CHAPTER XXX
Larry undressed, had a bath, shaved, dressed again, and started towork. But that day the most Larry did was abstractedly going throughthe motions of work. He was completely filled with the situation and itsmany questions, and with the suspense of waiting for Maggie to come andof how he was going to manage to see her privately.
The meeting, however, proved no difficulty; for Maggie, who arrived atfour, had come primarily on Larry's account and she herself maneuveredthe encounter. While they were on the piazza, Dick having gone into thehouse for a fresh supply of cigarettes, and Miss Sherwood being in ananimated discussion with Hunt, Maggie said:
"Miss Sherwood, I've never had a real look down at the Sound from theedge of your bluff. Do you mind if Mr. Brandon shows me?"
"Not at all. Tea won't be served for half an hour, so take your time.Have Mr. Brandon show you the view from just the other side of that oldrose-bench; that's the best view."
They walked away chatting mechanically until they were in a garden seatbehind the rose-bench. The rose-bench was a rather sorry affair, forit had been set out in this exposed place by a former gardener who hadforgotten that the direct winds from the Sound are malgracious toroses. However, it screened the two, and was far enough removed so thatordinary tones would not carry to the house.
"Did your grandmother get you word about the police?" Maggie asked withsuppressed excitement as soon as they were seated.
"Yes. She came out here about midnight."
"Then why, while you still had time, didn't you get farther away fromNew York than this?"
"If I'm to be caught, I'm to be caught; in the meantime, this is as safea place as any other for me. Besides, I wanted to have at least one moretalk with you--after something new grandmother told me about you."
"Something new about me?" echoed Maggie, startled by his grave tone."What?"
"About your father," he said, watching closely for the effect upon herof his revelations.
"What about my father? What's he been doing that I don't know about?"
"You do not know a single thing that your father has done."
"What!"
"Because you do not know who your father is."
"What!" she gasped.
"Listen, Maggie. What I'm going to tell you may seem unbelievable, butyou've got to believe it, because it's the truth. I can see that youhave proofs if you want proofs. But you can accept what I tell you asabsolute facts. You are by birth a very different person from what youbelieve yourself. Your father is not Jimmie Carlisle. And your mother--"
"Larry!" She tensely gripped his arm.
"Your mother was of a good family. I imagine something like MissSherwood's kind--though not so rich and not having such social standing.She died when you were born. She never knew what your father's businessactually was; he passed for a country gentleman. He was about thesmoothest and biggest crook of his time, and a straight crook if thereis such a thing."
"Larry!" she breathed.
"He kept this gentleman-farmer side of his life and his marriageentirely hidden from his crook acquaintances; that is, from all exceptone whom he trusted as his most loyal friend. Before you were old enoughto remember, he was tripped up and sent away on a twenty-year sentence."
"And he's--he's still in prison?" whispered Maggie.
Larry did not heed the interruption. "He had developed the highest kindof ambition for you. He wanted you to grow up a fine simple woman likeyour mother--something like Miss Sherwood. He did not want you everto know the sort of life he had known; and he did not want you to behandicapped by the knowledge that you had a crook for a father. He stillhad intact your mother's fortune, a small one, but an honest one. Sohe put you and the money in the hands of his trusted friend, with theinstructions that you were to be brought up as the girls of the nicestfamilies are brought up, and believing yourself an orphan."
"That friend of his, Larry?" she whispered tensely.
"Jimmie Carlisle."
"O--oh!"
"I don't know what Jimmie Carlisle's motives were for what he has done.Perhaps to get your money, perhaps some grudge against your father,which he was afraid to show while your father was free, for yourfather was always his master. But Old Jimmie has brought you up exactlycontrary to the orders he received. If revenge was Old Jimmie's motive,his cunning, cowardly brain could not have conceived a more diabolicalrevenge, one that would hurt your father more. Till a few years ago,when word was sent to your father that Old Jimmie was dead, Jimmieregularly wrote your father about the success of his plan, about howsplendidly you were developing and getting on with the best people. Andyour father--I knew him in prison--now believes you have grown up intoexactly the kind of young woman he planned."
"Larry!" she choked in a numbed voice. "Larry!"
"Your father is now as happy as it is possible for him to be, for he haslived for years and still lives in the belief that his great dream, theonly big thing left for him to do, has come to pass: that somewhere outin the world is his daughter, grown into a nice, simple, wholesome youngwoman, with a clean, wholesome life before her. And though she is theone thing in all the world to him, he never intends to see her again forfear that his seeing her might somehow result in an accident that woulddestroy her happy ignorance. Maggie, can you conceive the tremendousmeaning to your father of what he believes he has created? And can youconceive the tremendous difference between the dream he lives upon, andthe reality?"
