Children of the Whirlwind Part 7

"You talk about going straight--it's all rot!" she flamed at him. "A lot of men say they're going straight, but no one ever does! And you won't either!"

"You think I won't?"

"I know you won't! You don't know how to do any regular work. And, besides, no one will give a crook a chance."

She had unerringly placed her finger upon his two great problems, and Larry knew it; he had considered them often enough.

"All the same, I'm going to make good!" he declared.

"Oh, no, you're not!"

Perhaps he was stirred chiefly by the sting of her taunting tongue, by the blaze of her dark, disdainful eyes; and perhaps by the changed feeling toward this creature whom he had left a half-grown girl and returned to find a woman. At any rate, he crossed and seized her wrists and gazed fiercely down upon her.

"I tell you, I'm going to go straight, and I'm going to make a success of it! You'll see!" And then he added dominantly: "What's more, I'm going to make you go straight, too!"

She made no attempt to free herself, but blazed up at him defiantly.

"You'll make me do nothing. I'm going to be just what I said, and I'm going to make a success of it. Just wait--I'll prove to you what I can do! And you--you'll be a failure, and will come slinking back and beg us to take you in!"

They glared at each other silently, angrily, their aroused wills defying each other. For a moment they stood so. Then something--a mixture of his desire to dominate this defiant young thing and of that growing change in him toward her--surged madly into Larry's head. He caught Maggie in his arms and kissed her.

All the rigidity went suddenly from her figure and she hung loose in his embrace. Their gazes held for a moment. She went pale, and quivering all through she looked up at him in startled, wide-eyed silence. As for Larry, a dizzying, throbbing emotion permeated his whole astonished being.

Suddenly she pushed herself free from his relaxing arms, and backed away from him.

"What did you do that for?" she whispered huskily.

But she did not wait for his answer. She turned and hurried for the stairway. Three steps up she turned again and gazed down upon him. Her cheeks were once more flushed and her dark eyes blazing.

"It's going to be just as I said!" she flung at him. "I'm going to succeed--you're going to fail! You just wait and see!"

She turned and ran swiftly up the stairway and out of sight. Neither of them had been aware that the d.u.c.h.ess, a drab figure merged into a drab background, had regarded them fixedly during all this scene. And Larry was still unconscious that the old eyes were now watching him with their deep-set, expressionless fixity.

Motionless, Larry stood gazing at where Maggie had been. Within him was tumult; he did not yet understand the significance of that impulsive kiss... He began to walk the floor, his mind and will now more in control. Yes, he was going to go straight; he was going to make good, and make good in a big way! And he was going to make Maggie go straight, too. He'd show her! It wasn't going to be easy, but he had his big plan made, and he had determination, and he knew he'd win in the end. Yes, he'd show her!...

Up before the mirror Maggie sat looking intently at herself. Part of her consciousness was wondering about that kiss, and part kept fiercely repeating that she'd show him--she'd show him--she'd show him!...

Looking thus into their futures they were both very certain of themselves and of the roads which they were to travel.

CHAPTER VII

Larry was still gazing at where Maggie had stood, flashing her defiance at him, when Hunt came thumping down the stairway.

"h.e.l.lo, young fellow; what you been doing to Maggie?" demanded the painter.

"Why?"

"Her door was open when I came by and I called to her. She didn't answer, but, oh, what a look! What's in the air?"

And then Hunt noted the d.u.c.h.ess apart in her corner. "I say, d.u.c.h.ess--what were Larry and Maggie rowing about?"

"Grandmother!" Larry exclaimed with a start. "I'd forgotten you were here! You must have heard it all--go ahead and tell him."

"Tell him yourself," returned the d.u.c.h.ess.

Larry and Hunt took chairs, and Larry gave the gist of what he had said about his decision to Barney and Old Jimmie and Maggie. The d.u.c.h.ess, still motionless at her desk as she had been all during Larry's scene with Old Jimmie and Barney, and then his scene with Maggie, regarded her grandson with that emotionless, mummified face in which only the red-margined eyes showed life or interest.

"So you're going to go straight, eh?" queried Hunt. The big painter sat with his long legs sprawling in front of him, a black pipe in his mouth, and looked at Larry skeptically. "You certainly did hand a jolt to your friends who'd been counting on you. And yet you're sore because they were sore at you and didn't believe in you."

"Did I say that I was sore?" queried Larry.

"No, but you're acting it. And you're sore at Maggie because she didn't believe that you could make good or that you'd stick it out. Well, I don't believe you will either."

