第67章

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.