CHAPTER XXV

When Maggie sped away from Cedar Crest in the low seat of the roadster

beside the happy Dick, she felt herself more of a criminal than at any

time in her life, and a criminal that miraculously was making her escape

out of an inescapable set of circumstances.

Beyond her relief at this escape she did not know these first few

minutes what she thought or felt. Too much had happened, and what had

happened had all turned out so differently from what she had expected,

for her to set in orderly array this chaos of reactions within herself

and read the meaning of that afternoon's visit. She managed, with a

great effort, to keep under control the outer extremities of her senses,

and thus respond with the correct “yes” or “no” or “indeed” when some

response from her was required by Dick's happy conversation.

Near Roslyn they swung off the turnpike into an unfrequented, shady

road. Dick steered to one side beneath a locust-tree and silenced the

motor.

“Why are you stopping?” she asked in sudden alarm.

“So we can talk without a piece of impertinent machinery roaring

interruptions at us,” replied Dick with forced lightness. And then in

a voice he could not make light: “I want to talk to you about--about my

sister. Isn't she splendid?”

“She is!” There was no wavering of her thoughts as Maggie emphatically

said this.

“I'm mighty glad you like her. She certainly liked you. She's all the

family I've got, and since you two hit it off so well together I hope--I

hope, Maggie--”

And then Dick plunged into it, stammeringly, but earnestly. He told

her how much he loved her, in old phrases that his boyish ardor made

vibrantly new. He loved her! And if she would marry him, her influence

would make him take the brace all his friends had urged upon him. She'd

make him a man! And she could see how pleased it would make his sister.

And he would do his best to make Maggie happy--his very best!

The young super-adventuress--she herself had mentally used the word

“adventuress” in thinking of herself, as being more genteel and mentally

aristocratic than the cruder words by which Barney and Old Jimmie and

their kind designated a woman accomplice--this young super-adventuress,

who had schemed all this so adroitly, and worked toward it with the best

of her brain and her conscious charm, was seized with new panic as she

listened to the eager torrent of his imploring words, as she gazed into

the quivering earnestness of his frank, blue-eyed face. She wished

she could get out of the machine and run away or sink through the

floor-boards of the car. For she really liked Dick.

“I'm--I'm not so good as you think,” she whispered. And then some

unsuspected force within her impelled her to say: “Dick, if you knew the

truth--”

He caught her shoulders. “I know all the truth about you I want to know!

You're wonderful, and I love you! Will you marry me? Answer that. That's

all I want to know!”

He had checked the confession that impulsively had surged toward her

lips. Silent, her eyes wide, her breath coming sharply, she sat gazing

at him.... And then from out the portion of her brain where were stored

her purposes, and the momentum of her pride and determination, there

flashed the realization that she had won! The thing that Barney and Old

Jimmie had prepared and she had so skillfully worked toward, was at last

achieved! She had only to say “yes,” and either of those two plans which

Barney had outlined could at once be put in operation--and there could

be no doubt of the swift success of either. Dick's eager, trusting face

was guarantee that there would come no obstruction from him.

She felt that in some strange way she had been caught in a trap. Yes,

what they had worked for, they had won! And yet, in this moment of

winning, as elements of her vast dizziness, Maggie felt sick and

ashamed--felt a frenzied desire to run away from the whole affair. For

Maggie, cynical, all-confident, and eighteen, was proving really a very

poor adventuress.

“Please, Maggie”--his imploring voice broke in upon her--“won't you

answer me? You like me, don't you?--you'll marry me, won't you?”

“I like you, Dick,” she choked out--and it was some slight comfort to

her to be telling this much of the truth--“but--but I can't marry you.”

“Maggie!” It was a cry of surprised pain, and the pain in his voice

shot acutely into her. “From the way you acted toward me--I thought--I

hoped--” He sharply halted the accusation which had risen to his lips.

“I'm not going to take that answer as final, Maggie,” he said doggedly.

“I'm going to give you more time to think it over--more time for me to

try. Then I'll ask you again.”

