Children of the Whirlwind [103]
"You are sick, Miss?" he asked anxiously.
"I--I have been," she stammered, trying to regain control of her faculties. "It's--it's that--and my not eating--and standing in this hot sun. Thank you very much for what you've told me. I'd--I'd better be getting back."
"I'll help you." And very gently, with a firm hand under one arm, he escorted her to the bench where Larry sat scribbling nothings. He then raised 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 replied in an agonized whisper. "I must get away from here quick, so that I can think."
"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 New York at once."
"All right." And Larry hurried away. She sat, pale, breathing rapidly, her whole being clenched, staring fixedly out at the Sound. Five minutes later Larry was back.
"It's all arranged, Maggie. I've told the people; they're sorry you've got 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 his arm.
"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 would kill 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 that I can never have him for my father! Never! And I think--I'd--I'd like him 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 the like of which had never tingled through him in her conquering moods. Indeed Maggie's situation was opening out into great human problems such as neither he nor any one else had ever foreseen!
"There comes Dick," she whispered. "I must do my best to hold myself together. Good-bye, Larry."
A minute later, Larry just behind her, she was crossing the lawn on Dick's arm, explaining her weakness and pallor by the sudden dizziness which had come upon her in consequence of not eating and of being in the hot sun.
CHAPTER XXXI
Larry was far more deeply moved this time when Maggie drove away with Dick than on that former occasion when he had tried to play with adroitness upon her psychological reactions. Now he knew that her very world was shaken; that her soul was stunned and reeling; that she was fighting with all her strength for a brief outward composure.
He had loved her for months, but he had never so loved her as in this hour when all her artificial defenses had been battered down and she had been just a bewildered, agonized girl, with just the emotions and first thoughts that any other normal girl would have had under the same circumstances. His great desire had been to be with her, to comfort her, help her; but he realized that she had been correct in her instinct to be by herself for a while, to try to comprehend it all, to try to think her way out.
When Maggie was out of sight he excused himself from having tea, left Hunt and Miss Sherwood upon the veranda, and sought his study. But though he had neglected his work the whole day, he now gave it no attention. He sat at his desk and thought of Maggie: tried to think of what she was going to do. Her situation was so complicated with big elements which she would have to handle that he could not foretell just what her course would be. It was a terrific situation for a young woman, who was after all just a very young girl, to face alone. But there was nothing for him but to wait for news from her. And she had not said even that she would ever let him hear.
While he considered these matters he had