CHAPTER VIII

WILLA SITS IN

"Well, what do you think of her?" Mason North's eyes twinkled as he put the question to the Ripley Halsteads in solemn conference on the following evening.

"A very interesting young woman," Halstead replied emphatically.

"She's refreshingly genuine and original, in this artificial, cut-and-dried age."

Mrs. Halstead shuddered.

"Aboriginal, I should say," she murmured. "And quite astonishingly impervious to the social amenities."

"I gathered that, myself," Mason North nodded. "I talked to her till I was blue in the face, but unless she could see a direct reason for doing a thing, or not doing it, she followed her own instinct."

"It wouldn't lead her far wrong," declared Halstead. "She may lack the minor hypocrisies, but she'll wall herself in with them soon enough, the Lord knows. She's willing to listen to reason, that's something.

"The life down there may have been rough, but it has not destroyed her native fineness and high principle. I don't say that I should care to have Angie go through such an experience, but it might have made a man of Vernon to buck up against it. Look at young Thode!"

"Kearn Thode?" The attorney glanced up quickly. "I thought he was out West?"

"No. Larkin tells me he sent him to Mexico a few months ago. I wonder if Willa happened to run across him? He's a splendid fellow and Larkin banks on his judgment and efficiency. That's the sort of life to bring out the best in a man, or a woman either, to judge from our small cousin. I like her independence, I don't mind telling you. It shows self-reliance and strength."

"But Willa has not the slightest idea of obligation," his wife remarked. "She seems rather to look on the situation as one for mutual commiseration. Any other poor, neglected, friendless creature from the backwoods would be transported into the seventh heaven at such great good fortune, but she accepts it as a more or less onerous duty."

"You wouldn't call her exactly friendless if you had witnessed the parting ovation she received; the whole town turned out. She's more than a popular favorite down there, she's an idol. Everyone seems to worship her, down to the lowest half-breed. If we handle her right, I shouldn't wonder if she turns out to be a mighty-fine woman."

"If we do?" Mrs. Halstead raised her eyebrows. "Perhaps you have some method to suggest. I admit that for the moment I am baffled. She refused flatly last night to go out of mourning, and I was really thankful for it after reflection; we can at least keep her in the background now, until I have succeeded in eliminating some of those frightful gambling expressions from her vocabulary. She seems to have been pa.s.sionately fond of the impossible person who brought her up. I shudder to think of the impression she would make now on our circle of friends. She doesn't seem in the least ashamed of her past environment, or desirous of concealing her connection with such a character."

The attorney chuckled.

"I wouldn't advise you to tackle that subject for awhile," he said.

"You ought to have heard the flaying she gave me when I suggested that no one but the immediate family need know about her foster father. Her opinion of her respected grandfather, in comparison with Gentleman Geoff, was illuminating."

He gave them the gist of it, and Mrs. Halstead listened with tightened lips.

"I shall tell Willa quite plainly that we and our friends are not interested in her past but only in what she is and may become. She appears to have at least a glimmering of sense and she must soon perceive for herself how disgraceful the whole unfortunate affair would seem to outsiders." She paused. "There is something that I do not quite understand about Willa. You are sure, Mason, that she has no vulgar, clandestine affair on her hands?"

"Good heavens, I should hope not! We've got enough to contend with as things stand without that." The attorney bounced forward in his chair.

"What on earth put such an idea into your head, my dear Irene?"

"She was already in the breakfast-room when I came down this morning, and I thought she looked remarkably fresh, but with these naturally pale people you never can tell." Mrs. Halstead, too, leaned forward impressively. "Willa said nothing about having been out, and naturally such a possibility never occurred to me, but Welsh tells me she drove up in a taxi-cab at half-past nine. She must have slipped out very early, for he did not see her go."

"Surely you questioned her?" her husband asked. North was speechless.

"'She had been out to take a look about the city.'" Mrs. Halstead shrugged. "She hadn't thought it worth while mentioning; she had always gone and come as she pleased."

"Exactly the same stall she gave me!" the attorney exploded. "We'd better look into this, for she gave me the slip half a dozen times on the train and in stations and I never could get any satisfaction out of her."

"I explained that young ladies did not go about alone in that fashion, at least unless their families knew and sanctioned it, and I pointed out the danger of losing her way. She promised to be more careful another time, but her manner was ambiguous, to say the least. She may have privately intended to be careful lest her future expeditions be discovered, but I have arranged to circ.u.mvent that. Whatever we do, we must have no breath of gossip until she is firmly established."

If Willa was aware of the respectful surveillance to which she was subjected thereafter she made no sign, possibly because she eluded it whenever she felt inclined with the utmost ease, and no tales were carried back. The servants beneath Mrs. Halstead's iron rule were too fearful of losing their positions to admit a failure of duty unless they were cornered and secretly they sympathized with the strange young lady. Thus Willa came and went as her pleasure dictated in the early-morning hours.

Her first real clash came during a discussion of finances with the attorney and Ripley Halstead. The latter had insisted on showing her exactly how the fortune left her by her grandfather was being manipulated for her interests, and she listened in grave attention.