That which prompted Maggie's response was a mixture of impulses: the

desire, and this offered opportunity, to escape; and a faint reassertion

of the momentum of her purpose. For with one such as Maggie, the set

purposes may be seemingly overwhelmed, but death comes hard.

“All right,” she breathed rapidly. “Only please get me back as quickly

as you can. I'm to have dinner with my--my cousin, and I'll be very

late.”

Dick drove her into the city in almost unbroken silence and left her at

the great doors of the Grantham, abustle with a dozen lackeys in purple

livery. She stood a moment and watched him drive away. He really was a

nice boy--Dick.

As she shot up the elevator, she thought of a hitherto forgotten element

of that afternoon's bewildering situation. Barney Palmer! And Barney

was, she knew, now up in her sitting-room, impatiently waiting for her

report of what he had good reason to believe would prove a successful

experience. If she told the truth--that Dick had proposed, just as they

had planned for him to do--and she had refused him--why, Barney--!

She seemed caught on every side!

Maggie got into her suite by way of her bedroom. She wanted time to

gather her wits for meeting Barney. When Miss Grierson told her that

her cousin was still waiting to take her to dinner, she requested her

companion to inform Barney that she would be in as soon as she had

dressed. She wasted all the time she legitimately could in changing into

a dinner-gown, and when at length she stepped into her sitting-room she

was to Barney's eye the same cool Maggie as always.

Barney rose as she entered. He was in smart dinner jacket; these days

Barney was wearing the smartest of everything that money could secure.

There was a shadow of impatience on his face, but it was instantly

dissipated by Maggie's self-composed, direct-eyed beauty.

“How'd you come out with Miss Sherwood?” he whispered eagerly.

“Well enough for her to kiss me good-bye, and beg me to come again.”

“I've got to hand it to you, Maggie! You're sure some swell

actress--you've sure got class!” His dark eyes gleamed on her with half

a dozen pleasures: admiration of what she was in herself--admiration

of what she had just achieved--anticipation of results, many

results--anticipation of what she was later to mean to him in a personal

way. “If you can put it over on a swell like Miss Sherwood, you can put

it over on any one!” He exulted. “As soon as we clean up this job in

hand, we'll move on to one big thing after another!”

And then out came the question Maggie had been bracing herself for: “How

about Dick Sherwood? Did he finally come across with that proposal?”

“No,” Maggie answered steadily.

“No? Why not?” exclaimed Barney sharply. “I thought that was all that

was holding him back--waiting for his sister to look you over and give

you her O.K.?”

Maggie had decided that her air of cool, indifferent certainty was the

best manner to use in this situation with Barney. So she shrugged her

white shoulders.

“How can I tell what makes a man do something, and what makes him not do

it?”

“But did he seem any less interested in you than before?” Barney

pursued.

“No,” replied Maggie.

“Then maybe he's just waiting to get up his nerve. He'll ask you, all

right; nothing there for us to worry about. Come on, let's have dinner.

I'm starved.”

On the roof of the Grantham they were excellently served; for Barney

knew how to order a dinner, and he knew the art, which is an alchemistic

mixture of suave diplomacy and the insinuated power and purpose of

murder, of handling head-waiters and their sub-autocrats. Having no

other business in hand, Barney devoted himself to that business which

ran like a core through all his businesses--paying court to Maggie. And

when Barney wished to be a courtier, there were few of his class who

could give a better superficial interpretation of the role; and in this

particular instance he was at the advantage of being in earnest. He

forced the most expensive tidbits announced by the dinner card upon

Maggie; he gallantly and very gracefully put on and removed, as required

by circumstances, the green cobweb of a scarf Maggie had brought to

the roof as protection against the elements; and when he took the

dancing-floor with her, he swung her about and hopped up and down

and stepped in and out with all the skill of a master of the modern

perversion of dancing. Barney was really good enough to have been a

professional dancer had his desires not led him toward what seemed to

him a more exciting and more profitable career.

