pal."

  "What're you going to do when you get back your strength?"

  "The same as I'm doing now--if they'll let me."

  And after a pause: "Perhaps later, if I had the necessary capital, I'dlike to start a little nursery. Or else grow flowers for the market."

  "Not going back to the old thing, then?"

  Joe shook his white head. "I'm all through there. Flowers are a moreinteresting proposition."

  "Whenever you get ready to start, Joe, you can
have all the capitalyou want from me. And it will cost you nothing. Or if you'd rather pay,it'll cost you the same as at a bank--six per cent."

  "Thanks. I'll remember." Joe Ellison could not have spoken his gratitudemore strongly.

  The Duchess now carefully guided the talk in the direction of the thingof which she had thought so constantly.

  "By the way, Joe, Larry told me something about you I'd never heardbefore--that you had been married, and had a child."

  "Yes. You didn't hear because I wasn't telling anybody about it when ithappened, and it never came out."

  "Mind telling me about it, Joe?"

  He pulled at his perfecto while assembling his facts; and then hemade one of the longest speeches Joe Ellison--"Silent Joe" some of hisfriends had called him in the old days--was ever known to utter. Butthere was reason for its length; it was an epitome of the most importantperiod of his life.

  "I had a nice little country place over in Jersey for three or fouryears. It all happened there. No one knew me for what I was; theytook me for what I pretended to be, a small capitalist whose interestsrequired his taking occasional trips. Nice neighbors. That's where I metmy wife. She was fine every way. That's why I kept all that part ofmy life from my pals; I was afraid they might leak and the truth wouldspoil everything. My wife was an orphan, niece of the widow of a brokerwho lived out there. She never knew the truth about me. She died whenthe baby was born. When the baby was a year and a half my big smashcame, and I went up the river. But I was never connected up with the manwho lived over in Jersey and who suddenly cancelled his lease and movedaway."

  The Duchess drew nearer to the heart of her thoughts.

  "Was the baby a boy or girl, Joe?"

  "Girl."

  The Duchess did not so much as blink. "How old would she be by thistime?"

  "Eighteen."

  "What was her name?"

  "Mary--after her mother. But of course I ordered it to be changed. Idon't know what her name is now."

  The Duchess pressed closer.

  "What became of her, Joe?"

  A glow began to come into the somber eyes of Joe Ellison. "I told youher mother was a fine woman, and she never knew anything bad about me. Iwanted my girl to grow up like her mother. I wanted her to have as gooda chance as any of those nice girls over in Jersey--I wanted her neverto know any of the lot I've known--I wanted her never to have the stainof knowing her father was a crook--I wanted her never to know even whoher father was."

  "How did you manage it?"

  "Her mother had left a little fortune, about twenty-fivethousand--twelve or fifteen hundred a year. I turned the money and thegirl over to my best pal--and the squarest pal a man ever had--the onlyone I'd let know about my Jersey life. I told him what to do. She was anawfully bright little thing; at a year and a half, when I saw her last,she was already talking. She was to be brought up among nice, simplepeople--go to a good school--grow up to be a nice, simple girl. Andespecially never to know anything about me. She was to believe herselfan orphan. And my pal did just as I ordered. He wrote me how she wasgetting on till about four years ago, then I had news that he was deadand that the trust fund had been transferred to a firm of lawyers,though I wasn't given the name of the lawyers. That doesn't make anydifference since she's getting the money just the same."

  "What was your pal's name, Joe?"

  "Jimmie Carlisle."

  The Duchess had been certain what this name would be, but neverthelessshe could not repress a start.

  "What's the matter?" Joe asked sharply. "Did you know him?"

  "Not in those days," said the Duchess, recovering her even tone. "ThoughI got to know him later. By the way," she added casually, "did JimmieCarlisle have any children of his own?"

  "Not before I went away. He wasn't even married."

  There was now no slightest doubt left in the Duchess's mind. Maggie wasreally Joe Ellison's daughter.

  Joe Ellison went on, the glow of his sunken eyes becoming yet moreexalted. He was almost voicing his thoughts to himself alone, forhis friendship with the Duchess was so old that her presence was noinhibition. His low words were almost identical in substance with whatLarry had told--a summary of what had come to be his one great hope anddream, the nearest thing he had to a religion.

  "Somewhere, in a nice place, my girl is now growing up like her mother.Clean of everything I was and I knew. She must be practically a womannow. I don't know where she is--there's now no way for me to learn.And I don't want to know. And I don't want her ever to know about me.I don't ever want to be the cause of making her feel disgraced, or ofdragging her down from among the people where she belongs."

  The Duchess gave no visible sign of emotion, but her ancientheart-strings were set vibrating by that tense, low-pitched voice. Shehad a momentary impulse to tell him the truth. But just then the Duchesswas a confusion of many conflicting impulses, and the balance of theirstrength was for the moment against telling. So she said nothing.