She was white, staring, wilted. For once all the defiance,self-confidence, bravado, melted out of her, and she was just anappalled and frightened young girl.
After a moment she managed to repeat the question Larry had ignored: "Ismy real father--still in prison?"
"You'd like to see your real father?" he asked her.
"I think--I'd like to have a glimpse of him," she breathed.
Larry, just before this, had noted Joe Ellison in his blue overalls andwide straw hat cleaning out a bank of young dahlias a distance up thebluff. He now took Maggie's arm and guided her in that direction.
"See that man there working among the dahlias?--the man who once broughtyou a bunch of roses? Joe Ellison is his name. He's the man I've beentalking about--your father."
He felt her quivering under his hand for a moment, and heard her breathcome in swift, spasmodic pants. He was wondering what was the effectupon her of this climax of his revelation, when she whispered:
"Do you suppose--I can speak--to my father?"
"Of course. He likes all young women. And I told you that he and I wereclose friends."
"Then--come on." She arose, clinging to him, and drew him after her.Halfway to Joe she breathed: "You please say something first. Anything."
He recognized this as the appeal of one whose faculties were reeling.There had never been any attempt here at Cedar Crest to conceal JoeEllison's past, and in Larry's case there had been only such concealmentas might help his evasion of his dangers. And so Larry remarked as JoeEllison took his wide hat off his white hair and stood bareheaded beforethem:
"Joe, Miss Cameron knows who I really am, and about my having been inSing Sing; and I've just told her about our having been friends there.Also I told her about your having a daughter. It interested her and sheasked me if she couldn't talk to you, so I brought her over."
Larry stood aside and tensely watched this meeting between father anddaughter. Joe bowed slightly, and with a dignified grace that overallsand over fifteen years of prison could not take from one who duringhis early and middle manhood had been known as the perfection of thefinished gentleman. His gray eyes warmed with appreciation of the youngfigure before him, just as Larry had seen them grow bright watching theyoung figures disporting in the Sound.
"It is very gracious for a young woman like you, Miss Cameron," he saidin a voice of grave courtesy, "to be interested enough in an old manlike me to want to talk with him."
Maggie made the supreme effort of her life to keep herself in hand."I wanted to talk to you because o
f something Mr. Brainard told meabout--about your having a daughter."
Larry felt that this was too sacred a scene for him to intrude upon."Would you mind excusing me," he said; "there are some calculations I'vegot to rush out"--and he returned to the bench on which they had beensitting and pretended to busy himself over a pocket notebook.
While Larry had been speaking and moving away, Maggie had swiftlybeen appraising her father. His gray eyes were direct as against thefurtiveness of Jimmie's; his mouth had a firm kindliness as against thewrinkled cunning of Jimmie's; his bearing was erect, self-possessed,as against Jimmie's bent, shuffling carriage. Maggie felt no swift-borndaughter love for this stranger who was her father. The turmoil of herdiscovery filled her too completely to admit a full-grown affection; butshe thrilled with the sense of the vast difference between her supposedfather and this her real father.
In the meantime her father had spoken. Joe would have been more reservedwith men or with older women; but with this girl, so much the sort ofgirl he had long dreamed about, his reserve vanished without resistance,and in its place was a desire to talk to this beautiful creature whocame out of the world which the big white house represented.
"I have a daughter, yes," he said. "But Larry--Mr. Brainard perhaps Ishould say--has likely told you all there is to tell."
"I'd like to hear it from you, please--if you don't mind."
"There's really not much to tell," he said. "You know what I was andwhat happened. When I went to prison my daughter was too young toremember me--less than two years old. I didn't want her ever to be drawninto the sort of life that had been mine, or be the sort of woman that agirl becomes who gets into that life. And I didn't want her ever to havethe stigma, and the handicap, of her knowing and the world knowing thather father was a convict. You can't understand it fully, Miss Cameron,but perhaps you can understand a little how disgraced you would feel,what a handicap it would be, if your father were a convict. I had a goodfriend I could trust. So I turned my daughter over to him, to bebrought up with no knowledge of my existence, and with every reasonableadvantage that a nice girl should have. I guess that's all, MissCameron."
"This friend--what was his name?"