Maggie, not to rouse Barney's suspicions, played her role as well as he

did his own. And most of the other diners, a fraction of the changing

two or three hundred thousand people from the South and West who choose

New York as the best of all summer resorts, gazed upon this handsome

couple with their intricate steps which were timed with such effortless

and enviable accuracy, and excitedly believed that they were beholding

two distinguished specimens of what their home papers persisted in

calling New York's Four Hundred.

Maggie got back to her room with the feeling that she had staved off

Barney and her numerous other dilemmas for the immediate present. Her

chief thought in the many events of the day had been only to escape her

dangers and difficulties for the moment; all the time she had known that

her real thinking, her real decisions, were for a later time when she

was not so driven by the press of unexpected circumstances. That less

stressful time was now beginning.

What was she to do next? What were to be her final decisions? And what,

in all this strange ferment, was likely to germinate as possible forces

against her?

She mulled these things over for several days, during which Dick came to

see her twice, and twice proposed, and was twice put off. She had quiet

now, and was most of the time alone, but that clarity which she had

expected, that quickness and surety of purpose which she had always

believed to be unfailingly hers, refused to come.

She tried to have it otherwise, but the outstanding figure in her

meditations was Larry. Larry, who had not exposed her at the Sherwoods',

and whose influence had caused Hunt also not to expose her--Larry, who

without deception was on a familiar footing at the Sherwoods' where she

had been received only through trickery--Larry, a fugitive in danger

from so many enemies, perhaps after all undeserved enemies--Larry,

who looked to be making good on his boast to achieve success through

honesty--Larry, who had again told her that he loved her. She liked Dick

Sherwood--she really did. But Larry--that was something different.

And thus she thought on, drawn this way and that, and unable to reach a

decision. But with most people, when in a state of acute mental turmoil,

that which has been most definite in the past, instinct, habit of mind,

purpose, tradition, becomes at least temporarily the dominant factor

through the mere circumstance that it has existed powerfully before,

through its comparative stability, through its semi-permanence. And so

with Maggie. She had for that one afternoon almost been won over against

herself by the workings of Larry's secret diplomacy. Then had come

the natural reaction. And now in her turmoil, in so far as she had any

decision, it was instinctively to go right ahead in the direction in

which she had been going.

But on the sixth day of her uncertainty, just after Dick had called on

her and she had provisionally accepted an invitation to Cedar Crest for

the following afternoon, a danger which she had half seen from the

start burst upon her without a moment's warning. It came into her

sitting-room, just before her dinner hour, in the dual form of Barney

and Old Jimmie. The faces of both were lowering.

“Get rid of that boob chaperon of yours!” gritted Barney. “We're going

to have some real talk!”

Maggie stepped to the connecting door, sent Miss Grierson on an

inconsequential errand, and returned.

“You're looking as pleasant as if you were sitting for a new photograph,

Barney. What gives you that sweet expression?”

“You'll cut out your comic-supplement stuff in just one second,” Barney

warned her. “We both saw young Sherwood awhile ago as he was leaving the

Grantham, and he told us everything!”

Persiflage did indeed fail Maggie. “Everything?” she exclaimed. “What's

everything?”

“He told us about proposing to you almost a week ago, and about your

refusing him. And you lied to us--kept us sitting round, wasting our

time--and all the while you've been double-crossing us!”

Those visitors from South and West, especially the women, who a few

nights before on the roof had regarded Barney as the perfect courtier,

would not have so esteemed him if they had seen him at the present

moment. He seized Maggie's wrists, and all the evil of his violent

nature glared from his small bright eyes.

“Damn you!” he cried. “Jimmie, she's yours, and a father's got a right

to do anything he likes to his own daughter. Give it to her proper if

she don't come across with the truth!”

Jimmie stepped closer to her and bared his yellow teeth. “I haven't

given you a basting since you were fifteen--but I'll paste you one right

in the mouth if you don't talk straight talk!”

