"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 old rose-bench; that"s the best view."
They walked away chatting mechanically until they were in a garden seat behind the rose-bench. The rose-bench was a rather sorry affair, for it had been set out in this exposed place by a former gardener who had forgotten that the direct winds from the Sound are malgracious to roses. However, it screened the two, and was far enough removed so that ordinary tones would not carry to the house.
"Did your grandmother get you word about the police?" Maggie asked with suppressed 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 from New York than this?"
"If I"m to be caught, I"m to be caught; in the meantime, this is as safe a place as any other for me. Besides, I wanted to have at least one more talk 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 her of 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, but you"ve got to believe it, because it"s the truth. I can see that you have proofs if you want proofs. But you can accept what I tell you as absolute facts. You are by birth a very different person from what you believe 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 Miss Sherwood"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 business actually was; he pa.s.sed for a country gentleman. He was about the smoothest and biggest crook of his time, and a straight crook if there is such a thing."
"Larry!" she breathed.
"He kept this gentleman-farmer side of his life and his marriage entirely hidden from his crook acquaintances; that is, from all except one whom he trusted as his most loyal friend. Before you were old enough to 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 kind of ambition for you. He wanted you to grow up a fine simple woman like your mother--something like Miss Sherwood. He did not want you ever to know the sort of life he had known; and he did not want you to be handicapped by the knowledge that you had a crook for a father. He still had intact your mother"s fortune, a small one, but an honest one. So he put you and the money in the hands of his trusted friend, with the instructions that you were to be brought up as the girls of the nicest families 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 your father was always his master. But Old Jimmie has brought you up exactly contrary to the orders he received. If revenge was Old Jimmie"s motive, his cunning, cowardly brain could not have conceived a more diabolical revenge, one that would hurt your father more. Till a few years ago, when word was sent to your father that Old Jimmie was dead, Jimmie regularly wrote your father about the success of his plan, about how splendidly you were developing and getting on with the best people. And your father--I knew him in prison--now believes you have grown up into exactly 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 has lived for years and still lives in the belief that his great dream, the only big thing left for him to do, has come to pa.s.s: that somewhere out in the world is his daughter, grown into a nice, simple, wholesome young woman, with a clean, wholesome life before her. And though she is the one thing in all the world to him, he never intends to see her again for fear that his seeing her might somehow result in an accident that would destroy her happy ignorance. Maggie, can you conceive the tremendous meaning to your father of what he believes he has created? And can you conceive the tremendous difference between the dream he lives upon, and the reality?"
She was white, staring, wilted. For once all the defiance, self-confidence, bravado, melted out of her, and she was just an appalled and frightened young girl.
After a moment she managed to repeat the question Larry had ignored: "Is my 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 and wide straw hat cleaning out a bank of young dahlias a distance up the bluff. He now took Maggie"s arm and guided her in that direction.
"See that man there working among the dahlias?--the man who once brought you a bunch of roses? Joe Ellison is his name. He"s the man I"ve been talking about--your father."
He felt her quivering under his hand for a moment, and heard her breath come in swift, spasmodic pants. He was wondering what was the effect upon 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 were close 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 Joe Ellison"s past, and in Larry"s case there had been only such concealment as might help his evasion of his dangers. And so Larry remarked as Joe Ellison took his wide hat off his white hair and stood bareheaded before them:
"Joe, Miss Cameron knows who I really am, and about my having been in Sing 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 she asked me if she couldn"t talk to you, so I brought her over."
Larry stood aside and tensely watched this meeting between father and daughter. Joe bowed slightly, and with a dignified grace that overalls and over fifteen years of prison could not take from one who during his early and middle manhood had been known as the perfection of the finished gentleman. His gray eyes warmed with appreciation of the young figure before him, just as Larry had seen them grow bright watching the young figures disporting in the Sound.
"It is very gracious for a young woman like you, Miss Cameron," he said in a voice of grave courtesy, "to be interested enough in an old man like 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 of something Mr. Brainard told me about--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"ve got to rush out"--and he returned to the bench on which they had been sitting and pretended to busy himself over a pocket notebook.
While Larry had been speaking and moving away, Maggie had swiftly been appraising her father. His gray eyes were direct as against the furtiveness of Jimmie"s; his mouth had a firm kindliness as against the wrinkled cunning of Jimmie"s; his bearing was erect, self-possessed, as against Jimmie"s bent, shuffling carriage. Maggie felt no swift-born daughter love for this stranger who was her father. The turmoil of her discovery filled her too completely to admit a full-grown affection; but she thrilled with the sense of the vast difference between her supposed father and this her real father.
In the meantime her father had spoken. Joe would have been more reserved with men or with older women; but with this girl, so much the sort of girl he had long dreamed about, his reserve vanished without resistance, and in its place was a desire to talk to this beautiful creature who came out of the world which the big white house represented.
"I have a daughter, yes," he said. "But Larry--Mr. Brainard perhaps I should say--has likely told you all there is to tell."