"Carlisle--Jimmie Carlisle. But his name could never have meant anythingto you. Besides, he's dead now."
Maggie forced herself on. "Your plan--it turned out all right? Andyou--you are happy?"
"Yes." In the sympathetic atmosphere which this young girl's presencecreated for him, Joe's emotions flowed into words more freely than everbefore in the company of a human being. Though he was answering her,what he was really doing was rather just letting his heart use itslong-silent voice, speak its exultant dream and belief.
"Somewhere out in the world--I don't know where, and I don't want toknow--my daughter has now grown into a wholesome, splendid young woman!"he said in a vibrant voice. Brooding in solitude so long upon hiscareful plan that he believed could not fail, had made the keen JoeEllison less suspicious concerning it than he otherwise would havebeen--perhaps had made him a bit daffy on this one subject. "I havesaved my daughter from all the grime she might have known, and whichmight have soiled her, and even pulled her down if I hadn't thoughtout in good time my plan to protect her. And of course I am happy!" heexulted. "I have done the best thing that it was possible for me todo, the thing which I wanted most to do! Instead of what she might havebeen, I have as a daughter just such a nice girl as you are--just aboutyour own age--though, of course, she hasn't your money, your socialposition, and naturally not quite the advantages you have had. Of courseI'm happy!"
"You're--you're sure she's all that?"
Again his words were as much a statement aloud to himself of hisconstant dream as they were a direct answer to Maggie. "Of course! Therewas enough money--the plan was in the hands of a friend who knew howto handle such a thing--she's never known anything but the very bestsurroundings--and until she was fourteen I had regular reports on howwonderfully she was progressing. You see my friend had had her legallyadopted by a splendid family, so there's no doubt about everything beingfor the best."
"And you"--Maggie drove herself on--"don't you ever want to see her?"
"Of course I do. But at the very beginning I fixed things so I couldnot; so that I would not even know where she is. Removed temptation frommyself, you see. Don't you see the possible results if I should try tosee her? Something might happen that would bring out the truth, and thatwould ruin her happiness, her career. Don't you see?"
His gray eyes, bright with his great dream, were fixed intently uponMaggie; and yet she felt that they were gazing far beyond her at someother girl... at his girl.
"I--I--" she gulped and swayed and would have fallen if he had not beenquick to catch her arm.
"You are sick, Miss?" he asked anxiously.
"I--I have been," she stammered, trying to regain control of herfaculties. "It's--it's that--and my not eating--and standing in thishot sun. Thank you very much for what you've told me. I'd--I'd better begetting back."
"I'll help you." And very gently, with a firm hand under one arm, heescorted her to the bench where Larry sat scribbling nothings. He thenraised his hat and returned to his dahlias.
"Well?" queried Larry when they were alone.
"I can't stand it to stay here and talk to these people," she repliedin an agonized whisper. "I must get away from here quick, so that I canthink."
"May I come with you?"
"No, Larry--I must be alone. Please, Larry, please get into the house,and manage to fake a telephone message for me, calling me back to NewYork at once."
"All right." And Larry hurried away. She sat, pale, breathing rapidly,her whole being clenched, staring fixedly out at the Sound. Five minuteslater Larry was back.
"It's all arranged, Maggie. I've told the people; they're sorry you'vegot to go. And Dick is getting his car ready."
She turned her eyes upon him. He had never seen in them such a look.They were feverish, with a dazed, affrighted horror. She clutched hisarm.
"You must promise never to tell my father about me!"
"I won't. Unless I have to."
"But you must not! Never!" she cried desperately. "He thinks I'm--Oh,don't you understand? If he were to learn what I really am, it wouldkill him. He must keep his dream. For his sake he must never find out,he must keep on thinking of me just the same. Now, you understand?"
Larry slowly nodded.
Her next words were dully vibrant with stricken awe. "And it means thatI can never have him for my father! Never! And I think--I'd--I'd likehim for a father! Don't you see?"
Again Larry nodded. In this entirely new phase of her, a white-faced,stricken, shivering girl, Larry felt a poignant sympathy for her thelike of which had never tingled through him in her conquering moods.Indeed Maggie's situation was opening out into great human problems suchas neither he nor any one else had ever foreseen!
"There comes Dick," she whispered. "I must do my best to hold myselftogether. Good-bye, Larry."
A minute later, Larry just behind her, she was crossing the lawn onDick's arm, explaining her weakness and pallor by the sudden dizzinesswhich had come upon her in consequence of not eating and of being in thehot sun.