“You hear that!” Barney gritted at her. He believed there was justice in

his wrath--as indeed there was, of a sort. “Think what Jimmie and I've

put into this, in time and hard coin! We've given you your chance, we've

made you! And then, after hard work and waiting and our spending so

much, and everything comes out exactly as we figured, you go and throw

us down--not just yourself, but us and our rights! Now you talk straight

stuff! Tell us, why did you refuse Sherwood when he proposed? And why

did you tell me that lie about his not proposing?”

Maggie realized she was in a desperate plight, with these two inflamed

gazes upon her. Never had she felt so little of a daughter's liking for

Old Jimmie as now when she looked into his lean, harsh, yellow-fanged

face. And she had no illusions about Barney. He might love her, as she

knew he did; but that would not be a check upon his ruthlessness if he

thought himself balked or betrayed.

Just then her telephone began to ring. She started to move toward it,

but Barney's grip checked her short.

“You're going to answer me--not any damned telephone! Let it ring!”

The bell rang for a minute or two before it stilled its shrill clamor.

Its ringing was in a way a brief respite to Maggie, for it gave her

additional time to consider what should be her course. She realized

that she dared not let Barney believe at this moment that she had turned

against him. Again she fell back upon her cool, self-confident manner.

“You want to know why? The answer is simple enough. I thought I might

try out an improvement of our plan--something that might suit me

better.”

“What's that?” Barney harshly demanded.

“Since Miss Sherwood fell for me so easy, it struck me that she'd be

pretty sure to fall for me if I told her the whole truth about myself.

That is, everything except our scheme to play Dick for a sucker.”

“What're you driving at?”

“Don't you see? If she forgave me being what I am, and I rather think

she would, and with Dick liking me as he does--why, it struck me as the

best thing for yours truly to marry Dick for keeps.”

“What?” Though Barney's voice was low, it had the effect of a startled

and savage roar. “And chuck us over-board?”

“Not at all. If I married Dick for keeps, I intended to pay you a lump

sum, or else a regular amount each year.”

“No, you don't!” Barney cried in the same muffled roar.

“Perhaps not--I haven't decided,” Maggie said evenly. “I've merely been

telling you, as you requested me, why I did as I did. I refused Dick,

and lied to you, so that I might have more time to think over what I

really wanted to do.”

Instinctively she had counted on rousing Barney's jealousy in order to

throw him off the track of her real thoughts. She succeeded.

“I can tell you what you're going to do!” Barney flung at her with

fierce mastery. “You're not going to put over a sure-enough marriage

with any Dick Sherwood! When there's that kind of a marriage, I'm going

to be the man! And you're going to go right straight ahead with our old

plan! Dick'll propose again if you give him half a chance. And when he

does, you say 'yes'! Understand? That's what you're going to do!”

There was no safety in openly defying Barney. And as a matter of fact

what he had ordered was what, in the shifting currents of her thoughts,

the steady momentum of her old ambitions and purposes had been pushing

her toward. So she said, in her even voice:

“You waste such a lot of your good energy, Barney, by exploding when

there's nothing to blow up. That's exactly what I'd decided to do. Miss

Sherwood has asked me out to Cedar Crest to-morrow afternoon, and I'm

going.”

Barney let go the hold he had kept upon her wrists, and the dark look

slowly lifted from his face. “Why didn't you tell a fellow this at

first?” he half grumbled. Then with a grim enthusiasm: “And when you

come back, you're going to tell us it's all settled!”

“Of course--if he asks me. And now suppose you two go away. You've given

me a headache, and I want to rest.”

“We'll go,” said Barney. “But there may be some more points about this

that we may want to talk over a little later to-night. So better get all

the rest you can.”

But when they had gone and left her to the silence of her pretentious

and characterless suite, Maggie did not rest. She had made up her mind;

she was going to do as she had said. But there was still that same

turmoil within her.

Again she thought of Larry. But she would not admit to herself that her

real motive for suddenly deciding to go to Cedar Crest on the morrow was

the chance of seeing him.