"You're a great painter, Hunt, and a great cook--but I don't give a d.a.m.n what you believe."

"Keep your shirt on, young fellow," Hunt responded, puffing imperturbably. "I say I believe you won't win out--but that's not saying I don't want you to win out. If that's what you want to do, go to it, and may luck be with you, and may the devil stay in h.e.l.l. The morals of other people are out of my line--none of my business. I'm a painter, and it's my business to paint people as I find them. But Maggie certainly did put her finger on the tough spot in your proposition: for a crook to find a job and win the confidence of people. It's up grade all the way, and it takes ten men's nerve to stick it out to the top. Yep, Maggie was sure right!"

And then the d.u.c.h.ess broke her accustomed silence with her thin croak:

"Never you mind Maggie! She thinks she knows everything, but she doesn't know anything."

Larry looked in surprise at his grandmother. There was a flash in her old eyes; but the next moment the spark was gone.

"Sure you're up against it--but I'll be rooting for you." Hunt was grinning. "But say, young fellow, what made you decide to vote the other ticket?"

Larry was trained at reading faces; and in the rough-hewn, grinning features of Hunt he read good-fellowship. Larry swiftly responded in kind, for from the moment he had pulled the mask of being a fool from the painter and shown him to be a real artist, he had felt drawn toward this impecunious swashbuckler of the arts. So he now repeated the business motives which he had presented to Barney and Old Jimmie. As Larry talked he became more spontaneous, and after a time he was telling of the effect upon him of seeing various shrewd men locked up and unexercised in prison. And presently his reminiscence settled upon one prison acquaintance: a man past middle age, clever in his generation, who had already done some fifteen years of a long sentence. He was, said Larry, grim and he rarely spoke; but a close, wordless friendship had developed between them. Only once, in an unusually relaxed mood, had the old convict spoken of himself, but what he had then said had had a greater part in rousing Larry to his new decision than the words of any other man.

"It was a queer story Joe let out," continued Larry. "Before he was sent away he had a kid, just a baby whose mother was dead. He told me he wanted to have his kid brought up without ever knowing anything about the kind of people he knew and the kind of life he'd lived. He wanted it to grow up among decent people. He had money put away and he had an old friend, a pal, that he'd trust with anything. So he turned over his money and his baby to his friend, and gave orders that the kid was to be brought up decent, sent to school, and that the kid was never to know anything about Joe. Of course the baby was too young then ever to remember him; and when he gets out he's going to keep absolutely clear of the kid's life--he wants his kid to have the best possible chance."

"What is his whole name, and what was he sent up for?" queried the d.u.c.h.ess, that flickering fire of interest once more in her old eyes.

"Joe Ellison. He was an old-time confidence man. He got caught in a jam--there had been drinking--there was some shooting--and he had attempted manslaughter tacked on to the charge of swindling. But Joe said everybody had been drinking and that the shooting was accidental."

"Joe Ellison--I knew him," said the d.u.c.h.ess. "He was about the cleverest man of his day. But I never knew he had a child. Who was this best friend of his?"

"Joe Ellison didn't mention his name," answered Larry. "You see Joe spoke of his story only once. But he then said that he'd had letters once a month telling how fine the kid was getting on--till three or four years ago when he got word that his friend had died. The way things stand now, Joe won't know how to find the kid when he gets out even if he should want to find it--and he wouldn't know it even if he saw it.

Up in Sing Sing when I had nothing else to do," concluded Larry, "I tell you I thought a lot about that situation--for it certainly is some situation: Joe Ellison for fifteen years in prison with just one big idea in his life, the idea being the one thing he felt he was really doing or ever could do, his very life built on that one idea: that outside, somewhere, was his kid growing up into a fine young person--never guessing it had such a father--and Joe never intending to see it again and not being able to know it if he ever should see it.

I tell you, after learning Joe's story, it made me feel that I'd had enough of the old life."

Again the d.u.c.h.ess spoke. "Did Joe ever mention its name?"

"No, he just spoke of it as 'his kid.'"

Larry was quiet a moment. "You see," he added, "I want to get settled before Joe comes out--his time's up in a few months--so that I can give him some sort of place near me. He's all right, Joe is; but he's too old to have any show at a fresh start if he tries to make it all on his own."

"Larry, you haven't got such a tough piece of old bra.s.s for a heart yourself," commented Hunt. "What are your own plans?"