  Their talk drifted back to commonplaces, and presently Joe Ellisonwent away. The Duchess sat motionless at her desk, againthinking--thinking--thinking; and when Joe Ellison was back in hisgardener's cottage at Cedar Crest and was happily asleep, she still satwhere he had left her. During her generations of looking upon life fromthe inside, she had seen the truth of many strange situations of whichthe world had learned only the wildest rumors or the most respectableversions; but during the long night hours, perhaps because the affairtouched her so closely, this seemed to her the strangest situation shehad ever known. A father believing with the firm belief of establishedcertainty that his daughter had been brought up free from all taint ofhis own life, carefully bred among the best of people. In reality thegirl brought up in a criminal atmosphere, with criminal ideas implantedin her as normal ideas, and carefully trained in criminal ways andambitions. And neither father nor daughter having a guess of the truth.

  Indeed it was a strange situation! A situation charged with all kinds ofunforeseeable results.

  The Duchess now understood the unfatherly disregard Old Jimmie had shownfor the ordinary welfare of Maggie. Not being her father, he had notcared. Superficially, at least, Jimmie Carlisle must have been a muchmore plausible individual twenty years earlier, to have won the implicittrust of Joe Ellison and to have become his foremost friend. Sheunderstood one reason why Old Jimmie had always boarded Maggie inthe cheapest and lowest places; his hidden cupidity had thereby beenpocketing about a thousand dollars a year of trust money for oversixteen years.

  But there was one queer problem here to which the Duchess could not atthis time see the answer. If Jimmie Carlisle had wished to gratify hiscupidity and double-cross his friend, why had he not at the very startplaced Maggie in an orphanage where she would have been neither chargenor cost to him, and thus have had the use of every penny of the trustfund? Why had he chosen to keep her by him, and train her carefully tobe exactly what her father had most wished her not to be? There musthave been some motive in the furtive, tortuous mind of Old Jimmie, thatnow would perhaps forever remain a mystery.

  Of course she saw, or thought she saw, the reason for the report of OldJimmie's death to Joe Ellison. That report had been sent to escape anaccounting.

  As she sat through the night hours the Duchess for the first time feltwarmth creep over her for Maggie. She saw Maggie in the light of avictim. If Maggie had been brought up as her father had planned, shemight now be much the girl her father dreamed her. But Old Jimmie hadentered the scheme of things. Yes, the audacious, willful, confidentMaggie, bent on conquering the world in the way Old Jimmie and laterBarney Palmer had taught her, was really just a poor misguided victimwho should have had a far different fate.

  And now the Duchess came to one of the greatest problems of her life.What should she do? Considering the facts that Joe Ellison wished thelife of a recluse and desired to avoid all talk of the old days, thechances were that he would never happen upon the real state of affairs.Only she and Old Jimmie knew the essentials of
the situation--and verylikely Jimmie did not yet know that the friend who had once trusted himwas now a free man. She felt as though she held in her hands the stringsof destiny. Should she tell the truth?

  She pondered long. All her considerations were given weight according towhat she saw as their possible effect upon Larry; for Larry was the oneperson left whom she loved, and on him were fixed the aspirations ofthese her final years. Therefore her thoughts and arguments were myopic,almost necessarily specious. She wanted to see justice done, of course.But most of all she wanted what was best for Larry. If she told thetruth, it might result in some kind of temporary breakdown in Maggie'sattitude which would bring her and Larry together. That would bedisastrous. If not disastrous at once, certainly in the end. Maggie wasa victim, and undoubtedly deserved sympathy. But others should not besacrificed merely because Maggie had suffered an injury. She had beentoo long under the tutelage of Old Jimmie, and his teachings werenow too thoroughly the fiber of her very being, for her to alterpermanently. She might change temporarily under the urge of an emotionalrevelation; but she would surely revert to her present self. There wasno doubt of that.

  And the Duchess gave weight to other considerations--all human, yet allin some measure specious. Joe Ellison was happy in his dream, and wouldbe happy in it all the rest of his life. Why tell the truth and destroyhis precious illusion?--especially when there was no chance to changeMaggie?

  And further, she recalled the terrific temper that had lived within thecomposed demeanor of Joe Ellison. The fires of that temper could not yetbe all burned out. If she told the truth, told that Jimmie Carlisle wasstill alive, that might be just touching the trigger of a devastatingtragedy--might be disaster for all. What would be the use when no onewould have been benefited?

  And so, in the wisdom of her old head and the entanglements of her oldheart, the Duchess decided she would never tell. And that loving, humandecision she was to cling to through the stress of times to come.

  But even while she was thus deciding upon a measure to checkmate themboth, Larry was pacing his room at Cedar Crest, at last excitedlyevolving the elusive plan which was to bring Maggie to her senses andalso to him; and Maggie, all unconscious of this new element which hadentered as a potential factor in her existence, all unconscious of howfar she had been guided from the course which had been charted forher, was lying awake at the Grantham after a late party at which DickSherwood had been her escort, and was exulting pridefully over theseemingly near consummation of the plan that was to show Larry Brainardhow wrong he was and that was to establish her as the cleverest woman inher line--better even than Barney or Old Jimmie believed her.

  And thus separate wills each strove to direct their own lives and otherlives according to their own separate plans; little thinking to whatextent they were all entangled in a common destiny; and thinking not atall of the further seed that was being sown for the harvest-time of thewhirlwind.