When the matter was concluded, Mr. North cleared his throat with a nervous but ingratiating smile.

"Now, my dear, I think we should come to an understanding about your other inheritance; that left to you by--ah, Gentleman Geoff. Mr.

Baggott, the executor, informed me that the sale of your foster father's establishment alone netted two hundred thousand dollars and there are other securities and bank deposits, besides. He very ill-advisedly turned them over to you, but you, of course, cannot think of handling such a sum on your own initiative. It must be invested under mature judgment, and you are still a minor. If you will place the necessary deeds and memoranda in our hands----"

"I am not a minor under Mexican law." Willa bent a steady gaze upon him. "Dad trusted me with absolute control and I'm going to play a lone hand as far as that money is concerned, Mr. North. You can tie as many strings as you please to the Murdaugh fortune, I'm not worrying about that; I have enough without it, and what I've got I'm going to keep."

"Little cousin, that would be impossible." Halstead shook his head.

"I would not interfere in any way with your personal liberty, but this is a matter in which you must defer to your proper guardians. You are incapable of managing it alone, and it is unthinkable that you should try."

"I'm very sorry, Cousin Ripley; I seem to be saying that all the time, don't I?" She smiled faintly, but her little chin was set in determined lines. "You may not have known it, but I've banked and invested Dad's money--and speculated with it, too--for the last three years, and he always said he would trust my judgment before any hombre in Mexico. I know you don't like me to speak of Dad, but I only wanted you to know that I'm really quite capable."

"Willa, my dear--" began Halstead, but the lawyer stopped him with a gesture.

"Do you realize that we can have the entire estate taken out of your hands by process of law and turned over to us as your guardians? We most certainly shall, if you persist, in order to protect you against your own wilful recklessness. My dear, you will not force us to such a disagreeable and expensive step? You are not going to disappoint us by proving ungrateful for the interest we have taken in you?"

"I am not ungrateful!" she cried pa.s.sionately. "I know you are all trying to help me and look out for me, and I am thankful. I--I can't give up the control of my own money, for I may have to use it. It's really mine, Dad gave it to me, and I'm not going to have to ask for it when I want it, or explain what I want it for. If you try to take it from me, I'll have to fight for it. Everyone in Limasito will back me up, and the law down there is on their side and mine, remember.

Everything else is in your hands and I am grateful to you for taking care of it, but Dad's money isn't part of the Murdaugh outfit, and I mean to keep it for myself."

No further argument could avail to move her an iota from her position and the matter perforce rested, but when the two men were alone together, Ripley Halstead looked at his attorney with a troubled question in his eyes.

North nodded solemnly.

"It's blackmail!" he announced. "She's paying hush-money to someone and planning flight if the truth, whatever it may be, is discovered.

Why else would she insist on retaining control of the money she considers peculiarly her own? I thought I had learned every detail of the past, and that her life was an open book, but you never can tell.

There may have been some foolish romance or entanglement--"

"No." Halsted shook his head. "You're on the wrong track there, I'm sure of it. Willa is too high-minded to compromise herself, and level-headed enough to be safe from sentimental folly under any circ.u.mstances. If she had become involved in any difficulty, you can bank on it that she would come out with the truth, straight from the shoulder; she would be the last person in the world to allow herself to be intimidated. She may be being bled through pity or a mistaken sense of loyalty, but I don't see what we can do now to stop it."

"The first step will be to discover what her game is." The attorney chuckled ruefully. "To use her own parlance, Ripley, that young woman called my bluff, and her cards are high. Litigation would be a wearisome business and we couldn't buck her crowd down there. She'd have the executor, Baggott, appointed as trustee of the old gambler's estate, and he would be wax in her hands. We can only watch her, and try to prevent her doing anything foolishly quixotic."

The next day Willa paid her first visit to a famous modiste in Mrs.

Halstead's company, and returned exhausted but impressed. The latent feminine instinct for adornment had taken possession of her and through the long evening she dreamed in a hazy rapture. The motive which had so far actuated her on her course was temporarily laid aside and in its stead came vague scenes of the future, when she should have learned how to carry those marvelous creations with the trained ease and elegance of Angelica, and was wholly transformed from the plain, awkward creature of the Limasito days. Perhaps, when Kearn Thode came to New York--

A sudden sound, subdued but unmistakably familiar, roused her from her reverie. What could it mean? She sprang from her chair and stood listening intently. The family were supposed to have gone to a dinner-party, yet from somewhere above had come a chorus of male laughter, and down the stairs to her opened door echoed the rattle and clink of poker chips.

Willa crept out to the hall wistfully, drawn by the well-remembered sound as by a magnet, and step by step ascended the stairs. A door at the left was ajar and through it came a warm ray of light and the odor of cigarettes.

"If that wasn't a hunch, I'll eat my shirt!" A buoyant voice exulted.

"Stuck two raises before the draw and then filled an inside straight!

What do you call it?"

"Lunacy, even if it did break for you," Vernon drawled. "You ought to be shot at sunrise. No more post-mortems. Ante up there, Cal."